Data processes for students who leave secondary education or transfer to another school

Information about the process for managing data when a student leaves secondary education or transfers to another school

There are different data-management processes for students leaving secondary education and students transferring to another secondary school.

It's important for schools to follow the right process so that all student records are complete and accurate.

Students leaving secondary education

When a student leaves secondary education, schools need to make sure the student's outstanding results can be reported and viewed online, and their relevant qualifications awarded.

To make sure this happens, schools must:

  • report all missing internal assessment results to NZQA
  • withdraw any internal entry that does not or will not have a result recorded against it
  • withdraw all external entries unless the student has said they will sit the examination
  • show that the student has left school in the school's student management system, including the reason they're leaving
  • leave the student's NZQA enrolment active in the school's data file to allow for late internal and external result entry
  • update ENROL to show they have left school.

Don't withdraw a student's NCEA enrolment as this withdraws all their entries and results for the year and prevents us from awarding any appropriate qualifications. Students do not have access to withdrawn results.

Students transferring to another school

Students can only have one active secondary school enrolment with NZQA at one time.

When a student transfers schools, the previous and new schools must take the following actions so the transferring student’s record is accurate.

What the previous school must do

  • Update ENROL to show the student as a leaver, but keep the student's NZQA enrolment active until another school confirms their enrolment.
  • Make sure they don't withdraw the student's NZQA enrolment until the new school confirms it has accepted the student’s enrolment request.
  • Send a full transcript of the student's results to their new school on request, including any results confirmed after the student left.

What the new school must do

  • Update ENROL to show the student’s change of school.
  • Use the Candidate Results from Other Providers link in the MyNZQA school portal to download the student’s results from the current and any previous years, including qualifications and endorsements. You should import this into your student management system.
  • Submit, in a data file, an NZQA enrolment for the student. You will receive an error saying ‘new secondary home school for year’ in your batch if the previous school hasn't sent an updated data file to NZQA withdrawing the student. If this doesn't resolve in the next file submission, contact the student's previous school or your data manager at NZQA.
  • Request a full academic transcript from the previous school to confirm that all the transferring student’s results are recorded with the correct provider code.
  • Report any additional results using the previous school or external provider's code, making sure the correct provider responsible for the assessment is listed.
  • Make entries for standards (including externals) the student will be assessed against in the remainder of the year.
  • Check that standards, including those from the previous school, are allocated to courses appropriately.

If you need to contact the previous school, a list of contacts for Principal’s Nominees can be found under School’s Administration in the MyNZQA school portal.

Log in to the school portal (external link)(external link) 

Late external entry process for transferring candidates

Students who transfer schools after 1 September will not have personalised booklets at the new examination centre school.

The new school must follow the late entry process, which includes adding the entry details to its data submission.

Papers must not be transferred between schools.

Late entries

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