Key dates and information
Please refer to the online version of the Key dates to ensure you have access to the most up to date information.
Key dates for secondary assessment
13 June
Final date for schools to read and digitally sign their Memorandum of Agreement for rebate
1 July
- July data file submission due
- Deadline to confirm entries into DCAT assessment event
- Attach SAC entitlements to external standards from now
On this page
Latest circulars
A2025/7 - Changes to the Te Ao Haka and Ngā Toi TAPā external assessment dates
Find NZQA publications, including past circulars here:
Exam Centre Manager nominations, Memorandum of Agreement and Memorandum of Understanding
This is a reminder of the following upcoming deadlines:
Exam Centre Manager nominations
If your school or kura is an exam centre, you will need to nominate an Exam Centre Manager (ECM).
The ECM is responsible to NZQA for the conduct of the NZQA exams held at exam centres in November. This is a reminder that the application to nominate an ECM opened on 05 May 2025 and was due to close on 20 May 2025.
NZQA will be reaching out to Principals’ Nominees who have missed the deadline to see if you require support. You may also contact us for support:
To submit the nominations, please login to the old school portal > High Security Features > Exam Centre Manager Recruitment.
Memorandum of Agreement
The Memorandum of Agreement sets out how your school and NZQA work together to ensure timely and accurate management of candidate data, collection and submission of international fee-paying candidate fees, and the smooth conduct of examinations for the benefit of the candidates.
The Memorandum of Agreement was made available from 1 April 2025 and will close on 13 June 2025. All schools are required to read and digitally sign this document.
You can access it under High Security > School’s Administration > Memorandum of Agreement through your provider login.
Exam Centre Memorandum of Understanding
The Exam Centre Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is a partnership agreement between a kura teina (school without an exam centre) and a kura tuakana (school with an exam centre) to ensure a suitable environment for ākonga in the kura teina to sit NCEA external exams.
This is a reminder that acceptance of the MoU opened on 5 May 2025 and will close on 29 August 2025.
Questions?
If you have questions, please email the Assessment Delivery team:
Changes to paper backups for digital examinations from 2025
Changes are being made to the paper backups available to students entered for digital end of year examinations.
From this year, personalised paper backups will not be provided for students entered into a digital examination. Instead, to support individual students in the event their digital device fails, we will provide a 15% buffer (2 booklets minimum) of non-personalised papers for each standard entered digitally.
Personalised paper backups will remain for Scholarship examinations, as it is a competitive examination with no derived grade option.
Printed resource booklets will continue to be provided as a paper copy for all students entered in a digital examination.
Within the last three years, the proportion of students entered for digital assessment but reverting to paper on the day of the examination has been less than 10%. Paper waste has been high as a result. In 2024, NZQA produced approximately 215,000 papers that were not used because a student did their examination digitally.
This change will:
- reduce administration workload for examination centre staff
- reduce the amount of paper storage required by schools
- reduce paper waste.
In the event of widespread disruption to a digital examination, you will not be expected to print additional papers to provide one for each student. If the event is significant and beyond a student’s control, then unexpected event grades will apply.
Supporting materials for end of year examinations will be updated to reflect this change, including managing widespread disruption.
June data file submission
When you are reviewing your processed data file submissions, please check any error messages and make the necessary amendments to your system before generating and submitting a new file.
For guidance on how to resolve errors, refer to the SMS User Guide found through your provider login, under Data File Submission. Contact us if you need help resolving any issue:
Web Entry schools should refer to the User Guide under Web Entries through the new portal.
Assessing Provider Code use
A reminder to use the correct Assessing Provider Code when reporting results. You should only use another provider’s code when they assess a student. There must also be a memorandum of understanding in place (see section below on School Third Party Consent). Refer to pages 23 to 26 in the PN Handbook or contact your School Relationship Manager if you are unsure of the process.
