NCEA - National Certificate of Educational Achievement

NCEA - National Certificate of Educational Achievement

Students choose from a range of NCEA courses covering practical and academic skills which offer credits towards this qualification through both Unit Standards and Achievement Standards. Students’ work is assessed against standards which describe what a student can do.

Achievement Standards:

• Achievement Standards can be assessed by both internal and external assessment.  Students can gain Excellence, Merit or Achieved in these standards.

Unit Standards:

• Unit Standard assessment is completely internally assessed.  Students gain an Achieved grade for these standards.

 NCEA Qualifications:

There are three NCEA qualifications: Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3.

• For a student to be awarded NCEA Level 1 they must achieve 80 Credits. Of these, 10 credits must be in literacy standards and 10 credits in numeracy standards.
• For a student to be awarded NCEA Level 2 they must achieve 80 credits, 60 of which must be from Level 2 standards. They must also meet the Level 1 numeracy and literacy requirements.
• For a student to be awarded NCEA Level 3 they must achieve 80 credits, 60 of which must be from Level 3 and 20 from Level 2 or higher standards. They must also meet the Level 1 numeracy and literacy requirements.

Certificate Endorsements:

• Students who attain 50 credits at a particular level with Merit will gain a Merit Endorsement at that level.
• Students who attain 50 credits at a particular level with Excellence will gain an Excellence Endorsement at that level.

 Students will gain a course endorsement (at Merit/Excellence) for each individual course (subject) where they achieve:

• 14 credits at Merit or Excellence Level.
• Of which at least 3 externally assessed and 3 internally assessed credits are achieved at the respective Merit or Excellence Level.
• In totally internally assessed subjects, i.e. Religious Education and Physical Education, 14 credits at Merit or Excellence Level will give the student a course endorsement.