NCEA stands for National Certificate of Educational Achievement. It is the main qualification in New Zealand beneath university degree level.
It is important to remember, though, that it is simply one national certificate (technically it is actually three, at different levels). There are more than 1000 other specialist certificates and diplomas also administered by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), as diverse as the National Certificate in Computing, National Certificate in Carpentry, and National Certificate in Veterinary Nursing.
It is a common misconception that NCEA is the only educational qualification beneath degree level. That is incorrect. It is simply the general multi purpose certificate that most school students work towards obtaining.
All of these certificates, diplomas and degrees combine to be part of the New Zealand Qualifications Framework (NZQF).
NCEA Levels
There are three levels of NCEA that student work towards obtaining.
- NCEA Level 1 - usually taken by Year 11 students (this replaced School Certificate)
- NCEA Level 2 - usually taken by Year 12 students (this replaced Sixth Form Certificate and University Entrance)
- NCEA Level 3 - usually taken by Year 13 students (this replaced Bursary)
Courses and Standards
Students take various courses in their schools or other learning institutions. A course is usually based on a particular subject area, for example, a course might be Level 1 Mathematics or Level 3 English.
There are no requirements for students to take any particular course for NCEA - it is up to any educational institution to decide whatever courses they will offer.
Schools still tend to teach traditional subject-based courses as they always have, however. Most schools will offer courses at each of the three levels in subjects such as English, Mathematics, Biology, History and Accounting.
More recently, standards in non-traditional subject areas, such as Business and Dance, have been added to the framework. As a result, schools have created courses to deliver content and then assess to the new standards. Schools have also started to become creative and created courses that assess standards from more than one field.
Some learners in non-traditional situations may avoid studying a course entirely, simply concentrating on studying for, and then being assessed on, particular standards.
So what is a standard? The entire curriculum is broken down into standards. A standard describes a particular area of learning. To be precise, a standard states that a student has been assessed as being capable of understanding the learning of a topic at a particular “standard” of ability.
It is important to realise that under NCEA, students are measured according to whether they attained set levels of achievement. There are no scores or grades, although there may be multiple levels of achievement, indicating just how well a student has measured up against the standard.
When the New Zealand qualifications system changed to a standards-based system, there was obviously a need to create standards. This was initially done by taking the existing subject syllabi and splitting each course up into logical sections, making each of these a standard. Although there have been some revisions to the standards since then, that is still the core of the standards taught by schools in traditional subjects.
These standards were developed by the Ministry of Education. They are called Achievement Standards, and each standard has four possible levels of achievement: Excellence, Merit, Achieved, and Not Achieved. A few of the newer subjects have had Achievement Standards developed for them as well.
The other type of standard is a Unit Standard. Unit Standards were introduced before Achievement Standards (at one stage in the planning all standards were going to be unit standards). These are developed either within NZQA or by industry training organisations. These tend to be more industry or career focused. A key difference between these and Achievement Standards is that most of these only offer two levels of achievement - Achieved or Not Achieved. There are a few exceptions, which offer Merit and Excellence, however.
There are two types of ways standards can be assessed: internally or externally. Nowadays the bulk of standards are assessed internally, using a variety of assessment methods.
There are external standards in the more traditional subjects. There are assessed by examinations at the end of the year. A student enrolled in an external exam can choose to write answers to one, two or three standards in the three-hour exam.
Credits
Obviously with standards across a multitude of subjects there needed to be a way to weight the difficulty level of each standard. This was done by allocating each standard with a value of credits. A standard testing a short and simple skill may be worth one credit. A standard covering a year-long activity may be worth 20 credits.
Each achievement and unit standard is allocated a credit value. Each credit represents a notional ten hours of study.
If a subject is assessed for external credits in a 3-hour exam, the total value of the three standards assessed is 12 credits.
The overall NCEA awards are given once a student has been awarded a certain level of credits from the standards they have mastered.
Because NCEA is seen as a general-purpose certificate of education, it was felt that a student needed to prove that they were literate and had numeracy skills before they earned the qualification (even if they managed to obtain sufficient credits overall). Certain standards, across a wide range of subjects, are deemed to count as literacy or numeracy credits in addition to being normal standard credits.
To gain NCEA Level 1 a student needs to achieve 80 credits from standards (at any level). These need to include 10 literacy and 10 numeracy credits.
To gain NCEA Level 2 a student needs to achieve 80 credits from standards (60 of these must be at Level 2 or above). They must also have obtained the 10 literacy and 10 numeracy credits required for Level 1.
To gain NCEA Level 3 a student needs to achieve 80 credits from standards at level 2 or above (60 of these must be at Level 3 or above). They must also have obtained the 10 literacy and 10 numeracy credits required for Level 1.
These credits can be obtained from any combination of achievement or unit standards, as long as they meet the above criteria.
Merit and Excellence Endorsements
There is an incentive for students enrolled in achievement standard courses to perform to the best of their capabilities. Merit and Excellence endorsements are given to those students who perform particularly well in their studies. You can gain an endorsement either in an individual subject or overall for NCEA.
These subject-based endorsements only apply to traditional subjects with achievement standards. A student must earn all of the credits in a particular year to count for an endorsement. There also needs to be a mix of internal and (with a couple of subject exceptions) external credits.
For a student to gain a Merit endorsement in a subject at a certain level (1. 2 or 3) in a particular year, they need to gain at least 14 credits at Merit or Excellence quality in that subject at the required level or higher. 3 of the credits must come from internal assessment. 3 must come from external assessment. The rest can come from either type.
An Excellence endorsement is awarded to students who manage to meet the above criteria with Excellence credits.
Overall
NCEA is the general qualification offered at levels 1 to 3 of the New Zealand Qualifications Framework. Most student working towards it are in Years 11 to 13 at school. However, there is no reason older students cannot work towards this standard.
When it comes down to it, it is simply a statement that a student has proved that they have managed to produce a body of work up to a certain standard. There are multiple ways that students can study and be assessed to meet the necessary standard.