PN Handbook 2025 [DOCX, 3.7 MB]
Service IQ have some specific concerns about schools using their provider code where they didn’t assess the students. Please check if you have reported results using their provider code (9068) without an agreement in place. The Use of External Organisations link in your Key Indicators show the standards where you have reported results using another organisation’s provider code.
International students – NZQA Secondary Education Fees
Schools with international students who have completed internal assessments and/or entries in external assessment will be sent an invoice by the end of September. Please review data you submit for international students at your school.
School third-party consent – Memorandum of Understanding
Schools are required to provide NZQA with information about agreements between a school and an external provider when reporting results from that provider.
This agreement is usually referred to as a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two parties. The requirements of an MoU, as well as an editable exemplar, can be found at:
Sub-contracting - third-party consent
To improve oversight of this obligation, schools are now required to upload the MoU via the application’s function on their NZQA portal. Instructions on how to complete this process can be found at:
Resources for Principals' Nominees
It is important that the agreement is between the home school and the provider conducting the assessment. In cases where an organisation facilitates access to a network of assessors, the MoU must be with the assessor themselves, not the network facilitator.
Agreements with Trades Academies are exempt from this requirement in cases where the candidates are enrolled in the academy for assessment purposes.
Compliance with this new requirement may be reviewed during upcoming Managing National Assessment reviews and school quality assurance visits.
Aromatawai Māori
Te Marautanga o Aotearoa (TMoA) | NZC kaupapa ako Māori – Te Reo Māori, Te Ao Haka | Te Reo Matatini me te Pāngarau
To view the 2025 Tautuhinga Assessment Specifications for Tūmahi Aromatawai Pātahi (TAPā) and Kete Manarua assessments, Kete Manarua tūmahi (task), and tauaromahi (exemplars), and other assessment material for the above subjects/wāhanga ako, please visit Te Pā Mātauranga and navigate to the subject page you require.
About TAPā and Kete Manarua
For general information about TAPā and Kete Manarua modes of assessment:
Guide to preparing for TAPā external assessments
To help manage the delivery of TAPā external assessments, we have summarised a list of important information and resources to prepare ākonga and kaiako for the TAPā:
Reminder – Term 3 TAPā assessment date change – Te Ao Haka, Toi Puoro, Toi Ataata
A reminder that changes have been made to the TAPā external assessment dates for Te Ao Haka and Ngā Toi standards scheduled in Term 3, 2025. Te Ao Haka and Ngā Toi TAPā external assessments originally scheduled for Week 8 of Term 3 (2-4 September 2025) have been brought forward to Week 6 (19-21 August 2025).
See the full list of standards affected
Reminder - Changes to the External Assessment opportunities – Te Reo Matatini 2025
A reminder that changes have been made to the External Assessment opportunities being offered for Te Reo Matatini Unit Standards 32413 and 32415 in 2025. You can view the updated information on the subject page. There are NO change to the External Assessment opportunities for Pāngarau US32412.
Go to the subject page for Te Reo Matatini me te Pāngarau
If you have any questions in the meantime, please email us at:
Reminder – 2025 Wānanga Aromatawai register for upcoming drop-in sessions
Following the online workshops held during Term 1, NZQA is hosting online drop-in sessions to support kura and kaiako delivering the new TMoA and NZC kaupapa Māori Level 1 achievement standards and field Māori unit standards for assessment. These will cover both internal and external assessment. The drop-in sessions will be open for an hour and give kaiako a chance to discuss any assessment-related questions with a subject-matter expert.
To sign up for a drop-in session, or to view the workshop recordings, please visit the events page:
Te Ao Haka ki te Ao Symposiums 2025 – Register now
Two Te Ao Haka Symposiums will be held in July and October, hosted by kura in Tāmaki (Auckland) and Ōtautahi (Christchurch). The symposiums are open to all kaiako wanting to know more about assessing Te Ao Haka. NZQA will be present to provide support around assessment. To attend a symposium, please visit the events page on our website and complete the registration form by the due date.
