NCEA

Information on how the NCEA qualification works in New Zealand can be found here.

Students have the opportunity to achieve their NCEA qualification up to Level 3. Students in Years 11, 12 and 13 study NCEA at the level suited to their progress. The opportunity to sit Scholarship is offered to suitable candidates in Year 13. Some Year 10 students are also given the opportunity to begin their NCEA studies. Students are encouraged to achieve to Excellence level in their studies. The school hopes that these Excellence grades will assist students when applying for tertiary courses and scholarships as the entry level required by tertiary organisations continues to rise. This is true also of the levels students must reach before they can apply for many scholarships for tertiary study.

Please note that we are going through a period of change with our qualification system. Those of you who have already had children go through NCEA will see that there have been some significant changes to the qualification system (2024). NZQA have rolled out a new Level 1 programme of assessment, the new Level 2 will go live in 2028 and Level 3 in 2029. 

The changes are pretty simple, the qualification is now 60 credits (credits are still awarded at Achieved, Merit and Excellence) but there is a literacy (reading & writing) and numeracy corequisite that must be passed before the qualification, at any level,can be awarded. Literacy and numeracy are awarded through students sitting online common assessment activities (Reading, Writing and Numeracy). Students are only required to pass each of these once. Currently there are 2 assessment windows for the CAA's in each academic year. Students currently in Year 12 are not affected by the corequisites if they have already been awarded their Lit/Num.