Data process for students who leave secondary education or transfer to another school

Find out more about the process for managing data for students leaving secondary education or transferring to another school

The process for managing data for students leaving secondary education is different to those transferring to another secondary school. Please follow the processes so that all students' records are complete and accurate.

Students leaving secondary education

When a student leaves secondary education, schools need to ensure the student’s outstanding results can be reported and viewed online, and relevant qualifications can be awarded.

To enable this, schools should do the following:

  • Report all missing internal results to NZQA.
  • Withdraw any internal entry that does not or will not have a result recorded against it.
  • Withdraw all external entries unless the student has indicated they intend to sit the examination.
  • Show that the student has left school in their student management system (including the leaving reason). Do not withdraw their NCEA enrollment as this will withdraw all their entries and results for the year and prevent the award of the appropriate qualifications. Students do not have access to withdrawn results.
  • Leave the student's NZQA enrollment active in the school's data file to allow for late internal and external result entry.
  • Update ENROL to show they have left school.

Students transferring to another school

Students can only have one active secondary school enrolment with NZQA at one time. Therefore, where a student transfers schools, the previous and new school both need to take the following actions so that the transferring student’s record is accurate.

School transferred from (previous school)

The previous school should do the following:

  • Update ENROL to show the student as a leaver but keep their NZQA enrolment active until another school confirms the enrolment.
  • Ensure they do not withdraw the NZQA enrolment until the new school confirms they have accepted the student’s request to enrol.
  • Send a full transcript of the student's results to the new school on request, including any results confirmed after the student has left.

School transferred to (new school)

The new school should do the following:

  • Update ENROL to show the student’s change of school.
  • Use the 'Candidate Results from Other Providers' link in the Provider Login to download the student’s results from the current year and from previous years including any qualifications and endorsements. You should import this into your student management system.
  • Submit, in a datafile, an NZQA enrolment for the student. Note: you will get the error message ‘New Secondary Home School for year’ in your batch if the previous school has not yet sent an updated data file to NZQA withdrawing the student. If this does not resolve in the next file submission, contact the previous school or your Data manager at NZQA.
  • Request a full academic transcript from the previous school to confirm that all the transferring student’s results are recorded with the correct provider code.
  • Report any additional results using the previous school’s or external provider code, ensuring the correct school/organisation responsible for the assessment is listed.
  • Make entries for standards (including externals) the student will be assessed against in the remainder of the year.
  • Check that standards (including those from the previous school) are allocated to courses appropriately.

If you need to contact the previous school, a list of contacts for Principal’s Nominees can be found in 'School’s Administration' in the Provider Login.

Provider Login (external link)(external link) — education.govt.nz

Late external entry process for transferring candidates

Students who transfer schools after 1 September will not have personalised booklets at the new examination centre school. The new school will need to follow the Late Entry process which includes adding the entry details to your data submission.

Papers must not be transferred between schools.

Making entries for candidates

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