Fifty years ago poetry was a key element in the English programme in most secondary schools in New Zealand. Today many teachers avoid teaching poetry for several reasons, one of these being the nature of the assessment of the subject, English, by the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) set up by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA). The outcome has been the setting up of a cycle of disadvantage whereby many students may never have the opportunity to study or write a poem in school. Such students leave school without having encountered literary study at its most intense and refined, which employs the most concentrated use of language and gives valuable access to the imaginative dimension of language. These students will, in their turn, as educators of the next generation, fail to transmit these qualities to others. (Contains 1 table and 24 footnotes.)