The report looked at first-year bachelors-degree students at universities, who had all achieved the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 3 and attained the University Entrance standard.

While academic achievement at school was the strongest predictor of first-year university success for these students, not all higher-achieving school students performed equally well at university, and some who had lower school achievement out-performed students with higher school achievement. The report looks at the factors that might explain these differences.

The study considered a population of first-year bachelors-degree students at university, who had all achieved the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 3 and attained the University Entrance standard.

While academic achievement at school was the strongest predictor of first-year university performance for these students, not all higher-achieving school students performed equally well at university, and some who had lower school achievement out-performed students with higher school achievement.

Among higher-achieving school students, those who:

• studied part-time or for only part of the year, or
• were from the sole-Pasifika¹ ethnic group, or
• were low-decile school students from ethnic groups other than sole-European

showed lower levels of university performance than other higher-achieving school students.

Among those with lower school achievement, students who took a year off before starting their tertiary studies—particularly students from low-decile schools—showed higher levels of performance at university than those who progressed directly to tertiary study after leaving school.

But this better performance among those who took a gap year was not seen in European, or sole-Pasifika students.

Lower-achieving students from low-decile schools performed better in their first-year of tertiary studies than similar students from high-decile schools. This suggests that among lower achieving students, NCEA underestimates the ability of those from lower decile schools. And conversely, NCEA overestimates the ability of those from higher decile schools.

View the full report: http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/tertiary_education/76374

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