For high school students studying the NCEA curriculum, the literacy and numeracy standards are a requirement to achieve NCEA qualifications. But what are they, and how can your child best prepare for success?
The CAA assessments
The Common Assessment Activities (CAAs) are the external tests that students sit to pass the literacy and numeracy standards. Typically, students will sit these in Year 10.
The assessments are currently available across 2 sitting periods in each year, May and September. The exact dates and times will vary depending on your school.
All assessments are marked against several outcomes for that assessment. To achieve the assessment, a student must reach the Sufficient or Strong level for all outcomes for that assessment. If a student sits an assessment and receives a Not Achieved, they are able to re-sit the assessment in another sitting period.
Literacy – Reading
In the Reading CAA, students are asked to read a range of common, everyday texts such as articles, infographics and emails, and demonstrate their comprehension of the purpose, vocabulary and ideas. All questions are multiple choice.
Outcomes for Reading are:
- Demonstrate understanding of written texts.
- Evaluate written texts with critical awareness.
- Process written texts for different purposes.
Literacy – Writing
In the Writing CAA, students are asked to write two short texts according to a prompt given. These are usually non-fiction such as an opinion post, letter, or article. There is also a short grammar section with multiple choice questions.
Outcomes for Writing are:
- Write meaningful texts for different purposes and audiences.
- Use written language conventions to support communication.
Numeracy
In the Numeracy CAA, students are asked to use a range of basic mathematical and statistical techniques to solve everyday problems involving size/weight, probability, scale, pricing and more.
Outcomes for Numeracy are:
- Formulate mathematical and statistical approaches to solving problems in a range of everyday situations.
- Use mathematics and statistics to meet the numeracy demands of a range of everyday situations.
- Explain mathematical and statistical responses to situations.
How to prepare
Review past papers. NZQA provides several past papers, exemplars, unit standards and other resources on their website. Your child can get used to the format and style of the assessment as well as practice. We also recommend using past papers to get a sense of your child’s strengths and weaknesses against the topics of each paper.
Address weaker skills or knowledge. Focus on the specific areas that might make achieving the standard harder for your child. If they struggle with vocabulary, or probability, for example, target these areas for practice and revision.
Connect skills to everyday situations. The standards are aimed at skills and knowledge needed to perform many common tasks in everyday situations. Look for opportunities where you and your child can work through everyday problems using their literacy and numeracy skills.
English language learners
For English language learners, the Literacy and Numeracy standards present an additional challenge. The Ministry of Education advises that English language learners are ready to sit the CAAs when they have full mastery of Level 3 of the English Language Learning Pathway. You can find out more about the ELLP here.
We recommend that English language learners focus on commonly used vocabulary, comprehension skills, and the process of planning and writing articles, letters and opinion pieces. Revision of their own writing will help students to see where they might notice and fix mistakes in their next writing piece. Because of the nature of the literacy criteria, accurate grammar, sentence construction, and punctuation are particularly valuable.
To prepare for the numeracy CAA, English language learners should revise the key terms and word problems they are likely to encounter.
Next steps
There are a number of resources aimed at students preparing for the literacy and numeracy CAAs, such as the Literacy and Numeracy workbooks from ESA Publications.
Focus Education also offers tutoring to prepare for the CAAs, so please contact us if you would like to find out more.
In general, exam preparation is best done well in advance, so the earlier your child is prepared, the better they are likely to do in these critical NCEA standards.
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