SecQual

Reporting entries in internally assessed standards for course endorsement
S2011/023 - 24 May 2011

Reporting entries in internally assessed standards for course endorsement

To enable the effective introduction of Course Endorsement, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) will be monitoring entries so that schools and NZQA can be confident that courses have been reasonably constructed and will lead to endorsements where intended. The monitoring will focus on ensuring that:

• the entries in a course are coherently grouped
• the standards entered are broadly consistent with the course name
• the course meets endorsement requirements: 14 credits minimum, with 3 internal and 3 external credits (taking into account the agreed exemptions). 

Where there are issues discovered in course endorsement data, the school will be contacted by their School Relationship Manager or the School Data Management team to discuss them.

Reporting entries in internally assessed standards

NZQA intends to give learners information about potential endorsements via the learner-login. 

For the information displayed to learners to be accurate, and for NZQA’s monitoring to be effective, it will be necessary for schools to report all entries in internally assessed standards, before assessment has occurred. This was general practice in 2009 and prior. 

Without full reporting of entries in internally assessed standards courses will be incorrectly highlighted to both NZQA and learners as unable to be endorsed and possible course endorsements will be understated.

Conversely, entering excessive numbers of internally assessed standards may suggest there are opportunities to achieve endorsement that do not actually exist.

Therefore, as previously stated, entries in all internally assessed standards must be reported early in the year. As it becomes clear to teachers that some standards will not be assessed, entries in those standards should be withdrawn.

The deadline for withdrawing internal standards is 1 October.

Internally assessed entries without results

In previous years, there have been considerable numbers of entries in internally assessed standards that have no result reported.  Such residual entries could suggest to the learner and to NZQA that an endorsement is possible when it is not.

Schools should make best efforts to withdraw entries in standards where assessment is no longer planned.

It is not intended to use ’V’ codes for internally assessed results for any standards this year. Detailed advice will be issued soon.

Advice to School Management Systems’ vendors

We have written to all SMS vendors to reiterate that ‘V’ codes will not be used for unassessed internals in 2011. 

Enquiries

Please refer any enquiries relating to this circular to:

School Relationship Manager
School Quality Assurance and Liaison
Telephone:04 463 3000
Fax: 04 463 3113
Email: firstname.lastname@nzqa.govt.nz