The number that should worry every hiring manager
By the end of 2025, 5,356 students had failed the NCEA numeracy co-requisite test four or more times since the tests were introduced in 2023, according to an NZQA report covered by the NZ Herald. The same report found 2,508 students failed the reading test at least four times and 2,687 failed writing the same number of times.
These are not students who slipped up once. They have exhausted multiple attempts at a minimum-standard test and still cannot clear it. NZQA’s own language is blunt, noting that “there is still a population of students for whom more intensive or specific support is required.”
What the test actually gates
The co-requisite is the floor, not the ceiling. Students must pass all three tests, reading, writing and numeracy, or complete 20 credits in approved alternative standards, before they can receive any NCEA certificate at all. Fail the numeracy bar and you walk out of school with nothing on paper, regardless of how you performed elsewhere.
To be clear, the system is working for most. The NZ Herald report notes that more than 85% of students met requirements through the online tests in 2025, and the average student needed just 1.3 attempts. The 5,356 are the tail. But it is a long tail, and the broader pipeline behind them is widening.
The employer translation
This is where the abstract becomes a business problem. The EMA, which represents thousands of employers, has been saying for some time that the output isn’t landing. Writing in August 2025, the EMA’s Joanna Hall said members report “low levels of communication, digital literacy, and fundamental reading and maths skills” among school leavers, adding that the inability of some young people to follow instructions or communicate effectively “limits their prospects, and it’s limiting our productivity as a country.”
BusinessNZ has framed it as a structural mismatch. In a July 2025 submission to the Education and Workforce Select Committee, it argued that “many of the skills that people currently get trained in are not the skills needed by business, and this is holding back graduates from successfully gaining employment.”
The pipeline is bigger than the headline
The persistent failures sit inside a larger deterioration. Figures reported by the ODT in February 2026 showed that by the end of 2025, 9% of Year 13s and 15% of Year 12s had not achieved the co-requisite, roughly 5,000 and 10,000 students respectively who would not receive any NCEA certificate.
Achievement rates were the lowest in five years. Only 74% of Year 12s met the co-requisite, down from 85% in 2021, while the share of school leavers with no qualification at all reached 16% in 2024, up from 11% in 2019.
The regional and equity pattern matters for hiring. Historically, RNZ has reported that students from schools facing the greatest socioeconomic barriers passed numeracy at around 40%, versus 80% at lower-barrier schools. For employers in construction, manufacturing, logistics and hospitality concentrated in those communities, this isn’t an abstract equity debate. It is a hiring pipeline problem.
The 2028 cliff
Things may get worse before they improve. The alternative pathway that lets students meet the requirement via approved standards rather than the online tests closes at the end of 2027. Porirua College principal Ragne Maxwell warned in February 2026 that achievement rates will worsen when it does, and raised a fair concern about the test format itself, saying some students “are failing who are literate and numerate.”
From 2028, the Government will also abolish NCEA Level 1 and introduce a new foundation certificate in literacy and numeracy, the first step in replacing the entire NCEA system by 2030. Budget 2026 put $131.1 million into compulsory education, which BusinessNZ’s Rachel Simpson welcomed in May 2026 as “ultimately an investment in New Zealand’s productivity, competitiveness, and long-term prosperity.”
Read the data carefully, but don’t dismiss it
Not everyone accepts the crisis framing. University of Auckland’s Dr Lisa Darragh argued in May 2026 that “the evidence doesn’t clearly show an education system in crisis,” noting curriculum achievement has been relatively stable and PISA declines track OECD-wide post-COVID trends. That caution is reasonable. It does not change the 5,356 figure, which comes from NZQA’s own report, nor the consistent employer feedback that sits behind it.
The new foundation certificate has one job that matters to business: it has to be legible. Employers need a credential that means a school leaver can read an instruction, write a coherent message and do the maths on a job site. If the 2028 overhaul delivers that, the disruption will have been worth it. If it just relabels the same tail of failure, the productivity drag continues, only with a different acronym on the certificate.
Sources
- More than 5000 teens fail NCEA numeracy test four times or more (2026-06-28)
- Fears literacy, numeracy failure could lead to students giving up (2026-02-02)
- School Leavers Will Benefit From Greater Industry Involvement (2025-08)
- Announced investment in education will bolster reform – BusinessNZ (2026-05-28)
- Relevant skills in short supply – BusinessNZ (2025-07-10)
- Why the story about our children failing at maths is misleading (2026-05-28)
- Students from poor schools had much worse NCEA maths and literacy test results than others