Internal moderation

About internal moderation

Internal moderation supports the credibility of assessment by ensuring that assessment is valid, and grade judgements are verified.

The credibility of national assessment relies on quality assurance systems operating in every institution. Schools must have assessment policies and procedures to ensure that results reported are accurate and consistent with the listed standard.

Schools must undertake quality assurance each year for each standard assessed to ensure that:

• all assessment material is critiqued and re-contextualised / modified as necessary, before use
• judgements are consistent with the standard
• for each standard a sufficient sample of each teacher's grade judgements is verified
• for each standard assessment materials are retained, along with a selection of student work following NZQA guidelines, for the purpose of external moderation
• all advice from external moderation is actioned before the materials are used again.

The critiquing process

The critiquing process ensures the assessment activity focuses on the requirements specified in the standard and Conditions of Assessment, and provides the opportunity for students to present evidence at all grades.

The verification process

The verification process ensures that the teacher judgements are consistent with the standard, before they report the results to NZQA. It must be undertaken by a subject specialist with standard-specific knowledge. Work for grade verification should be strategically selected, rather than being selected randomly.

The marker should seek verification of grades awarded samples of work around grade boundaries, as well as for any grades that need review, to satisfy themselves that their decisions are consistent with the standard. The number of samples selected for verification will depend on factors such as the experience of the teacher, previous external moderation history and the student cohort.

Myth 6 Internal moderation

Strategic selection scenarios [DOCX, 27 KB]

Retaining assessment material

Schools must have a policy for the retention of assessment material for internally assessed standards. It should ensure that:

• material is available to meet the requirements of the external moderation process during the year a standard is assessed
• annotated samples of student work are retained to provide markers with benchmarks for comparison and exemplar purposes
• evidence of internal moderation is available until the end of the following academic year
• the school can confirm the accuracy of results reported to NZQA.

External moderation

The Internal Moderation Cover Sheet

Schools can adopt or adapt the Internal Moderation Cover Sheet to aid them in the internal moderation process and recording evidence for monitoring.

Internal moderation cover sheet [DOCX, 35 KB]

Establishing external links with other schools

Teachers often establish external links with colleagues in other schools, subject associations and subject advisers to maintain their understanding of the standards. Contact can be maintained through online social networking, instant messaging, video conferencing or email links, as appropriate.

As external professional interaction helps teachers to maintain a current understanding of the standards, it is recommended that senior management in all schools continues to encourage and, if necessary, facilitate these contacts.

Monitoring systems

Schools must have monitoring systems to ensure that the results they report have been subject to their internal moderation process. Evidence of internal moderation and the school's monitoring of it must be retained until the end of the following academic year.