The predictability of enrolment and first‐year university results from secondary school performance: the New Zealand National Certificate of Educational Achievement

Abstract

This study investigates the predictive correlations between results from the New Zealand National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), a standards‐based qualification, and university grade point averages achieved by first‐year students in one large New Zealand University (and, for comparison purposes, also presents correlations from the Cambridge International Examinations [CIE], an international norm‐referenced system delivered in New Zealand, and university grade point averages achieved by first‐year students who entered with that qualification). The study then evaluates alternative models for university entrance, using different attributes of the qualifications for possible entry criteria, and ascertains the implications of the best of these models for different groups of students. The best alternative model gives greater weight to excellence and merit in NCEA results, and less weight to credit accumulation at minimum pass rates. A combination of this alternative model and the current model provides a merit‐based admissions system which would potentially increase the number of students from groups under‐represented in university education in New Zealand (students from Maori and Pacific ethnicities and from schools in lower socio‐economic communities), who are admitted with no necessary decline in the success rate during first‐year university study.