The Education Act of 1989 brought into existence the New Zealand National Qualifications Authority (NZQA), of which the first major task was to develop a national qualifications framework (NQF; New Zealand Government, 1989). The NQF was initially envisaged as a unified framework into which all secondary, vocational, and tertiary qualifications would be accommodated. The national certificates of educational achievement (NCEA) are the NQF awards that, since 2001, have been phasing out the school certificate, sixth-form certificate, and university bursaries secondary school qualifications. With the NCEA regime having completely phased out the "old" upper-secondary examination structures by the end of 2003, the overarching objective of this study was to begin to monitor the impact of the reform on a major school subject area: science. This broad objective entailed an analysis of the ways in which school science departments were structuring their programs with regard to course variety and standards compilation. Of particular note was the emergence of nonconventional science courses and post-Year 11 general science courses and the role of unit standards in all programs. A second objective of the study was to gauge the opinions of school science department heads concerning topical assessment-related issues. The NQF/NCEA reform remains in a state of flux, and the views of senior teachers represent professional opinion of the level of influence that brought about the devising of achievement standards. The broad issues canvassed were the comparability of unit standards and achievement standards in terms of academic status and the credibility of awards, as well as the variety of standards and course permutations available for school science programs. (Contains 8 tables.)