GOING ON A HIGH SCHOOL EXCHANGE AND MANAGING NCEA
Are you considering going on a semester or year exchange but worried about how it will affect your NCEA credits ? If you are prepared to work hard and you have the support of your school , it ’ s possible to go on a longer exchange without having to repeat any NZ schooling . Read below some of the feedback from past Your Education students about how they went on a semester or year exchange and successfully managed their NCEA credits .
Olivia went to the USA on an Academic Year programme during her Year 12 .
Adam went to the USA on a Semester programme during his Year 11 .
" My American exchange was for my second year of NCEA , level 2 . Before I left , I had several meetings with my deans to make sure that my school would be able to accommodate me leaving for a year . The outcome of these meetings decided that I was able to effectively “ jump ” over level 2 and progress to level 3 when I returned . The side effect to this is that instead of bringing the 20 credits from level 2 that students are allowed , I had to achieve 80 level 3 credits , instead of 60 , in order to pass .
As the American school system was very different , there was no way to bring credits from that to NCEA . The only downside to this was that for application to universities , I could only use my level 3 credits . This meant that I was unable to apply for certain scholarships that required the use of level 2 credits e . g . the Victoria University Excellence Scholarship . Fortunately , there are many other scholarships available for many other criteria so this was not much of a problem for me .
Overall , it just meant that I needed to work a little bit harder in order to pass my final year of high school and guarantee my place in tertiary study ."
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