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Māori Party co-leader John Tamihere says every child enrolled for NCEA this year should be awarded the certificate.
He says students have had 10 weeks of their school year disrupted by COVID-19, and large numbers of Māori students in low decile schools would not have had the devices or data plans to benefit from remote learning.
He says NCEA is no longer a make or break exam.
"All schools can give a relative assessment, because some kids are obviously better than others and should get a better mark. All I am saying is all kids deserve a pass mark. Those that do better deserve a better grade. What that does is that allows all our kids to have another shot in education year 2021, because hundreds of them are not going back to school," Mr Tamihere says.
Even before COVID there were 35,000 Māori aged 14-20 not in education, training or employment, and those numbers should not be allowed to explode.
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