There are 3 levels of NCEA certificate, depending on the difficulty of the standards achieved.

You need 80 credits to achieve an NCEA certificate at each level: 60 credits at that level or above, plus 10 Literacy or Te Reo Matatini credits and 10 Numeracy or Te Pāngarau credits.

Students need to show that they have foundational reading, writing and numeracy skills to gain an NCEA qualification. This is also known as the NCEA Co-requisite. 

While students can still progress through their NCEA journey, they must achieve the literacy and numeracy co-requisite to gain NCEA. Students can achieve the requirements any time throughout their NCEA journey. Students can try to achieve the requirements many times throughout their NCEA journey. Students need to meet literacy and numeracy requirements once only.

There are currently a limited amount of internal Achievement Standards that students can use to also gain the literacy and numeracy requirements of NCEA which are still offered at Spotswood College.

Achievement Standards and Unit Standards can still be used towards the 60 credits at NCEA Level 1, 2 and 3 and any credits learners already have will also count.

When students perform consistently above the Achieved level, their results can be ‘endorsed’ to reflect that high achievement.

Students can achieve an endorsement at the certificate or individual course level. 

NCEA Certificate endorsement:

NCEA certificates can be endorsed with Merit or Excellence.

To achieve an Excellence endorsement, a student must earn 50 credits at Excellence. Those credits must be at the level of the certificate or above.

To achieve a Merit endorsement, a student must earn 50 credits at Merit (or Merit and Excellence). Those credits must be at the level of the certificate or above.

Course Endorsement:

Course endorsement provides recognition of student achievement in an individual course in a single school year. It can be awarded at Achieved, Merit, and Excellence. Students achieve course endorsement if, in a single school year, they achieve:

14 or more credits at Achieved or Merit or Excellence, and at least 3 credits from externally assessed standards and 3 credits from internally assessed standards.