“It’s the System Failing Our Future”: Youth MP Demands Education Reform at Youth Parliament

By Josephine Lilley, Youth Press Gallery, Youth Parliament 2025

Youth MP Mahant Agrawal during his general debate speech.

Note: Articles in this newsletter edition were produced by the Youth Press Gallery at various stages of the Youth Parliament 2025 programme. Accordingly, the content presented reflects the context and timing at the date of its original writing.

The two-day Youth Parliament event is now over, and with all the heavy coverage on this year's controversy, the censorship allegations, here’s what you may have missed:

- 80 Youth MP’s voices were taken to the stage during the general debate speeches, addressing issues that are important to them and their community.

- 19 Rangatahi were selected to ask oral questions to a minister, demanding answers to pressing issues, holding the Government accountable.

- The remaining 24 were allocated the role of co-chairs, leaders of their Parliamentary Working Group, where they addressed a relevant issue and, with their group, find possible solutions.

Youth MP for Carlos Cheung, Mahant Agrawal, was one of the 80 whose passionate voices filled the debating chamber, presenting a critical general debate speech on the current education system in Aotearoa.

Focused on the importance of our country’s youth, Agrawal criticised the education system, referring to it as a “small narrow hole”, a system that is fit for a few, but not all.

“I think our most vulnerable stakeholder is our Youth, our Rangatahi”

NCEA is the main qualification achieved by secondary school students, and what the education system in Aotearoa is centred around, a system that Agrawal believes is in need of change.

“It feels like the NCEA curriculum is more focused on trying to make students memorise and achieve an ambiguous rubric than it is on teaching meaningful content that influences our pilgrimage.”
Agrawal criticises the fact that the current curriculum focuses on content that isn’t “relevant to our ascent.”

“Students are forced to learn about evolution for a year instead of lab or clinical tools that could prepare them for nursing school. Or a student dreaming to debate in courtrooms being crushed in university, because all they did was analyse films in school.”

His speech represents the voices of those who feel held back by a system that simply does not work for them, voices that belong to rangatahi who could not previously be heard.

NCEA has been running since 2002, and 23 years later, the system may be starting to look outdated.

The advancement of our society, particularly technology, has Agrawal believing change is required now more than ever.

“Not only that, Mr Speaker, but AI has seeped into our classrooms, rewriting lessons, replacing thoughts with algorithms. We’ve traded creativity for code, and curiosity for convenience. The very essence of learning, the struggle to understand, is being stripped away, leaving only empty commands. And I bet you couldn't even tell that the last four lines were crafted by code, not a human's mind involved.”

Agrawal did not come empty handed. His call for change came with a solution, suggesting we follow examples of the Cambridge and IB curricula.

“Academics say that Cambridge and IB are 6× more likely to get entrance into UoA than NCEA.”

He believes that these options provide better pathways for students and their future careers.

“Giving us a choice to pick the content we actually need, content that supports our chase instead of inopportunity”.

Agrawal’s powerful general debate speech called out the misplaced blame that has fallen onto the students, rather than the education system itself, pushing for a change that he deems necessary.

“Our education system is flawed, and it's not our future failing the system, it's the system failing our future.”