For assessors & operators
Moderation: how assessments get checked
Every completed assessment is readable, end to end, by a moderator — every unit, every criterion ticked, the written record you entered, and anything you attached. It is the quality assurance behind the qualification, and it is the reason an NZRA endorsement means something to an operator.
It is not a queue your candidate waits in. Certificates issue on your sign-off, not on a moderator’s. This page is honest about what’s built and what isn’t.
Start here
The idea in one line
Your assessment is readable afterwards, by another assessor, in full.
That is the whole mechanism, and it is deliberately not a gate. You are trusted to make the call on the water — the certificate issues when you sign the last unit. Moderation is the profession checking its own work afterwards, which is what makes the award defensible if anyone ever asks.
Clearing this up first
What actually holds a certificate back
Gate 1
Foundation E-learning
For the five raft guide awards. Your sign-offs save; the certificate waits for their theory. How that works
Gate 2
River Rescue, Grade 3 and up
Its 8 units have to be signed off too. They come with the award at no extra cost, on their own enrolment.
Past those two, the certificate number is allocated, the registry entry is written and the guide gets their PDF — all on your final sign-off. Nothing sits waiting for a committee.
The surface
Everything completed goes in the queue
No sampling
There’s no percentage and no rota. Every completed assessment is listed and counted as unreviewed until somebody opens it.
Three states
Needs review, reviewed, or flagged — with running counts at the top, so it’s obvious what’s outstanding.
Practice kept separate
Sandbox assessments — the ones assessors train on — are listed on their own and issue nothing real.
Who can open it
Five people, today. It’s a permission on an account rather than a separate job — three admins have it by role, and two assessors have been given it.
- Timothy MarshallAdmin + assessor
- Stuart DearloveAdmin
- Nathan ToppAdmin
- Koryn GouldAssessor
- Anthony ChurchesAssessor
NZRA can switch that permission on for any assessor from the admin panel. If the exec wants moderation spread across more of the senior assessors, that’s a toggle, not a build.
The detail
What a moderator can read back
- Every unit, and whether it was marked Competent or Not Yet Competent
- Which criteria were ticked inside each unit
- The written record of assessment the assessor had to enter
- Any feedback left for the candidate
- Who signed each unit off, which may be more than one assessor
- Photos, video clips and documents attached as evidence
Which is why the record of assessment on each unit is compulsory and won’t save empty. “Competent” with nothing written beside it tells a moderator nothing, and tells an operator nothing two years later.
The decision
Three things a moderator can do
Approve — quality OK
The assessment stands as a worked example of the standard.
Flag for quality issues
Recorded against the assessment with the moderator’s notes. Today this is a note for NZRA and other moderators — it doesn’t email the assessor yet.
Reopen for re-assessment
Puts the enrolment back to active so it can be worked on again. It does notwithdraw a certificate that has already issued — taking an award back off the register is a separate, deliberate step below.
The serious one
Pulling an award back off the register
Admin only, with a reason
An NZRA admin revokes the certificate and has to record why. A moderator who isn’t also an admin can’t do it.
It comes off everywhere at once
The Record of Learning entry is marked revoked, and it drops out of the public registry, the guide’s dashboard and their employer’s view. The record is kept for audit, not deleted. A revocation made in error can be restored.
43 certificates have been issued through the platform and 5 have been revoked, so this is a path that gets used — mostly for records entered wrongly rather than anything contested.
Honest status
Where this is actually up to
In place, barely used
The queue and the review screen work, and they’ve been used once — 37 legacy records signed off in one sitting in August, all approved, all noted as pre-dating the system. Nothing has been flagged and nothing reopened. Two completed assessments are sitting unreviewed right now. So: real surface, almost no operating history.
What still needs building
- A flag doesn’t reach the assessor. No email, no screen on their side. It needs to, or moderation can’t improve anyone’s practice.
- Reopen doesn’t round-trip properly — a reopened assessment leaves the queue and doesn’t come back. Known, and being fixed.
- No per-unit flagging, no review history, no filtering. A second decision overwrites the first.
- Assessments submitted from the mobile app don’t appear here yet. That queue is still to be built.
- Only four evidence files exist in the whole system. Moderators reading your photos and video is a capability, not yet a habit — worth attaching them.
The question for tonight isn’t whether the tool exists. It’s who should be moderating, how often, and what happens when something is flagged. That’s a decision for the assessors in the room, not a feature request.