There has been perhaps no greater admission of the general failure of schooling in New Zealand than the Schools Plus programme, which essentially proposes that apprenticeship-type programmes should be made available to students as young as 13. Released close on the heels of the newly introduced national curriculum, it seems to be a form of official recognition that the newly crafted curriculum has little or no relevance to large numbers of secondary school students. The proponents of Schools Plus believe that this relevance can be achieved by allowing young people to partly join the workforce ("Incentives yes, but not compulsion", 2008). As an admission of failure it tops the 2007 idea from NZQA that a good way to motivate and challenge our brightest was to offer merit and excellence stickers on NCEA records because the work that students do at this level has little intrinsic interest or reward for even our brightest youth.