NCEA

National Certificate of Educational Achievement

New Zealand’s qualification for school learners is the National Certificate of Educational Achievement – NCEA. NCEA is a qualification on New Zealand’s National Qualifications Framework (NQF). It sits alongside more than 800 other national qualifications used throughout tertiary education and industry training.

• NCEA is achievement based. National standards have been set in each area of learning. When students achieve these standards they earn credits towards their NCEA qualification.
• The NQF contains two types of national standards: Achievement Standards and Unit Standards. Credits from both types of standards count towards NCEA.
• Achievement Standards allow students to show the quality of their achievement in a standard – students can just achieve the standard, or achieve it with merit or with excellence.
• For Unit Standards students can either achieve the standard by meeting the criteria or not achieve the standard. There are no merit or excellence grades.
• Some Achievement Standards are assessed in school during the year (internally), other Achievement Standards are assessed externally (usually in end of year exams).
• All Unit Standards are internally assessed.

NCEA results

In January the New Zealand Qualifications Authority issues students with a full profile of their achievement in each subject. This interim results notice shows:

• The student’s credits and grades for each standard.
• How the students’ achievement compared with the achievement of other students across the country in each standard.

NZQA will also provide each student with a record of learning which summarises all of the standards, credits and qualifications to date.

How do students complete a qualification?

There are three NCEA qualifications. The requirements for each level are shown below:

• Level 1 - 80 credits from any level, including 8 literacy and 8 numeracy credits.
• Level 2 - 80 credits, with at least 60 credits from Level 2 or higher.
• Level 3 - 80 credits, with at least 60 credits from Level 3 or higher. Any credits below Level 3 must be from Level 2.

Level 2 or 3 NCEA certificates are able to be endorsed with Merit or Excellence. Students who gain a certificate with 50 or more credits at Merit or better will have “Merit” endorsed on their NCEA Certificate, while 50 credits at Excellence level are needed for the “Excellence” endorsement. The credits must be at the level of the certificate.

MRGS Information about NCEA

Open the PDF below for information about NCEA at Mt Roskill Grammar School