New Plymouth Girls’ High School
National Qualifications
Senior students at New Plymouth Girls’ High School are working to gain credits from Achievement or Unit Standards toward the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) at Levels 1, 2 or 3. The NCEA is a standards- based qualification comprised of a mixture of both internally and externally assessed Achievement or Unit standards giving students credits on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF).
Copies of all the Achievement Standards and Unit Standards are available on the NZQA website. NCEA Subject Resources » NZQA
The details of the requirements for each Achievement / Unit Standard are sent to students in Course Outlines by their subject teachers in February each year.
Internally assessed standards are assessed throughout the year. Most external assessments are examined at the end of the year from mid-November to early December. Some subjects have portfolio or practical work to submit. Students can gain Achieved, Achieved with Merit or Achieved with Excellence, with the latter being very demanding.
NCEA is all about excellence, be it students striving for and gaining Excellence grades or reaching their personal level of excellence with AchieveNd grades.
NCEA is New Zealand’s national school leaver qualification and as such is recognised by the tertiary sector and employers nationally and internationally.
Level 1 NCEA Requirements:
- 60 credits at Level 1
- 10 credits in numeracy
- 10 credits in literacy
Students will take six subjects each assessing up to 20 Level 1 credits.
The Level 1 literacy and numeracy requirements must be met to achieve NCEA Level 1, 2 and 3 NCEA. NCEA Literacy and Numeracy Corequisites » NZQA
Level 2 NCEA Requirements
- 60 credits at Level 2 or above and
- 20 credits at any other level
Twenty Level 1 credits can count towards NCEA Level 2. A full course of study of six subjects would provide 108 to 120 credits at Level 2.
Level 3 NCEA Requirements:
- 60 credits at Level 3 or above and
- 20 credits at Level 2
Twenty Level 2 credits can count towards NCEA Level 3.
Note: Where a Level 3 course does not offer all possible credits, a student may discuss with the HoD the option of completing additional standards.
Credits can count for more than one qualification.
Certificate endorsement
For an NCEA certificate to be endorsed with Excellence a student must gain 50 credits at Excellence at the level of the certificate or above. So, if a student has 50 Level 1 credits at Excellence they may have their Level 1 certificate endorsed with Excellence. Likewise, if a student gains 50 credits at Merit (or Merit and Excellence) at Level 1 their NCEA Level 1 certificate may be endorsed with Merit. Endorsement awards show on a student’s NCEA results » NZQA
Certificate endorsement is calculated in January each year on the release of external results. Only the highest level certificate awarded can be endorsed unless students:
- achieve more than one level NCEA certificate in a single year e.g. a Year 11 student doing multi-level study may achieve both a Level 1 and a Level 2 certificate in the one year and have them endorsed,
- in addition to meeting the requirements of a higher level certificate endorsement, have achieved sufficient credits from a lower level to be able to endorse the lower level certificate e.g. a student may be working at both Levels 2 and 3 and achieve enough Level 2 Excellence credits to upgrade their Level 2 Merit endorsement to Excellence. The student will need to contact NZQA to have the lower level certificate upgraded.
Course endorsement
Course endorsement provides recognition for a student who has performed exceptionally well in an individual course.
Students will gain an endorsement for a course if, in a single school year, they achieve:
- 14 or more credits at Merit or Excellence, and
- at least 3 of these credits from externally assessed standards and 3 credits from internally assessed standards. Note, this does not apply to Physical Education, Religious Studies and Level 3 Visual Arts.
A course endorsement is not a qualification.
A course endorsement can be awarded even if a qualification for that level is not achieved. For example, a student may achieve a Merit endorsement for their Level 2 Mathematics course regardless of whether they achieve NCEA Level 2.
New Zealand Scholarship
New Zealand Scholarship provides recognition and monetary reward to top students in their last year of schooling. New Zealand Scholarship assessments enable candidates to be assessed against challenging standards, and are demanding for the most able candidates in each subject. Assessment is by either a written/spoken examination or by the submission of a portfolio or report of work produced throughout the year.
Scholarship candidates 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.
Approximately three per cent of Year 13 students studying each subject at Level 3 are awarded Scholarship, if they reach the standard that has been set. There is some tolerance around the three per cent, mainly for those subjects with few candidates.
Scholarship can be sat as a single subject Scholarship Standard or in several subjects. Scholarship is examined by an external examination or an external submission of student work.
There is one single Scholarship Standard per subject in most traditional school subjects. It is awarded as follows:
- Scholarship not attained;
- Scholarship;
- Scholarship with outstanding performance.
