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Dear Parents and Caregivers
Your child has received quite a bit of information recently about the examinations and, in this newsletter, a link will take you to the newsletter that was given to students this week as part of their very important NCEA information pack.
After reading the newsletter you should have a clear idea of what the issues are for students during examination time. Encourage them to give of their best, to not be complacent, to be organised and to know just what they have to do – and then go out there and do it!
If your child is doing at least one digital examination, please tell them they need to be well-prepared for their examination/s as per those guidelines provided earlier in this newsletter.
At all times, please feel free to contact me via email with any questions that you may have about NCEA at DBV@stac.school.nz.
Kind regards
David Bevin
Head of Teaching and Learning
Students’ health and safety in an examination setting is of great importance. As such, all students are being informed in their NCEA briefings with me that, if they are unwell, they should not come to their examination which is where the derived grade provisions (outlined later in this newsletter) will come into play as a way of managing a situation of student illness.
Students, and parents, are informed that the Examination Centre Manager and I will refuse a student entry to an examination if they show obvious signs of illness. Where this happens, the derived grade provisions will be implemented.
So, a request – Given the very heightened sensitivity to students coming to school obviously unwell, we ask parents to act with caution in such a situation and to keep their child home from the examination and to remember that students, and examination supervisors, could very quickly become anxious if they are sharing the same space as an obviously unwell student. The effect of such stress on another student’s examination performance cannot be underestimated which is why I make this serious request.
As we get older, we can forget some of those more stressful events, such as examinations, that we endured all those years ago. If you found those examinations not so difficult, you could be forgiven for thinking that it will be pretty straightforward for your children as well, but will it? Have you possibly forgotten something? Did those examinations really go as easily as you thought? Or, actually, did you find them to be a really big ordeal with memories that you’d rather forget?
Do you know about your child’s ability to manage their organisation and their learning generally? If you and your child attended it, what was discussed in last term’s Conference about their next steps in preparation for the NCEA externals? How well will they prepare for an intense period of academic pressure such as these examinations will be? Please help them to not leave anything to chance during this time. Here are two bits of advice for helping students to manage for success during their NCEA examinations.
Having the right environment for study at home is essential….a suitable study space, a structured study programme operating through the days of Study Leave, organised and detailed study notes, plenty of sleep, not too many late nights, a good and healthy diet and, importantly, plenty of exercise and down time as part of it all, parts of the ‘magic formula’ for success!
This website is very important for students to check out over the next month in particular. On the front page of the website, students have their own dedicated space, or ‘one-stop shop’, called the Student Assessment Hub, to access and will find a lot of material to look into. Students are provided with quite a number of tips for managing examination pressure and we parents shouldn’t underestimate the pressure that our students may well feel under at this time of the year so you might find it useful to click here to read information on the NZQA website.
The NCEA examinations countdown is truly under way!
In this newsletter you’ll read about:
It's just over two weeks to the start of the NCEA and Scholarship examinations and there's a lot to think about.
Check out the NCEA folder on StACNet because there's a lot of up-to-date NCEA examination information for you to check.
STACNET NCEA EXAMINATIONS 2023 >
Also in this newsletter, I’ll give you a ‘tour’ around a student’s NZQA Learner Login which now becomes the students’ key ‘port of call’ for accessing a lot of information, not the least of which are their NCEA results! It’s a ‘treasure trove’ of information. Note, though, that you can only access it if your child allows you to access it – so, will your child share their access with you?
Even though they leave school at the end of this year, Year 13 (and some Year 12) students and their parents are reminded of the various financial awards that are made to all those students who gain an Excellence endorsement in Level 3 NCEA overall and/or course endorsements and/or Scholarship passes. We always make the award to those students at our Academic Assembly in mid-February and the gain of such endorsements is a real achievement and one worth celebrating! Details of the awards are shown in the Student Examinations booklet, the link to which is here.
Further on you will see a diagram that outlines the awards available to students of NCEA. Nowadays, there is increasing emphasis on ‘competitive entry’ and on NCEA students gaining the best grades that they can get; it is also fair to say that there is a particular interest in the community in students’ achievements in external examinations in particular. As such, students at both year levels should be aiming for the best grades that they can get in the upcoming externals as there can be a lot riding on it.
Year 12 students and their parents have previously been informed that their Level 2 results have a significance beyond just this year. As with every year, next year, Year 13 students will be applying for Halls of Residence and a range of tertiary scholarships. For all such applications, they will be required to include documentation that shows their last full set of results, those being their Year 12/Level 2 results. As such, their applications will be judged against those results they gain this year, including their external results, perhaps it’s needless to say but they really do have to keep their eye on what they are hoping to apply for in June/July/August next year.
For Year 13 students, there is the need to both gain University Entrance and to reach those ‘thresholds’ that the various universities set as additional requirements. Students must understand the great difficulty of gaining entry to university courses if they do not gain UE.
