New Zealand Qualifications Authority Haque joined the
New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) in September 2006 at a time when the organisation was
under public scrutiny for issues around achievement levels of students in
New Zealand Scholarship examinations. He held the role of deputy chief executive, qualifications division, of NZQA from 2006 until 2011, with the specific responsibility for managing the
National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), in particular establishing "quality assurance of both internal and external assessment and the analysis and publication of results". When achievement data for more than 150,000 secondary students in New Zealand went online in 2007, Haque entered the debate about whether internal assessment was undermining qualifications. He noted that NZQA was implementing Government policy for assessment that was standards-based and used both internal and external measures, concluding that NCEA was "internationally recognised as robust and credible...[and]...each level of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) is specifically described so that the standards and the qualifications in the NQF can be compared internationally". An editorial in the
New Zealand Herald in 2008 welcomed the announcement of a government review of NCEA, acknowledging that while there had been more "consistency and certainty" of the examination system within the country's secondary schools, there were still issues to be addressed around moderation of internal assessment and the complex question of "credit parity between assessment and unit standards". NZQA agreed that dealing with these issues was key to the review and Haque said it was "a chance to recognise how far that assessment development has come and the validity of much of the criticism". There was debate about the proposed review in the media between politicians
Anne Tolley and
Chris Carter, but it was noted that it would be done by a panel of experts from across the education sector with the reviewed standards being assessed by NZQA's technical overview group of university professors. Haque concluded it was "a rare opportunity to align the curriculum development process with the assessment development process". In May 2010, NZQA released the first
Annual Report on NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship Data and Statistics (2009). In the report's introduction, co-authored by Haque, the report was said to summarise "the activity and achievement of New Zealand's secondary school students since the full implementation of the National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEAs) in 2004", and stated that a strength of the NCEA system was it allowed a student's performance to be analysed over time, and was a move away from
norm-referenced testing to show achievement against standards and not relative to other students.
Radio New Zealand noted that the data in the Report showed gaps between "Māori and non-Māori, Pasifika and non-Pasifika, and girls and boys...[but]...one of the largest gaps was between rich and poor schools". In reply, Haque said that "factors like decile, student numbers and the courses offered will affect each school's results." Improvements were evident in the
Annual Report on NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship Data and Statistics (2010) which recorded: In 2010 there were encouraging increases in attainment of NCEA qualifications over 2009 across all NCEA levels. In particular, the attainment gaps between Māori and Pasifika candidates on one hand, and European and Asian candidates on the other hand, reduced at all NCEA levels. The attainment gaps between Māori and Pasifika students and students of other ethnicities are now significantly smaller than they were in 2004, the first year of full implementation of NCEA. In an interview in 2023, Haque reflected on his years as deputy chief executive at NZQA and the structural changes he was involved in to address a demoralised, "inward-looking" culture within the organisation and restore public credibility in a national qualification.
Ministerial taskforce to review Tomorrow's Schools The New Zealand Government announced a
review of Tomorrow's Schools in 2018 by an independent taskforce to be chaired by Haque. One media commentator noted at the time that in his book
Changing our Secondary Schools (2014), Haque had presented the view that while the Tomorrow's Schools model had its problems, he did not advocate doing away with it totally, and in his opinion it was not necessary "to return to the top-down centralised system of old". Writing in the
New Zealand Herald in July 2018, Haque had previously claimed the New Zealand model of devolved education had reduced bureaucracy and allowed schools to function within a competitive business model that favoured advantaged communities, but struggled to support schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students. He suggested that the problems would not be solved by "ad hoc tinkering and well meaning intentions". While the Taskforce's draft review was going through the process of public consultation in December 2018 Haque spoke frequently in the media and at community meetings to clarify the rationale for many of the suggested changes, contending that while most people agreed things needed to be done differently, anxiety was understandable. He said some of the details of the recommendations were likely to change after consultation, and would take several years to fully implement. When questioned about why hubs, which were recommended by the taskforce to replace regional Ministry of Education offices and assume some of the powers held by school boards of trustees, had no elected positions, Haque said it was about better organisation, not representation, and the taskforce's position was that education could "no longer be a political football". In an interview on New Zealand
morning television, Haque said the review had been necessary to address the workload of school boards and staff under the current devolved system where there were few incentives for schools to work together. The system, he suggested, created inequalities between and within schools and the proposed education hubs would provide advice, professional development and support for schools to work collaboratively with their communities. At the political level, Haque contended that the report provided "an opportunity for cross-party conversations and an accord [which] all agree to and support". The final report was released to the public in September 2019. On 4 February 2021, Haque supported calls from the Principals' Federation for the Ministry of Education to provide more leadership in the face of poor results by students in a range of international and national tests. Haque claimed the problem was a system that paid little attention to curriculum development and did not provide good professional development or leadership support for principals. He expressed concern that the government was taking an ad hoc approach and stood by the taskforce's recommendation for the creation of a "new Crown organisation that would operate regional hubs to support schools". Haque argued that some of the reforms had not gone far enough in making "substantial and cultural" changes that would create a real opportunity to "coordinate the health and education reforms". Later he said the goal of the review was to recommend improvements in the education system so everyone got "a
fair go", and although "pleasing progress" was being made, the process to implement changes needed to be sped up. In the lead-up to the
2023 general election, Haque claimed that an overloaded and depleted workforce in the country's schools, combined with curriculum changes and a restructuring of the Ministry of Education, which he said were "incoherent, poorly planned, with impossible timelines", had resulted in an understandable polarisation of conversations about educational issues and policies. In a critique of the government's response to the recommendations of the taskforce, Haque put the case that the implementation of the proposed changes was appalling. He concluded that dysfunction within the Ministry of Education needed to be addressed, cross-party agreements were required to deal with problems in the system and a strong national network of support for schools was necessary if the reforms were to be effectively implemented. In September 2023, Haque restated this position. He agreed with several principals that there had been progress and that
COVID-19 had hindered the government in making many of the changes following the review, but he remained disappointed because successive governments had been unable to "resolve significant disparities in student achievement over the past 30 years" and neither of the major political parties in 2023 appeared to "have policies that would achieve more than tinkering at the edges of the school system". ==Local-body politics==