Principal’s Notes – July 2026

Many of you will have read the piece from a local principal in the NZ Herald recently, extolling the virtues of the new approach to curriculum and assessment, basically asserting that the current system is broken.

I beg to differ and wish to endorse the current system which helps get the majority of New Zealand’s secondary school students on a learning journey – recognising their achievements and specifying, via the standards they have achieved, what they can do.

It is important to recognise next steps in a secondary school education. “What are you going to do after school runs out for you in x year time?” is a refrain I repeat regularly to our students. Getting kids on a learning journey is critical because we are not graduating doctors or lawyers or electricians or teachers or nurses or carpenters etc from school. We are setting them up to continue their learning journey post school with the quals they need to go onto university, polytech, apprenticeships and so on.

For those of you reading this that do have a university qualification, my message to you in relation to the collection of standards achieved in NCEA is much like the papers you achieved that went together to form your degree – 21 papers usually. Those papers outlined what you have achieved on your journey to a bachelors or masters degree, much like the standards in an NCEA Record of Learning show.

For those students on their current learning journey towards a quality NCEA qualification, work hard, bet those Merits and Excellences that are so important for your next steps and rest assured that NCEA is a highly valued qualification across the international educational landscape. Ask those students from Springs who are currently studying overseas at a range of world class universities!

Ivan Davis
Principal