Teachers, students and accountants are aghast at the decision to remove level one accounting from the NCEA curriculum – and have started a petition to make the Ministry of Education accountable
It’s not just Latin that’s on the chopping block.
From 2023, level one students will lose the option to study accounting as a dedicated subject, and accountants are worried this will damage the financial literacy of future generations.
Charlotte Evett of Chartered Accountants of Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ) is “really disappointed” important skills may be lost.
“Young people these days are bombarded with things like after pay and student debt - there’s lots of opportunity to fall into a debt trap,” she said. “[Accounting] helps them make informed decisions.”
And it's something we are in need of, according to a survey held last year by the Commission for Financial Capability that found young people have the lowest financial knowledge and understanding of any age group.
Evett says a lack of financial literacy can have a broader effect on the country, too.
“Obviously if you have too many financially illiterate people, it has wider ramifications for the economy,” she said.
A petition started last month by high school teacher Simone Hamilton is calling for the decision to combine level one accounting, business studies and economics as one subject to be reversed.
The petition has received 1343 signatures.
Following the Ministry of Education’s list of provisional subjects for NCEA level 1, 93 percent of submissions were about the combined ‘commerce’ subject - with 78 percent of them against them. Hamilton said “this indicated overwhelming opposition to the new subject and the Ministry of Education has ignored students, teachers, whānau and community”.
Evett says CA ANZ were supportive of refreshing a dusty curriculum that still refers to cheques. “You would lose young people straight away with that,” she said. “So we were supportive of combining the subjects under the premise that accounting would be included - it doesn’t look like they have.”
High school teacher Joanne Aberhart has taught economics, accounting and business studies. She says they are three completely different subjects and it’s not as simple as bundling them all together.
This, combined with the Ministry of Education giving short thrift to the opinions of the teachers they consulted, makes her worried that it will be more difficult for students to pick up level two economics and accounting and numbers will dwindle.
These fears were mirrored by the Commerce and Economics Teachers Association, which told its members that the new subject would provide only surface learning and make the transition to level two more daunting.
Aberhart says she’s worried less about students who would go on to study commerce at university, and more about those leaving school and going into work or the trades and then starting their own business.
“A plumber may be a very good plumber but it doesn’t matter if he can’t keep his books,” she said.
And she’s not the only teacher worried about the move - her online groups for teachers of these subjects have a small minority of teachers ready to give the new way a go, with most teachers expressing disappointment at the decision.
She sees the move as part of a bigger trend from the Ministry of Education.
“They want a broader education at level one, but it could leave the students without the depth they need to go on,” she said.
Evett wonders why the ministry doesn’t see the value in an accounting focus in the new subject.
“Perhaps they see the increase in accounting software like Xero and MYOB as replacing the need for those basic skills,” she said. “But that’s like not teaching maths because we have calculators.”
The petition calling for the reversal of this decision is open until June 18.
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