How Co-requisites and Surveillance Will Push Our Kids Out of Education

by Rebecca Thomas

The student has already left

Rocked. Saddened. Frustrated.

That’s the trio of emotion that sits heavy in the chest when we read about Aotearoa ranking so poorly in the latest UNICEF report on child wellbeing.

When we watch, helpless, as suicide rates among our rangatahi outpace the OECD average.

And when we learn that the disbanding of Kāhui Ako may silence the very bridges that once linked primary and secondary schools—bridges that held our tamariki together, that caught those slipping through the net.

But this week, my heart aches for another reason. One that’s gathering quiet momentum in classrooms, corridors and principals' offices across the motu—as the first round of c0 requisite assessments begins.

And now, layered over top, the proposed surveillance-style attendance systems.

One is an academic barrier. The other is a behavioural tracker.

Together, they form a pipeline that might look like accountability on paper—but in practice, it’s quietly ejecting our most vulnerable learners from the education system.

A Barrier Disguised as a Benchmark

The co-requisite was introduced to ensure all students graduate with foundational skills in literacy and numeracy.

It sounds reasonable. Necessary, even.

Until you see the data:

• In 2023, only 62.1% of students passed Numeracy.

• 63.9% passed Writing.

• 68.5% met the Reading standard.

  
  

More than a third of all students are not passing. First time. Second time. For some, not even the third.

And yet there is no public data on how many give up. How many disengage. How many disappear.

What we are hearing though is that once a student fails twice, it’s near impossible to convince them they can succeed.

Some try again. Some don’t.

Especially when their home life is chaotic. When trauma is daily. When school has never felt like a place for them.

Add now the looming presence of a centralised attendance surveillance system.

More digital monitoring. More real-time dashboards. More heat maps of absence.

If we’re honest, it won’t help our most vulnerable students feel seen—it will make them feel watched.

Because this system isn’t asking:

“What do you need to show up?”

It’s asking:

“Why weren’t you here—and who should we blame?”

Let’s be clear—when monitoring replaces manaakitanga, when data replaces relationship, we lose our most important leverage: trust.

This is where the damage compounds.

The co-requisite fails the most vulnerable students.

The surveillance tracks them until they disappear.

And the system?

It looks cleaner. The statistics look better. League tables rise.

Because the only ones left behind are those we’ve already stopped counting.

We won’t see them in our pass rates. But we will see them in our suicide numbers. In our youth mental health services. In our justice system.

The tidy data hides a broken reality.

Let’s not pretend this is unintentional.

A system that punishes students who fail the test and tracks those who don’t show up is not designed to be inclusive.

It is designed to protect the image of progress.

But our job is not to uphold the image.

Our job is to tell the truth.

And the truth is: the combination of co-requisite barriers and punitive surveillance will push our kids out.

Out of education. Out of opportunity. Out of belief in themselves.

And some of them will not come back.

What Real Accountability Looks Like

If we are truly committed to equity, our system would be judged not by how well the top third are doing—but by what we’ve done for those at the bottom.

• We would fund and scale kaupapa Māori education.

• We would embed trauma-informed practices in every school.

• We would build relational trust, not just attendance algorithms.

• We would hold ourselves accountable for student disengagement.

What We Choose to See

If we continue down this path, we will graduate fewer students, but publish shinier data.

And we’ll claim success.

Meanwhile, a generation of rangatahi—bright, brave, bruised—will carry the scars of a system that couldn’t see past the spreadsheet.

We must ask: Are we designing a system for our most successful students? Or for all of them?

Because if we choose the former, let’s at least be honest.

We’re not building a system of equity.

We’re building a system of disappearance.