Curriculum Handbook

National Certificate in Educational Achievement (NCEA)

The National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) was introduced in 2002.

NCEA reports how well a student does in each of the separate skills and knowledge areas in a course. There is also a grade average to show a student’s overall performance in a subject.

The NCEA is the main qualification for secondary school students and usually involves a mixture of external assessment through exams, and internal assessment during the year. Students may achieve grades of achieved, merit and excellence depending on the standard.

NCEA was introduced to provide a more comprehensive record of what students achieve while they are at school. To complete the NCEA students must earn credits, which they earn by meeting standards in their chosen subject areas. Each standard sets out clearly and comprehensively what students need to know and do to be credited with meeting that standard.

Students pay an annual fee, currently $76.70 though financial assistance is available under certain circumstances, to have their credits registered. This payment also covers the automatic issue of the NCEA when they meet the requirements. For more details go to http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/qualifications-standards/qualifications/ncea/entry-into-ncea/fees-for-ncea/

How do students get NCEA?

NCEA can be awarded at Levels 1, 2 or 3. Each standard is worth a number of credits. To gain NCEA at any level, students will need to earn at least 80 credits (60 from the level of the award or above). These can come from:

• External assessment against achievement standards for school subjects.
• Internal assessment against achievement standards for school subjects.
• Internal assessment against unit standards (NQF)

For a student to be awarded the Level 1 certificate they must earn 80 credits and satisfy the literacy and numeracy requirements: for details go to http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/about-us/our-role/legislation/rules/secondary-schools-supporting-information/literacy-numeracy-2011/

Certificate and Course Endorsements

NCEA certificates at all three levels can be endorsed with merit or excellence if a student has achieved more than 50 credits at that level or above with merit or excellence in a single year. To get a course endorsement students need to gain 14 credits at merit or excellence. A course is usually what we call a subject at school, so, for example, a student could get English with excellence at level two. There are requirements for a course to be recognised and the endorsement available. For details on the award of NCEA link to http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/qualifications-standards/qualifications/ncea/understanding-ncea/how-ncea-works/ncea-levels-and-certificates/

Other National Certificates

Senior school students have access to units of learning from Level 1 to Level 4.  All credits gained are transportable, meaning they can count against more than one national certificate.
The following is a list of some of the National Certificates that students could gain credits towards as well as NCEA.

• National Certificate in Employment Skills – a qualification involving transition, numeracy and basic communication skills. This could be completed in one to two years.
• National Certificate in Computing and Business Studies – a qualification incorporated into the senior computing programme.
• National Certificate in Tourism and Travel – a level two introductory qualification to the travel industry available through the tourism course.
• National Certificate in Mechanical Engineering Technology – a level one qualification available through the engineering course

Application needs to be made to the NZQA separately for these National Certificates and there is a $15.30 cost for their issue. For more information go to http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/qualifications-standards/qualifications/national-certificates-and-national-diplomas/

Scholarship

Students in a secondary school have the opportunity to achieve Scholarship, through external examination or assessment in one or more subjects.

Scholarship is an award to recognise top students. It does not attract credits nor contribute towards a qualification but the fact that a student has gained a Scholarship will appear on the Record of Learning.

Scholarship enables students to be assessed against challenging standards, and is intended to be demanding for the most able students in each subject. Scholarship students are expected to demonstrate high-level critical thinking, abstraction and generalisation, and to integrate, synthesise and apply knowledge, skills, understanding and ideas to complex situations.

The best students in each of the 27 Scholarship subjects will be awarded Scholarship. The number of awards in each subject will be around 2-3 percent of those students studying the subject at NCEA level 3. Scholarship may be awarded at outstanding performance level, or at scholarship level.

Eligibility

Scholarship candidates need to be enrolled full-time in a secondary school or wharekura.

In order to receive a monetary award, a student must be

• either a New Zealand citizen or
• a permanent resident, and
• enrolled in tertiary study in New Zealand in the years they receive monetary awards.

Fees

There is no extra fee for entry in up to three Scholarship subjects, after that there is a fee of $75 per subject.

See http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/qualifications-standards/awards/scholarship/ for more information.

Records of Achievement

Credits for all registered standards a student achieves are recorded on a their individual Record of Achievement, (ROA), which is a part of a national database. Students register on the framework and pay an annual fee for any credits to be awarded. The ROA records a student’s successful completion of unit standards, achievement standards, and National Certificates. It is maintained and issued by the NZQA and enables education and training acquired over a number of years from a variety of sources to be recorded in a single document. Students can request (via their NZQA login page) one free copy each year from NZQA at the time their confirmed results are distributed.  See: http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/qualifications-standards/results-2/record-of-achievement/

New Zealand Qualifications Framework (NZQF)

The NZQF covers all the nationally registered qualifications (National Certificates including the NCEA) and all the nationally registered standards (Achievement Standards and Unit Standards) from which those qualifications are derived. It covers ways in which learning is recognised for qualifications in senior secondary school and beyond. (ie. what is to be achieved). This Framework has 8 levels. Level 1 is entry-level education and training, broadly equivalent to Year 11 studies. Level 8 offers the most advanced learning. Unit Standards (US) and Achievement Standards (AS) earned can be credited to all appropriate National Certificates on the New Zealand Qualifications Framework. Westland High School has the base accreditation for schools of subjects registered on the Qualifications Framework as well as others in a range of areas which we believe will meet the requirements of pupils at the school.

NZQF Levels Explained

Below is a diagram illustrating the relationships between:

• Years of schooling
• National Curriculum Framework (what is to be learned)
• New Zealand Qualifications Framework (what is to be achieved)