Over the past decade, the Literacy and Numeracy for Adults Assessment Tool (LNAAT) has been used extensively by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) to track learners’ literacy and numeracy (LN) skills in tertiary vocational education programmes in Aotearoa New Zealand. The main aim of this article is to show that the current LNAAT algorithm for calculating statistically significant learner gain in reading and numeracy is limited in its capacity to describe learner progress. Algorithm transparency, it is argued, is required to uncover its unintended descriptive effects, and to propose an alternative. We present a distinction that may be useful in dealing with the limitations of the gain calculation algorithm well-documented as a statistical measure in its initial design (TEC, 2012). Sustained TEC commitment to the LNAAT and LN progress tracking remains clear from recent guidelines (TEC, 2023). These guidelines include sectoral advice that Step 4 scores on the reading progressions and Step 5 scores on the numeracy progressions are educationally significant thresholds (TEC, 2023). However, hidden from view are numerous examples of learners who achieve these educationally significant levels yet are deemed not to have achieved statistically significant gain. This paper is intended to highlight educationally significant gain that has not been captured by the statistical measure in the LNAAT (TEC, 2023). We argue that a measure combining statistically significant and educationally significant gain would yield a more comprehensive and more informative account of learner and sectoral progress. We present a case for this distinction to raise stakeholder awareness of learner performances above these thresholds where these achievements are not recorded as statistically significant. We also argue that cross-tabulations of initial and progress steps represent a simple yet useful procedure to track shifts from lower steps to threshold levels, or regress from higher to lower levels (Field, 2014). A secondary, yet important, aim has been to collaborate with the New Zealand Council for Education Research (NZCER) to gain their perspectives and expertise in exploring the descriptive adequacy of the gain calculation algorithm and the implications of sectoral advice on step-level thresholds for reading and numeracy.