Nau mai, haere mai!
Welcome to the April 2023 newsletter EmaiLink 3.
Key dates
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 23 March | NZQA advertised for Panel Leaders (marking external standards) |
| 1 April |
First 2023 data file submission due. Please include as many candidate enrolments, courses and entries as possible. Please notify us of any new twins or triplets entered for NCEA: Acceptance of Memorandum of Agreement opens online. |
| 6 April | Term 1 ends |
| 24 April | Term 2 begins |
| 25 April | ANZAC Day |
Go to an overview of 2023 key dates with instructions on how to link them to an Outlook calendar:
2023 Key Dates for National Secondary Qualifications (external link)
On this page
Leading National Assessment seminars
The handbook and PowerPoint resources from the seminar are available on the Resources for Principal's Nominees page under 'Resources from 2023 seminars'.
Resources for Principal's Nominees (external link)
Please contact your SRM if you have any follow-up questions.
Registering students for their Student Login
Once your first data file submission has been processed by NZQA, you may wish to help students with using their Student Login.
To register, students need their NSN, date of birth, an email address and a 7-character password. NZQA will supply NSNs later in the year.
If you want to register students earlier, your Student Management System can generate a list, or students may be able to view theirs through their student portal.
How to create a new student account
The Student Login enables students to check their entries and results held by NZQA. It also gives them access to a range of processes not available elsewhere, such as printing official copies of their Record of Achievement and ordering a copy of an NCEA Certificate.
Digital assessment on Assessment Master
With Level 1 external examinations becoming digital first from next year, 2023 is a prime time to participate in digital assessments.
There are a series of resources available to support you and your students in preparing for digital assessments:
Get your school ready for digital exams (external link)
Digital exam preparation for students (external link)
NCEA Online preparation timeline [PDF, 229 KB]
NZQA is planning additional support and guidance to be provided to schools and kura on preparing for delivery of external digital assessments using Assessment Master. This involves a package of material including online sessions, guides, and an eLearning course on Putake.
- In early April guidance will be available in your School Provider login (Assessment Master Guidance folder). The support materials include:
- the Administrator guide and the Supervisor guide, which have step by step instructions for each role and links to support videos.
- job aids in English and Te Reo Māori. These are stripped down instructions from the guides.
- Also in early April, a Pūtake eLearning course will be available in English and Te Reo Māori. Instructions for accessing the courses will be in the guides.
- Online Assessment Master training sessions are expected to be held in May. More information about this will be available soon.
Using the NZQA Sort Key to assist with allocating students to rooms in Assessment Master (AM)
Allocating students to rooms in Assessment Master helps assessment supervisors filter for the students in the room or space they are supervising. This can be particularly helpful if you have large groups of students to manage over several rooms.
The Sort Key can be provided to NZQA with your Literacy and Numeracy | Te Reo Matatini me te Pāngarau entries if this is selected in your SMS. The Sort Key is currently used to indicate to NZQA how your student information should be sorted for things like NSN cards and examination entry slips. For example, you can add a home class code so that when the cards and slips arrive, they are in that ‘Sort Key’ order.
You may wish to consider setting your Sort Keys in your SMS to enable them to be used for your planned rooming or consider planning to allocate rooming around your existing sort keys.
1. Check that the Sort Key indicator is selected in your SMS
The Sort Key/code is an alphanumeric field (maximum 6 characters long).
If you have any questions about setting up this field, please talk to your SMS vendor.
2. In Assessment Master, add the ‘Student Sort Code’ column to the Exams dashboard when rooming
You will then be able to find students in that ‘sort code group’ and allocate them into a room using the ‘Bulk Update’ functionality. This could save time when organising large numbers of students into rooms or spaces for assessment. Instructions on how to do this will be included in the 2023 Supervisor guide. The guide will be available in the School Provider Login in April.
Professional learning opportunities
Round one of the online Making Assessor Judgements courses are available until mid-April. Please advise your curriculum leaders that these free, self-paced courses are designed to increase teacher confidence in assessing the most popular standards at Levels 2 and 3.
These, along with subject-specific Bite-Sized and Short courses, provide excellent professional learning opportunities for teachers new to NCEA, or those assessing a standard for the first time.
