National Certificate of Educational Achievement
We provided full-stack development services for the NCEA Standards & Resources platform — New Zealand’s national digital hub for achievement standards, assessment activities and qualification resources across the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa.
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The Challenge
The Ministry of Education was undertaking a generational reform of NCEA — New Zealand’s primary secondary school qualification.
The existing digital ecosystem was not designed to support the scale, complexity and bilingual requirements of the reform. Teachers, students and whānau needed a single, authoritative platform for:
- Over 1,000 achievement standards across multiple learning areas
- Assessment activities and supporting resources
- Full English and Te Reo Māori delivery
- Accessible content compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA
- Reliable document exports for offline classroom use
The Ministry required a modern platform capable of:
- Presenting complex qualification content in a clear, structured format
- Supporting bilingual content across the entire system
- Delivering fast, relevant search across a growing standards library
- Enabling independent editorial workflows
- Ensuring accessibility compliance across all releases
This was not simply a content refresh — it was a national-scale digital transformation aligned with curriculum reform.
We provided full-stack development services as a decoupled, CMS-driven application built to support the national qualification framework at scale.
The system combines Drupal for structured content management with Vue.js frontend components for interactive, high-performance delivery.
Bilingual by Design
The platform was architected for bilingual delivery from the outset. Every content type, interface element and navigation component supports full English and Te Reo Māori translation.
Intelligent Search at National Scale
Algolia-powered search enables teachers to locate relevant standards and resources instantly across 1,000+ qualification entries. Faceted filtering by learning area, subject and level ensures discoverability even within a highly structured content model.
Resource Exports
We developed a complete RTF export system allowing teachers to download assessment activities as Word-compatible documents with:
- Embedded images
- Professional A4 formatting
- Accurate Māori character encoding
Accessibility
Accessibility was embedded into the development lifecycle through automated WCAG 2.1 AA testing using axe-core integrated into Cypress end-to-end test suites.
This ensured compliance was continuously validated — not retroactively audited — across every release.
We also contributed towards the formalisation of the Ministry of Education Design System, reducing duplication and improving consistency across projects.
NCEA Standards & Resources became the Ministry of Education’s primary public interface for the reformed qualification standards.
The platform delivered measurable operational and educational value:
- Teachers gained direct, self-service access to authoritative standards and resources in both English and Te Reo Māori
- Offline-ready RTF exports became a widely adopted classroom preparation tool
- Content teams achieved full editorial independence through structured workflows
- The reusable frontend architecture contributed to the formalisation of the Ministry of Education Design System
- Continuous accessibility automation ensured sustained WCAG 2.1 AA compliance
The architectural decisions — decoupled CMS, bilingual-first content model and automated quality assurance — created a scalable foundation capable of supporting the ongoing rollout of reformed NCEA standards across all learning areas.
The Conclusion
NCEA Standards & Resources now operates as the Ministry of Education’s authoritative digital platform for delivering New Zealand’s reformed qualification standards — providing equitable, bilingual access for teachers, students and whānau nationwide.
The platform’s scalable architecture ensures it will continue to evolve alongside the national curriculum for years to come.