What we do

Our services span the secondary and tertiary education sectors. NZQA administers the National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEAs) for secondary school students and is responsible for the quality assurance of non-university tertiary training providers.

NZQA's priority is to support our diverse range of clients by providing effective and efficient services, within our statutory mandate, that meet their specific needs.

Our key responsibilities are the delivery of the following services:

The services we deliver provide:

develop, register and support the New Zealand Qualifications Framework
  • information about qualifications
  • information about what knowledge and experience holders of qualifications can be expected to have
  • information about what further education and/or employment opportunities the qualification leads to.

manage the external assessment of secondary school students and

moderate secondary schools' internal assessment activities and processes
  • external examination results
  • quality assurance of schools that offer assessment for national qualifications
  • awards of NZ Scholarship
  • identification of Top Scholars
  • achievement statistics.

quality assure non-university tertiary education organisations and

their courses, and moderate assessment activities and processes

for national qualifications for NZQA-owned unit standards
  • external evaluation and review of training providers
  • feedback and guidance to teachers on internal assessment
  • publicly available information about the quality and relevance of educational performance and organisational capability.

maintain effective liaison with overseas certifying and validating

bodies in order to recognise overseas educational and vocational

qualifications in New Zealand, and to achieve recognition of New Zealand educational and vocational qualifications overseas
  • the ability to use New Zealand qualifications as evidence of what people can do in more countries overseas
  • the ability to support migrants to New Zealand by recognising their qualifications.

act as a standard-setting body
  • Māori standards and qualifications
  • standards for which there are no other standard-setting bodies and which reflect Government priorities.

For an idea of the scale of our work, see Our work by the numbers.

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