School Assessment and Qualifications
New Zealand measures and monitors students’ achievement throughout their schooling.
Teachers and schools are supplied with examples of best-practice material and assessment tools linked to the national curriculum and benchmarking data. They are expected to make use of these tools for both student development and reporting purposes.
Information from the results of assessment is then able to be used to provide feedback to students, parents and teachers so that learning needs are addressed.
System-wide assessment is then carried out each year by the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP), assessing a national sample of Year 4 and Year 8 students.
New Zealand students also take part in a range of large scale international assessment studies.
In OECD’s PISA studies in 2000, 2003 and 2006 New Zealand 15 year old students performed well above the international mean in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy (also problem solving in 2003) with similar average results to Canada, Australia and Japan.
New Zealand students also performed well in the cross-curricular competency of problem solving.
New Zealand’s national qualifications system starts at Year 11 in senior secondary school.
The National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) is the national senior secondary school qualification. The NCEA means schools can develop learning programmes to suit students’ needs and then assess their achievement against national standards.
Students are able to achieve the NCEA at three levels via a wide range of courses and subjects, both within and beyond the traditional school curriculum. For most students, the three levels of the NCEA correspond to the final three years of secondary schooling (Years 11 to 13). To gain an NCEA the student must achieve 80 credits on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF), 60 at the level of the certificate and 20 others.
For more information on the NQF, go to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority website.
There are also many vocational qualifications available on the NQF and offered in secondary schools. They include, for example, the National Certificate of Tourism, National Certificate in Computing, and Level 2 or National Certificate of Motor Engineering.
There is also a New Zealand Scholarship award, which recognises very able students. Students attempting this separate assessment are usually in Year 13.
Some schools offer additional programmes such as Cambridge International Exams, the International Baccalaureate or an Accelerated Christian Education programme.
International Recognition of NCEA
New Zealand has qualifications recognition agreements with Australia and the United Kingdom. Although New Zealand does not have any specific qualifications recognition agreements at a government level with the USA, the two education systems are broadly comparable. New Zealand qualifications are acceptable for most purposes in the United States, including entry to tertiary education and employment.
NCEA Level 3 is recognised by the Australasian Conference of Tertiary Admissions Centres (ACTAC) (www.actac.edu.au) to determine students’ entry to Australian universities, provided that applicants also hold University Entrance. ACTAC monitors the process for admissions to universities throughout Australia.
In the United Kingdom, both the National Academic Recognition Information Centre (NARIC) (www.naric.org.uk) and the Universities and Colleges Admissions Services (UCAS) (www.ucas.ac.uk) recognise that NCEA Level 3, with some Merits/Excellences in subjects to be studied at higher education institutions, is considered comparable to the overall General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advanced standard. NARIC provide recognition service and comparability information of international qualifications from countries worldwide with those in the UK.
The UCAS publication ‘International Qualifications for Entry into Higher Education’ is a reference guide for UK tertiary providers to evaluate school leaving qualifications of students applying for admission. The UCAS publication is also used internationally as an authoritative guide. Information about NCEA is included in the UCAS publication along with a summary of the most recent percentage grade distribution for the major subjects taken by Year 13 students.