In New Zealand exams are set by the NZ Qualifications Authority (NZQA) and (currently) build up to the NZ Certificate of Achievement (NCEA). NCEAs come at three Levels (1, 2 and 3) usually taken in Years 11,12 and 13 at school (ages 15/16 – 17/18).
Alongside Level 3 you can also take Scholarship to improve your university entry scores or to gain a bursary from the NZ Government. You only get the bursary if you go to a NZ university, so Scholarship is really a not-very-subtle attempt to keep the brightest students in NZ!
NZQA Level 1 ( = mid-range GCSE)
NZQA Level 2 ( = high-range GCSE – AS Level)
NZQA Level 3 ( = AS Level – low-range A Level)
NZQA Scholarship ( = high-range A Level)
Equivalents are shown to the English system. In practice the higher-end schools also offer International Baccalaureate or English A Level routes for students who (a) are bright, and/or (b) are aiming overseas. This makes teaching and timetabling quite a challenge.
Changes coming in 2028-30
The National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) presents itself as a coherent all-embracing structure and system, but in practice it’s a credit-collecting scheme which few people understand, let alone trust – and it’s widely ‘gamed’ by students. The new system is perhaps more honest in saying it wants to do 3 different things:
- Year 11 (replacing NCEA Level 1): The Foundational Skills Award (focusing strictly on core literacy and numeracy skills).
- Year 12 (replacing NCEA Level 2): The New Zealand Certificate of Education (NZCE).
- Year 13 (replacing NCEA Level 3): The New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education (NZACE).
The phase-in timeline is:
- 2028: The Foundational Skills Award launches for Year 11.
- 2029: The NZCE is introduced for Year 12.
- 2030: The NZACE is introduced for Year 13.
Advocates and opponents will argue it either way, but the shift is clearly from a fragmented, credit-based approach where there was an industry in ‘gaming the system’ to one with a more traditional, subject-focused structure. Points to note are:
- Subject Requirements: Students in Years 12 and 13 must study at least five subjects a year and pass a minimum of three to four subjects to earn their certificate. (They’ll still actually get one certificate overall – a different approach from England.)
- Traditional Letter Grading: The current ‘Not Achieved, Achieved, Merit, Excellence’ rankings (which everybody finds confusing) will be scrapped in favor of a standard A+ to E grading scale.
- Mandatory Exams: Assessments will focus on whole-subject knowledge, making external exams compulsory for every subject.
- Year 11 is basically a Foundational Skills Award focusing strictly on core literacy and numeracy skills. This is important, but it doesn’t look like English GCSE level, and insofar as it provides a metric for the NZCE and NZACE it supports the general opinion already out there that NCEA 2 and NZCE are roughly equivalent to English GCSE and NCEA 3 to English AS. No-one in NZ argues that NCEA 3 is equivalent to an English A Level, and the new system seems to recognise this slightly more clearly than the old one did. This seems a good thing, though it does mean 18 years old is the standard for AS – which starts to look a bit old, at least by English standards.