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Careful Change, or Rash Reform: What Next for NCEA?

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Date

2026-06-17

Authors

Deerness, Stuart

Stewart, Georgina Tuari

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Journal Article

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Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Abstract

When New Zealand’s government proposed replacing the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) in August 2025 after a six-week consultation, what did this urgency reveal about contemporary educational governance? This article asks what remains unexamined in the rush to reform: whose evidence counts as legitimate, whose voices matter in educational decision-making, and what remains of ‘equity’ when government acknowledges that its proposed reforms will cause harm to already disadvantaged groups of students? This article does not argue for or against the replacement of NCEA. Rather, drawing on the concept of moral panic, together with Ball’s critical policy discourse analysis and scholarship on neoliberal educational reform, we set out to formulate and discuss three main questions about the proposal. Our analyses uncover trends indicating that the reforms are motivated and shaped by ideological loyalty to standardisation, managerial oversight, and market responsiveness, rather than by careful consideration of all available educational evidence. Rather than offer definite answers, we invite readers to consider these questions, which have been foreclosed by the speed and process of the proposal, but which are essential for democratic educational governance in Aotearoa New Zealand.

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Keywords

13 Education, Education, 39 Education, NCEA reform, Policy analysis, Educational assessment, Education and democracy, New Zealand education

Source

New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, ISSN: 0028-8276 (Print); 2199-4714 (Online), Springer Science and Business Media LLC. doi: 10.1007/s40841-026-00457-y

DOI

10.1007/s40841-026-00457-y

Publisher's version

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40841-026-00457-y

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Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/21439

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School of Education - Te Kura Mātauranga

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Creative Commons license

Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.