Access the courses (external link)
Face-to-Face and on-demand webinars are available to support assessors in developing confidence in their assessment and moderation practice. For more information about how we can support staff in your school, contact the Assessor Support team by emailing us:
Web Entries schools and the NCEA co-requisite
Web Entries schools will not be able to select an Assessment Opportunity for Literacy and Numeracy |Te Reo Matatini me te Pāngarau until July 2023.
NZQA will prepopulate all relevant entries for Assessment Opportunity 1 and then schools will be required to amend this (where necessary) when functionality becomes available.
School visits
When your School Relationship Manager visits, they will want to discuss your progress with any significant issues, actions and or considerations raised in your last Managing National Assessment (MNA) Report.
Wondering where your last MNA Report is? School MNA reports can be accessed on the NZQA website
Memorandum of Agreement
The Memorandum 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.
Please remember to read and digitally sign this memorandum for 2023 by 14 June. From 1 April it can be found under High Security > School’s Administration > Memorandum of Agreement through your Provider Login.
Data analysis
Derived Grade Profile
Your school’s profile data can be accessed in your Provider Login under Reports. The profile compares the derived grades at scale reported for unexpected events with actual grades for the last few years, by NCEA level and individual subjects.
Outlier Reports
You can see any Outlier Reports your school results have generated in your Provider Login under High Security. These reports include:
- an Internal External Comparison Outlier Report which is generated when the difference between a school’s internal and external results in a subject differs from the national pattern for schools of a similar decile band.
- a Derived Grade Comparison Outlier Report which is generated when a school’s pattern of derived grades at scale reported for unexpected events in a subject differs by two standard deviations or more from its final external results, with reference to the national pattern for schools of a similar decile band.
If the outlier page has the message ‘No comparison report available to download’ it means your 2022 data did not identify any outlier subjects.
External moderation
Remember that submissions for external moderation can be uploaded or sent anytime up to your moderation date.
As NZQA wants to minimise waste and is digital first, schools will need to pay the postage for any material they send physically.
Leaver early release of qualifications or awards 2023
As part of our 2022 response to COVID-19, we announced we would award an NCEA qualification or University Entrance to any of your leaving students who extended their learning into 2023.
If a student has completed their learning, achieved an NCEA and is now leaving secondary education, then please complete Appendix 1 to make the early qualification release request.
International students - assessment and NZQA fees
Since 2020, schools have been responsible for paying the NZQA fee for their international students, and will be invoiced annually after 1 September.
For international students a fee must be paid for reporting internal assessment results or making entries in NCEA externals or New Zealand Scholarship.
NZQA will not be adjusting invoices to accommodate school data errors so schools must have in place a system to pay the fee and ensure data submitted to NZQA is accurate. Within your Provider Login, the Billing report in High Security Features and Foreign Fee Payers link in Key Indicators will help you check the accuracy of data reported to NZQA for international students.
As with all students, if international students complete internal assessments, results must be reported to NZQA.
Special Assessment Conditions
SAC application deadline
The 'first deadline' to submit SAC applications is the end of Term 1. This is not a closing date as applications can be submitted until the end of Term 3. However, the earlier that applications can be received, the quicker these can be considered, and the sooner certainty can be provided to schools and students. Please email us if you have any questions:
SAC seminars
Seminars are being planned for Term 2. Dates and venues are confirmed in the SAC Update emailed to PNs and SENCOs on 30 March.
The first part of this seminar focuses on the implications for SAC as a result of the changes to NCEA from 2024, as well as the provision of support for students being assessed for the Literacy and Numeracy | Te Reo Matatini me te Pāngarau co-requisite.
The second part of the Seminar focuses on the current application process and is aimed at new or inexperienced SENCOs.
There is plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion.
Student access to SAC entitlements
Students can now log in to their NZQA Learner Login to view their approved SAC entitlements via the Special Assessment Conditions Entitlement link. Their approved entitlements can also be printed out via the PDF link. This may be useful for students requiring this confirmation for tertiary institutions.
A guide explaining this process for students will be included in the next SAC Update.