Retention of Assessment Materials

Why we do it

A new record keeping rule was added to the NZQA Rules in 2018. Rule 14.1C of the Quality Assurance (including EER) Rules 2016 requires institutions to keep all summative student assessment materials generated from education and training in which students are enrolled, or full copies of them, for at least 12 months from the date of completion of that education or training. This Rule commenced from 23 November 2018.

To comply with NZQA requirements, a copy of all summative assessment materials must be retained for a minimum of 12 months from the date of completion of the education or training at Unitec. Some exemptions/exceptions are allowed in certain cases (e.g. if student generated work are complex in nature and unable to be stored easily).

Guidelines

1. Education and training is defined as a course/paper/module/dissertation at Unitec.

2. Summative assessment materials include the following items:

summative assessment instructions given to students
marking documents (i.e. marking schedule/marking guide/marking rubric/assessment schedule)
marked student work (e.g. hard copy or electronic copy of student work submitted) including any resubmissions or reassessment.

The table below gives examples of marked student work that must be retained

Marked student work	Retention
Written work (paper based): May include but not limited to reports, essays, tests, exams, assignments, quiz/multi-choice, workplace documentation, worksheets, user manuals, portfolios	All original written work (paper based) other than exams must be stored locally by the School. Written exams will be stored centrally by Examinations Office.
Written work (electronic): May include but not limited to reports, essays, tests, exams, assignments, quiz/multi-choice, workplace documentation, worksheets, user manuals, portfolios	All written work (electronic) must be stored locally by the School on the H: drive. For some types of written work (electronic) Moodle or other supported digital tools can be utilised.
Charts, posters and other digital creative work	All electronic copies must be stored locally by the School on the H: drive, Moodle or other supported digital tools can be utilised.
Formal Examinations	Schools must return all students’ original marked examination answer booklets, question papers and marking schedules to the Examination Office. These will be retained for a period of one year. At the conclusion of this retention period, a sample range of the ‘top, middle (two samples) and bottom’ marked examination booklets, together with a copy of the related course examination questions and marking schedule, must be retained by the Examination office for moderation purposes. The remaining marked examination booklets must be destroyed. The material retained for moderation purposes must be retained for seven years and then destroyed. All destruction of marked examination booklets and marking schedules must be completed in accordance with Unitec’s approved records disposal procedure”

3. Originals/copies of performance or practical summative assessments including but not limited to presentations, demonstrations, acting, singing, dance, trades project outputs are not required to be kept due to practical storage constraints.

However other records may be kept to demonstrate the achievement of the summative assessment. These may include associated assessment requirements that form part of any of the above mentioned assessment types, such as journals, preparation documents/plans, on-line forum entries, student self-refection, etc. There may also be assessment process materials kept such as marking schedules and markers comments.

Specific arrangements for on-line Moodle assessment materials

Check with your APM to see if your course is using the TPA copy rollover approach. If so, and your assessments have been conducted and stored within Moodle (including Turnitin), then you do not need to download copies of the assessments. The old version of the course will remain accessible on Moodle with the previous learners enrolled and all assessment submissions. If your course is not stored using the TPA copy rollover approach, ask your APM or Programme Co-ordinator how to download all assessments to save on H drive.