Beyond right or wrong: What student responses reveal about numeracy

Meeting the NCEA numeracy co-requisite requires students to do more than perform calculations correctly. The common assessment activity administered by NZQA assesses students’ ability to apply mathematics and statistics in everyday contexts, interpret information, and justify conclusions. This article draws on the numeracy task complexity schema to analyse the demands of two 2025 common assessment activity items and examines a large sample of student responses to those items. The responses highlight both the strengths students bring to numeracy tasks and the challenges they encounter when co-ordinating calculation, interpretation, and communication. By looking beyond whether answers were simply right or wrong, the article considers what student work reveals about the nature of numeracy and discusses implications for classroom practice.