Sending Derived Grades to NZQA

In the April 2022 update to KAMAR, changes to how KAMAR records Unexpected Event Grades (UEGs) were made at NZQA request - changes as a result of issues identified with the previous process and their expectations. For more information on the NZQA guidelines see here. It's also worth looking at the myths on the NZQA web site.

Please note: In this item, we continue to refer to "Unexpected Event Grades" (UEG's) instead of the new name of "Derived Grades at Scale". KAMAR will be updated for 2023 to reflect the terminology now used by NZQA.

Background

Previously, schools created a 'Practice Assessment' and linked this to the external standard, which were then reported to NZQA as the UEG grade. While this process was simpler for schools, it caused issues, including:

• Some schools linked more than one practice assessment to the same external, resulting in the grade sent to NZQA not always being the intended grade.
• If schools changed the assessment result labels, then no UEG grade was reported.
• There was no process for teachers to ensure that the assessment provided authentic, valid, standard-specific evidence for the grade reported.

Recording UEG Results

After discussions with NZQA, changes were made by creating a dedicated UEG entry screen for each external standard. Our new screen allowed teachers to easily record their judgement grades and clearly see exactly what is being reported to NZQA for each student, for verification purposes.

The entry screen also allows teachers to view other assessments in their markbook, such as a practice examination, or an end-of-topic test held under examination conditions. There is even the ability to quickly copy the results from a practice exam assessment to the UEG, prior to verification.

For more information on entering UEG grades see here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q) We had created Practice Assessments - can I send these to NZQA ?
A) No. However, you can view these on the UEG entry screen. If they are set up as a NAME assessment, you can copy the result to the UEG grade column and then verify and adjust as necessary.

Q) Can I store the evidence/verification for the entered grade in KAMAR ?
A) Schools should have a dedicated storage (physical and/or virtual) location to keep documentation for evidence/verification purposes.

Q) Can I view UEGs outside the Markbook ?
A) UEGs are unofficial (not published) results intended for NZQA purposes, should they be necessary. However, you can use them in a markbook summary, using [11] or [13] for the UEG result value and [12] for the credits if UEG passed. They are also included in the ‘external entries’ printouts from Admin > NZQA.

Q) Can I report the UEG to students/caregivers (eg. on the Parent Portal) ?
A) UEG's are teacher judgements intended for the event a student is unable to sit the official exam, and thus their purpose is for reporting the teacher judgement to NZQA. There are no default report designs and no option on the portal to report the teacher judgements (UEG's). Schools should continue to use subject assessments to report the results of practice exams / tests, etc. to parents. You can however include the UEG for external standards on reports using the new zc_Result_UEG field, found in any of the ‘Result’ tables. If you do so, you need to make it clear that the UEG's are a judgement only and not an official result.