What’s the least that you need to do to get NCEA level 3 so you can go to university?

This is a question that home school parents ask. Being a home school parent, I’ve been asking myself this question…

Here’s the answer, or at least what I think the answer is based on a talk I listened to last night. Bear in mind that this is the absolutely minimum and I haven’t cross checked this with NZQA or other sources. Do your own due diligence if you’re interested.

In reality, someone might do more than this just because of the way the credits are allocated, or because they enjoy a particular subject they are studying.

1. NCEA Level 1: You need 10 credits from each of literacy and numeracy. These can be unit standards or achievement standards. It doesn’t matter which. But be aware that they are different. So 20 credits total. I’m working on a set of generic templates for the literacy side of things at the moment.
2. NCEA Level 2: You need 10 English credits, e.g. 5 from each of reading and writing, but it looks like there are plenty of possibilities to mix it up with other content. You also need at least another 10 credits to make a total of 20 credits. These can be from anywhere, but you should really be focusing them on what you want to be working on in level 3. See below.
3. NCEA Level 3: You need a total of 80 credits and 60 of these must be at level 3 with at least 14 credits in a minimum of 3 approved subjects each. There’s a list of approved subjects somewhere that I’ll post later.

So… about a 100 credits all up across three levels…

And all of this is different to the idea of “passing” NCEA at a particular level. If you want to pass NCEA at any level you’ll need 80 credits including the literacy and numeracy from level 1.

Of course, if you want to get into medicine or another high stakes course at university, you’d also better focus on getting Excellence at NCEA level 3 as well.

This minimal credit approach is not designed to get people to “pass” each level, but rather create a path to completing NCEA level 3 to get into university with the least amount of work and credits – or at least to allow you to wrap your own stuff around it (which is what homeschoolers tend to do).