While there is no set date yet for the publication of interim final NCEA results those are now expected to be available around mid-January. The best way to access those results is for students to go online at that time via their Learner Login; a hard copy is only available if a student requests one through their login by Sunday 31 December. The Results Notice only lists those results gained in 2023 while the Record of Achievement lists all results gained over a student’s NCEA ‘life’ – it does not show any results of 'Not Achieved' or 'SNA'.
Of course, your student will want to know their results straight away in mid-January rather than waiting while they spend several hours on the phone to NZQA to find out their NSN and to get the process started! In previous newsletters this year, I have outlined what happens regarding exam results. I encourage you to click here to find out more details.
Read further on for more information on the Learner Login’s great usefulness, particularly at this time of the year.
Internal assessment programmes are now complete, meaning that students have now finished their internals! The last requirement of them is that they formally sign off all of their internal grades on official College documentation. All students are required to sign for all their grades before they go on Study Leave next week.
When you check in to the Portal, you will be able to access the NCEA Current Results Summary that provides up-to-the-minute summarised information on your child’s NCEA achievement. This very good academic transcript is the same that is available to students when they log in to the Portal – please check it out even if you have done so before. Our student feedback indicates that the Portal is the students’ ‘place of preference’ when they are checking their results. Click on the Results tab and you’ll see a transcript of the results that we hold on our database. The Portal can, of course, be accessed in the StAC App.
For Visual Arts, DVC and Technology-based subjects, while there is no examination, there are externally-assessed standards that have been completed at school but that are either still to be marked internally (Levels 1 and 2) or externally.
Recently, I looked at a student’s Learner Login – I had forgotten how great it is, just what there is to see and why it is so important that students do register here. The ‘trick’ in parents accessing this is that they can’t! Or, not without their child letting them see it, but, in my opinion, you should see it because it is truly the best way to see the results.
So, just what can be seen there? Well, the first thing is that your student must have registered with NZQA by now – if they haven’t and they don’t until results come out in mid-January, they won’t be able to see them and won’t easily get through the registration process at such a busy time of the year, i.e. results time! Our data on this shows that all students across Years 10–13 have now accessed their Learner Login at least once this year and all students have a login. So, they’re all set to go!
I encourage you to first access the following web address to find out more details first then sit down with your student to see the ‘treasure trove’!
ncea rESULTS > LEARNER LOGIN >
Record of Achievement – every student should have a copy of this every year.
Accessing the Learner Login enables the student to print a valid copy of their official ROA – but only once the external results are showing (it isn’t complete otherwise). Ideally, this would be printed in about April of each year following the year of qualification, i.e. for Year 11 students this year, this means April of next year
For Year 13 2023 students, it’s very important that they have an updated copy of their ROA by now that shows their 2022 Level 2 achievement record.
Year 12 2023 students must have an updated copy of the ROA by April next year that they can then use when they make applications during the year for tertiary scholarships, Halls of Residence places, to name two important considerations.
My Admission Slip - if a student loses their candidate admission slip, they are able to print another one right here and, once it is signed by Mr Bevin or Mrs Faulls, it can be used to gain admission to an external exam. The rule is, no admission slip, no getting into an examination!
My School Entries and Results – this shows all results recorded so far this year and is the place to find the external examination results when they are released in January next year – called the Results Notice.
Clicking on the highlighted button at the right side of this screen provides access to a printable pdf document called a School Results Summary that provides an excellent visual summary of what the student has gained at the time of printing.
This can be printed at any time and will show all results recorded on NZQA at the time of printing. Until the external results are available in January, it will not show any externals so that would be the ideal time to have a printed copy. Later on, in April, the official results transcript, the ROA, should be printed and kept in an official file, ready for various types of future applications eg tertiary scholarships.
The Learner Login provides the ability to print an electronic copy of the ROA which enables it to be attached to applications in the future.
Year 11 students who study Level 2 subjects this year count their credits towards the Level 1 certificate, the Level 2 certificate and for Level 2 certificate endorsement. To gain a course endorsement in a Level 2 subject, credits must be gained this year, however.
Students who study Level 3 subjects this year count their Level 3 credits towards both the Level 2 certificate and the Level 3 certificate. To gain a course endorsement in a Level 3 subject, credits must be gained this year, they cannot be added to next year when in Year 13.
New Zealand Scholarship assessments enable candidates to be assessed against challenging standards and are demanding for the most able candidates in each subject. Assessment is by either a written/spoken examination (not like an NCEA examination although the subject matter is based on Level 3 NCEA content) or by the submission of a portfolio or report of work produced throughout the year.
Scholarship candidates are expected to demonstrate high-level critical thinking, abstraction, and generalisation, and to integrate, synthesise and apply knowledge, skills, understanding, and ideas to complex situations.
