Internal and external moderation
Secondary moderation consists of internal moderation and external moderation.
Internal moderation
Internal moderation supports the credibility of assessment by ensuring that assessment is valid, and grade judgements are verified.
External moderation
External moderation provides an assurance that assessment decisions, in relation to assessment standards, are consistent nationally.
On this page
Assistance for teachers
NZQA provides the following to assist teachers with assessment of internal achievement standards:
Assessor Support
NZQA offers online learning modules and workshops, plus live workshops and events to help assessors with the assessment of internally-assessed standards.
NCEA subject pages
Individual Subject pages are available for secondary school subjects.
The following resources are available:
- clarification documents, with a focus on key assessment issues that arise through moderation
- exemplars of student work, with a focus on making judgements at grade boundaries
- moderator newsletters communicating assessment information on internally assessed standards
- links to Ministry of Education TKI Resources and Conditions of Assessment.
Facebook pages for each subject
Each senior secondary school subject now has a Facebook page. Pages can be located by typing the subject name and NZQA into the Facebook search.
Teachers on Facebook can click 'Like' on these pages to receive updates when new information is published on the NCEA subject pages for internally assessed standards.
These pages are not intended as a subject discussion forum.
Request for clarification of a standard
Teachers can ask specific questions of moderators about how to interpret the standard.
Moderators will refer teachers to the current clarifications document, send an individual response to queries, or update the clarifications document as required.
Request for clarification of a standard [DOCX, 38 KB]
This form is not for:
- verifying grades on student work, or
- pre-moderation and approval of assessment tasks.
Query or appeal a Moderation Report
Teachers may query or appeal a moderation report if they are not clear on the meaning of something in a report, or do not agree with the moderators decisions, or comments.
National systems check
Each year, NZQA completes a national systems check to calculate the national moderation agreement rates. These rates are calculated by selecting a random sample of students’ work.
The total number of students’ work received by NZQA for this purpose varies from year to year but ranges between 5,000 and 10,000 samples taken from the population of student entries for internally-assessed standards.
NZQA publishes the national moderation agreement rates annually.