National News Story, www.stuff.co.nz, by Amanda Warren
University students who struggle to write adequate essays are causing concern among Lincoln University academics.
Despite this, the university council yesterday backed a New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) report proposing no changes be made to university entrance standards.
Concerns have been raised in the past about the reading and writing skills of first-year university students.
NZQA has reviewed university entrance standards under the new NCEA assessment system but proposed no substantive changes.
However, Warwick Scott, the academic staff representative on the Lincoln University council, said lecturers remained concerned about the writing skills of first-year students.
"There is a concern how little first-year students are writing in their exams. They only write half or three-quarters of a page in 40 minutes," Scott said.
"Students now are certainly not writing as much as they were five years ago."
Scott said he would like to know whether teachers thought NCEA standards were preparing students for university.
"Are they (students) learning to tick boxes instead of writing down their thoughts?"
Lincoln University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Roger Field, said the introduction of NCEA included new literacy requirements for secondary students moving on to university.
While he believed the requirements could be broader, he said the addition was good for universities.
In a report to the council, assistant vice-chancellor (academic) Sheelagh Matear said a university working group had been established to review the impacts of the NCEA on university entrants.
A comparison of end-of-semester exam results in 2004 and 2005 found the later, NCEA-educated students performed at least as well as the earlier contingent.
"The working groups considered that it was too early to consider changes to the entrance standard, based on only one experience of NCEA entrants," the report said.
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