Using your results: Advice for school leavers

You can provide potential employers and tertiary institutions with a lot of detail about your school and academic record. It may look impressive, but a summary might be more effective or helpful.

You can create a summary of your results using your on-line information.

When looking at your personal Record of Achievement, you can choose to view a ?selection' of items. When you have made a ?selection', you can copy and paste the information into your CV document, or just use a print-out.

As well as showing all your qualifications, you should include any specialist National Certificates you have gained, or even partially completed. You could also summarise the subject and skill areas you have covered during your school studies.

If you have gained a NCEA certificate endorsed with merit or excellence, or if you have a number of merit or excellence achievement standards, it's worthwhile highlighting these.

Even if you've got a lot of level 3 standards under your belt, don't forget there will probably be some standards you've achieved at levels 1 and 2 that employers and tertiary institutions may want to know about, such as the literacy and numeracy standards that you have to achieve to get a NCEA level 1. You might show your highest results in each learning area. For example, if you did Music only at level 1 or Geography to level 2, it could be worth including them. But if you did, say, Maths at levels 1, 2 and 3, only your level 3 results might be relevant, although if you did very well at the other levels, achieving merits or excellences, these could be relevant too.

Like you, your results are unique ? make the most of them. Be prepared to use them to show you in the best light.

Applying for a job

If you're not going straight onto tertiary study, you'll want to start looking for a job. In that case, you'll probably work towards National Certificates or Diplomas in the workplace.

To help you decide what sort of work might suit you best, talk to a careers advisor and check out Career Services website or call Career Services on 0800 222 733.

Once you've done some research and decided what sort of job you want to aim for, look at your results and think about which ones a potential employer might be most interested in. You might want to get in touch with a few employers and find out what they are looking for in an employee. They could be looking for a general overall ability or for very specific skills, or both. They might even be looking for people who have achieved specific standards on the National Qualifications Framework.

For example, if you know that a job requires strong communications or computing skills, or if you're looking for work in an industry area like retail, engineering, tourism or forestry, you'll want to highlight any relevant standards and qualifications you have achieved in these learning areas.

Once you know what an employer you want to impress is looking for, you can select the relevant material from your on-line Record of Achievement to include in your CV and application.

Going on to tertiary study?

Tertiary education providers have different entry criteria for different courses. Find out what these are before submitting your application and whether the provider wants to see your entire set of results, or a summary.

University Entrance

You are qualified for entrance to a New Zealand university if you have:

• a minimum of 42 credits at level 3 or higher on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF), including a minimum of 14 credits at level 3 or higher in each of two subjects from the approved subject list, with a further 14 credits at level 3 or higher taken from no more than two additional domains on the NQF or approved subjects
• a minimum of 14 credits at level 1 or higher in Mathematics or Pangarau on the NQF
• a minimum of 8 credits at level 2 or higher in English, te reo Māori or te reo Rangatira; 4 credits must be in Reading/Pānui and 4 credits must be in Writing/Tuhituhi. The literacy credits will be selected from a schedule of approved achievement standards and unit standards.

It is important to tell tertiary providers that you have met the University Entrance requirement. The best way may be to make sure you include that part of your Record of Achievement in your CV.

You can accumulate credits over more than one year. If you've achieved a unit standard and an achievement standard that assess the same learning outcome, you can only count one of them for university entrance. New Zealand Scholarship standards also count towards university entrance.

Remember - university entrance makes you eligible to enter university but doesn't guarantee you'll be accepted for the particular course you want to enter. Universities publish details of entry criteria for specific courses.

Visit KiwiQuals to find and compare every quality assured qualification in New Zealand.

Leaving school - what next?

Whether you're going on to tertiary study or about to apply for jobs, you'll need to think about how you're going to present your results.

You can access your Record of Achievement (ROA) at any time. You can order official transcripts, or just print-outs or you can copy and paste the material you need into your own CV. You should decide which option is best in view of how you'll use the information.

Your ROA is probably the most useful piece of documentation because it summarises all your achievements and qualifications.

But it could be several pages long. That's a lot of information for someone to go through, so it's worth taking some time to think about how to summarise your most relevant results.

The key issues to remember are:

• Your Record of Achievement can be used to show you in a good light
• Tailor what you include in your CV or application to meet the needs of whatever it is you're applying for.

More Information

Last updated: 09 November 2006