New Zealand's NCEA — Dropping Take-Home Reports and Writing a National AI-Authenticity Policy

Since 2023, updated through 2025, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) and the Ministry of Education have issued national guidance prohibiting chatbots, generative AI and paraphrasing tools in NCEA external assessment, so candidates cannot submit AI-generated material as their own work. Schools holding 'consent to assess' must adopt their own authenticity policy for internal assessment, specifying acceptable AI use. The guidance explicitly warns that AI-detection software should not be relied on alone because of false positives, and instead points teachers toward authentication strategies grounded in knowing their students' own work.

The policy aims to preserve the authenticity of NCEA assessment as generative AI tools become widespread, without over-relying on unreliable AI-detection software. It promotes concrete authentication strategies for teachers, including milestone check-ins, source referencing, follow-up questioning, comparison against a student's prior work, and watching for stylistic anomalies.

RNZ reporting in 2024 described individual schools — including Saint Patrick's College Wellington, Onslow College and Westlake Girls' High School — responding to detected AI cheating on take-home assessments by reverting to hand-written, supervised formats. Nationally, the Ministry and NZQA decided that written reports would no longer be used as the external-assessment method for 19 NCEA Level 1 standards from 2025, citing both administrative burden and authenticity concerns.

At one school quoted in the RNZ investigation, 15-20% of students were found to have used AI to cheat on early take-home assessments; after the school reverted to hand-written and supervised formats, detected AI-assisted cheating reportedly fell to roughly 5%. Teachers described the shift as having made essay-based assessment 'really tricky', with one noting the school had 'reverted back to hand-writing for a lot of assessments'.

The practice's own description cautions that these figures come from individual schools quoted in a single news investigation rather than a controlled national study, and reflect detected or self-reported cheating, not a rigorous causal evaluation. It also notes that the shift toward hand-written and supervised assessment carries acknowledged classroom costs, and that no equity-specific provisions were found in the published guidance for students who rely on assistive or translation technology.