Assuring quality outcomes

The supporting of assessor decisions by Waihanga Ara Rau gives industry confidence that providers are assessing at a national standard and ensures graduates are achieving the graduate profile outcomes outlined in qualifications consistently across the motu. Our role is to ensure that training providers deliver education programmes to a high standard that meets industry needs.

This year to date, 2,860 assessment samples have been requested and 83% of these have been received. Preliminary results are positive and indicate that the majority of the assessor decisions evaluated have been supported.

Other activities our Assurance Team are involved in include:

Pre-assessment moderation

This mahi is the pre-assessment moderation of new assessment tools developed by education providers. To date, 156 pre-assessment samples have been received of which some are new assessment tools, and some are tools which have been modified.

Consent to Assess applications

We are evaluating providers who wish to offer new programmes or unit standards that they haven’t offered previously. To date, we have evaluated 14 applications from educational providers.

Programme endorsement

This is a new function introduced in June 2022 and involves endorsing programmes of study that lead towards qualifications prior to the provider getting approval from NZQA. It makes sure that the programmes are supported by industry and that graduates will meet the outcomes expected by the industry. To date, we have evaluated 11 applications for programme endorsement.

Moderation cluster group meetings

We are holding moderation cluster group meetings with secondary schools that offer construction within their technical classes.

We are also visiting educational providers as part of the moderation process to observe assessment as it occurs.

The main focus for our Assurance Team for the remainder of 2022 is to develop a Transformational Plan for 2023. The plan will detail how we will do things differently in the future and will have a strong focus on embedding Mātauranga Māori across everything that we do.