Approximately three per cent of all students studying each subject at Level 3 nationally, who achieve 14 or more credits in the subject, are awarded Scholarship if they reach the standard that has been set.
External examinations begin on Monday 6 November and conclude on Thursday 30 November.
NCEA Timetable >
The NCEA timetable deserves a place of prominence in the house because if a student gets the date/day/time for an examination wrong, they won’t get to sit it and all the external results for that subject will be lost. Students, including our own, have in the past got the times wrong, usually, thinking an examination was on in the afternoon when it was the morning (students did that in our recent Prelim examinations!!) – to do this is disastrous! So, make sure that your child knows when and where they should turn up for their examination and whom they should contact if they are going to be absent. If our examination session roll calls indicate that a student is absent, we will ring but a student can’t enter an examination room more than 30 minutes late and they can’t sit the examination later on either.
Levels 1–3
As in the last few years, students in a small number of subjects will sit their examinations digitally, meaning, using their laptop (school laptops are not available to be used). Digital examinations are sat using the NZQA online examinations platform and are no different to paper-based examinations. The students concerned have already sat their Prelim examinations on a digital platform (Education Perfect) so that they were able to get a ‘feel’ for this method of assessment. This week, through their classroom teacher, students have all received very important reminders as the final preparation for their examination.
It is important that students take responsibility for getting themselves organised for their digital examinations/s, rather than rely on their teacher to do it all for them! However, last Friday all parents of students in Years 11–13 received this email from me:
Dear Parents
Please click on here to access a document that is being provided to all students who are doing an online/digital examination in this year’s NCEA exams. The document is provided in digital form only and will be shared by students’ teachers with their classes over the next week via Teams and/or One Note. The document provides good links to information relating to students being prepared for completing an online examination and students (and you, if you have the time!) are encouraged to take a look at what has been provided. Teachers have been asked to give their students some class time to look at the information and, where it is also provided, to have a look at the online examinations interface as it works for their examination subject/s.
The biggest concern that teachers of online examination subjects have is that their students are properly device-ready for their NCEA exam/s. It will be a major problem for a student and the Examinations Supervisors team if a student turns up to their digital examination either without their device or with a device that is not going to support them well through their exam. Our IT staff will of course provide support where they can but it is the student’s responsibility to have everything ready according to the NZQA requirements.
I do ask for your help by checking that your student is managing themselves well in this regard by having a look at what they are being told about online examinations and that, before each examination day, you ask them, for example, “have you charged your laptop?” and, on examination day, ”have you got your laptop – and your charger?!”
Regarding Special Assessment Conditions for online exams, Mrs Broad is working with students to establish how their entitlement ‘works’ with online assessment and your student will be able to explain to you what has been agreed in terms of their SAC.
Note, that NCEA online examinations have been sat for the last six years or so and this is the fourth year that St Andrew’s College students have been involved in this form of assessment. Extensive surveying of students done by NZQA has reported very favourable responses from students to doing examinations online and students have clearly found the experience to be well within their realm of experience.
This week, all students are receiving from their Tutor the following very important ‘information pack’ that they must read and hold on to:
If your child did not receive theirs or did not collect it, they don’t have any of that final information and they don’t have their Candidate Admission slip… which they really need. They need to see their tutor to collect that pack!
Candidates have now received their Candidate Admission Slip – and should have checked that all the details on it are correct, it’s a very important document and students mustn’t lose it! Without this key document, a student cannot enter an examination room. It shows a number of things that have to be correct.
Derived Grade (please contact me directly for further information about this should it apply to you).
This applies in a situation of ‘impairment’ (eg sickness, trauma) in the week/s leading up to, or during, an individual NCEA examination or the entire examination period. A student may apply for a derived grade and still sit their examination/s. As you will know, in such a situation, the College will provide ‘replacement’ grades derived from in-school assessment (usually the school examinations) for the Standard/s affected. If a derived grade application is accepted by NZQA (the College does not approve these applications), the student will receive the better of their examination grades or school-based derived grades. Note that if a student considers that they were impaired in an examination, suitable documentation should be provided as soon as possible after that examination.
NZQA is the sole judge of such applications which are made by the school in November/December on a child’s behalf. They may choose to inform students by letter of their decision at the same time as results are received in mid-January.
Please Note – in a situation of a possible derived grade application, students must deal directly with me only.
This is the information that students have received about this ‘tricky’ situation that I would like you to be clear about also, so please read this carefully.
PS – some information about our NCEA page on the College intranet, StACNet.
This page is updated regularly, and students and parents can access different information for the NCEA examinations in this folder.
In the FAQs document I have hopefully answered the questions that a parent may have about the examinations. These questions are also covered with students in the NCEA examinations briefing and in their student newsletter, please click here to read.
Look out for my final newsletter of the year (in early December) in which I will cover these matters and outline a little about ‘tidying away’ NCEA examinations 2023.