- Te Ao Haka ki te Ao Symposium - Tāmaki/Auckland – 9-10 July 2025
- Te Ao Haka ki te Ao Symposium – Ōtautahi/Christchurch – 1-2 October 2025
Ringa Toi Exhibition 2025 – Celebrating 10 Years – Registrations of interest now open
Registrations of interest are now open for this year’s Ringa Toi Student Exhibition. The exhibition will be held at Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand from 15 to 28 September 2025. If you are interested in submitting student work to be considered for this year’s exhibition, please complete and submit the registration of interest form by 27 June 2025.
Assessor Support
A list of recently published Assessor Support resources and modules for internally assessed standards can be found at:
Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu – End of year exam ākonga
This is included at the request of Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu.
Te Kura is not an end of year exam centre. This means Te Kura ākonga who are not enrolled with another secondary school must sit their exams at a school in their community. This does not apply to those who are dual enrolled with Te Kura, and NZQA confirms an Exam Centre Memorandum of Understanding is not required.
Te Kura ākonga register for external standards via an online NCEA Registration facility. If they submit their registration nominating your school as their preferred exam centre, your Principal’s Nominee will receive an email advising the details with a link to approve or decline the request. Te Kura ākonga are expected to contact you to discuss if their request can be accommodated.
Te Kura appreciates the support of schools in enabling their ākonga to sit end of year exams. For more information, please contact the Qualifications Advisor at Te Kura on 0800 65 99 88 option 3 (ask for Jo) or email:
NCEA scenario tool
As in previous years, at times the NCEA scenario tool/NCEA progress calculator will be unavailable due to an upcoming results release of the Co-requisite assessments. It will be made available again as soon as possible afterwards.
Special Assessment Conditions
Students requiring Braille papers
Co-requisite assessment
If you have a student requiring Braille papers for the second co-requisite assessment in September, please:
- Email sac@nzqa.govt.nz by 18 July so that we can confirm what is needed.
- Submit a SAC application (even if the student is in Year 9 or 10) by 18 July at the latest. We will not have time to prepare the Braille papers unless informed by this date.
- Contact the SAC team if you need to discuss this requirement.
End of year examinations
For end of year examinations, SACs for students requiring Braille papers must be attached to the examination sessions as early as possible and no later than 1 August. SAC applications for Braille papers cannot be approved after this date due to the significant time required for their production.
Attaching SAC provisions to exam sessions
The Special Assessment Exams Processing link on your SAC page for attaching SAC provisions to examinations opens on 1 July. Guidelines on how to complete this process can be found on page 38 of the SAC online tool guide. You can only complete this process once students’ external entries have been submitted to NZQA.
SAC online tool guide [PDF, 1.9 MB]
June SAC Update
This update will be emailed to all PNs and SENCOS before the end of Term 2. Please consult this for further information on attaching SAC provisions to end of year examination sessions.
Updated NZQA SAC webpages
The NZQA webpages containing information on SAC will soon be updated. Further information will be provided in the June SAC Update.
Support
Please email us if you have any questions or need support on SAC processes:
Digital Technologies submission instructions
The 2025 Digital Technologies Submission Instructions are now available online:
Teachers should be aware that there is an additional cover page for Level 1 Digital Technologies 92007 to be submitted with each candidate’s work. Candidates are encouraged to collate and upload their mini portfolio through their NZQA Learner Login as soon as the design teaching and learning is completed. Schools are encouraged to submit candidates’ work as soon as it is ready.
Checklist
The checklist provides a quick reference of the actions associated with information in this email link. Also refer to:
Action items for Principal's Nominee by calendar month
Support
- Register for Te Ao Haka Symposiums held in July and October
- Inform teachers of the updated list of Assessor Support resources and modules for internally assessed standards
Memorandum of Agreement
- Read and sign your Memorandum of Agreement for 2025 (through School’s Administration)
SAC
- Confirm with NZQA students who may require Braille papers
Exam centre management
- Nominate your Examination Centre Manager