#not just the 'pass fail' bar for entrance into degrees that most unis use the courses for

[cerbreus]

meeting w the transfer admin went well!

[1995lahaine]

sorry to send you another law school question if you don’t like answering these but I’m from the US so this is unclear. in NZ can you just go straight to a law school program from high school?? Like you just apply & get accepted & .......... go???

it’s fine!!! so like the process is that you have to get enough grade points to qualify for a conjoint degree of some sort (arts or commerce are the most popular). so that’s usually passing enough maths & english assessments to get university entrance requirements, and in theory, a pass in all the assessments you sit in your last year of high school will get you enough ‘points’ for a conjoint in arts, but you’d need a few more for a commerce degree. (because i got better grades, i didnt end up sitting a couple of my final calculus exams, cause i didn’t need to).

then you can start a ba/llb conjoint. the thing there, is that there are an average of about 1000 first year law entrants during your first semester if you’re at one of the big four unis. there are around 300 spots in each of those schools for second year students. so by your second semester of your freshman year, the number of law students drops to around 500. then 250-300 make it to 200 level at the end of the year.

so there’s effectively a 60% cut rate. then you’ve gotta keep decent enough grades to get your degree. my school grades the harshest in the country, and there’s around a 50% fail rate in many papers.

after you graduate with an llb (which takes 4-6 years for most people), you still have to pass the bar & a practical course in order to practise as a lawyer

[astraea-studies]

Hi! Can you tell us about the education system in NZ?

Good question anon! There’s a very good reason I haven’t responded to this and that’s because the education system in NZ is fucked up complicated :)

So buckle up, it’s going to be a rollercoaster of a ride.

Basically our education system is just god knows what (it really depends on the school) until the last 3 years of high school (year 11, 12 and 13) and then it becomes structured in a craaaaaazy complicated way. I’ll cover getting into university in the last paragraph, too. FYI, year 11 is also called Level 1, year 12 Level 2, and year 13 Level 3. 

(I’ll insert a link here because this is a tediously long answer!)

The fundamental idea behind NCEA (National Certificate of Educational Achievement, but everyone calls it NCEA) is that every subject is made up of ‘standards’ or topics (e.g. in English, a standard might be a speech), and each standard has a certain number of ‘credits’ - each subject typically offers 24 credits, but this can depend! In order to pass, you need 80 credits across all of your subjects. 80 credits is pretty easy to attain however, particularly when you take 140 credits (6 subjects worth 24 credits each). The number of credits per standard varies a LOT; it can be anywhere from 2 credits for a small standard to 12 credits for a really big one (like an art portfolio). The usually number is 3 or 4, but there’s sometimes 6 credit standards too. Theoretically each credit is worth 10 hours of work, but I don’t keep track so I honestly wouldn’t know. Also, credits can awarded at either Achieved, Merit, or Excellence level - this is super important later.

Now it gets messy. These standards are divided into ‘internals’ and ‘externals’. Externals are basically the typical end of year exams that everyone sits on a specific day at a specific time, and each subject can only offer a maximum of 3 externals, as all the exams are 3 hours long and it (theoretically) takes 1 hour per standard. There are exceptions, like art portfolios and digital technology (which does a report instead). They’re called externals because all the papers are sent off to some marking place (or something, idk) probably in our capital, Wellington, where they are all marked by the same people. As you can imagine, this is a ridiculously long process that means we don’t get these results back until mid-January, or just before our summer holidays end. Internals, on the other hand, are internally assessed by each individual school, and because there isn’t a specific date or even how the exact same standard should be assessed, each school does these differently. Does this mean it could be unfair? Absolutely. Internals also allow for reassessments or resubmissions (aka resubs), which is if a student is bordering one grade, they can alter their assessment in a small way to move their grade up. Unfortunately resubs aren’t required, so some schools offer loads of resubs while others offer none at all. This is mostly where the unfair nature of the assessments comes into play.

Are you still with me? Good. We’re barely halfway. Remember how a grade can be either Achieved, Merit or Excellence? Yeah, that’s really important. It’s obviously not enough just to have a pass/fail rate, so there’s a system of either Achieving, Achieving with Merit or Achieving with Excellence. As I’ve said, in order to pass you need 80 credits but to Achieve with Merit you need 80 credits with 50 at Merit or above, and to Achieve with Excellence you need 50 Excellence credits. But of course, even that isn’t enough, so not only can you pass overall with Merit or Excellence, you can also get each individual subject endorsed with Merit or Excellence! Yay! To get a subject endorsed with Merit/Excellence, you have to have at least 3 credits endorsed at that level (or above) in internal credits, and 3 credits endorsed at that level (or above) in external credits. You also have to have 14 credits endorsed at that level when combining internal and external credits.

So close, anon. The final part to passing Level 1, 2 or 3 is making sure you have literacy and numeracy credits, which tbh I don’t really understand because I get them anyway through the subjects, but you definitely need 10 credits that are numeracy approved (i.e. involve math) and 10 credits that are literacy approved (i.e. involving English - most subjects, including math, are literacy approved, as there’s usually some degree of comprehension or writing involved). That’s definitely the case for Level 1, but I think at Level 2 (even though numeracy credits are still offered) it’s just gaining 10 literacy credits, and at Level 3 you don’t need any at Level 3, but you still need the 10 credits from Levels 1 & 2 (but these carry over from previous years).

BUT WE AREN’T DONE YET! The university applications and acceptance rely on this wonderful system! So it is equally screwed up! Because the external results are released in mid-January and university begins at the end of February, there isn’t enough time for universities to make place and scholarship offers to students based on their Level 3 results, so universities make conditional offers, or offers based on Level 2 results, and as long as you gain University Entrance (UE) at Level 3, you’re accepted to that university. University Entrance has 3 conditions: you gain 14 credits each in 3 subjects at Level 3, 10 literacy credits at Level 2 or above, and 10 numeracy credits at Level 1 or above. It sounds like the bar is pretty low, and that’s because it is - while some courses are competitive entry, they are very few and not very competitive for first year entry - it’s getting into second year university that’s the difficult part. For example, you can conceivably get into first year health science (med school) by barely passing Level 3, but places in second year med school are highly competitive, so unless you’re willing to study really really hard in first year uni, you won’t be making it.

TL;DR NZ has a fucked up education system that I had to go to 3 seminars to understand and I wish we’d change it