ENTRANCE TO THE UNIVERSITY

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26201, 26 August 1950, Page 3

ENTRANCE TO THE UNIVERSITY

ACCREDITING SYSTEM EXAMINED

COMMITTEE REPORTS TO SENATE

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 24.

Far from increasing enrolments, the introduction of accrediting had been accompanied by a decrease in the annual total of candidates eligible to enter >n university education. This was reported to the Senate of the University of New Zealand to-day by the Vice-Chancellor (Professor I. A. Gordon) in presenting the report of a special committee on accrediting. The committee made the following recommendations: (1) That accrediting be continued and that a further review of its operation be undertaken in five years. (2) That all candidates for the University Entrance examination should enter in four subjects, and that the

entry form be amended so that only the subjects of that examination might be offered. (3) That successful candidates, whether by accrediting or by examinatioh, be given the same form of certificate. (4) That the standard of pass of University Entrance should be raised.

(5) That the standard of papers set for the University Entrance examination should remain as at present, but that, to ensure more conformity in the interpretation of prescriptions, there should be continuity in the appointment of 1 moderators for papers and the university should abandon its present method of a four-college rotation in the setting of entrance papers, and endeavour to appoint the same examiners for entrance papers for a period of. say, three years. (6) That candidates be given either a certificate of fitness to enter on university studies or advice of failure. (7) That the university should obtain the advice of its liaison officers on the inclusion of further schools and, in particular, the technical colleges, on the accrediting list, the main criteria to be used being (a) the university success of the school’s candidates in recent years, and (b) the success of the school’s in the University Entrance examination. The report was referred to the academic and entrance boards, whose comments will be considered by the Senate next year.