Educationist Discusses University Failures

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29903, 17 August 1962, Page 13

Educationist Discusses University Failures

If the high failure rate among university students at stage one could be attributed to faulty preparation at secondary school, it might be pertinent to ask whether the high failure rate at stage two was attributed to faulty preparation by the university in the student’s first year, said Professor F. Mitchell, professor of education at Otago University at the Science Congress yesterday. Professor Mitchell suggested that the pass-failure criterion had been accepted as a dictum that was not open to question. However, if failure rates showed variations Iron) year to year and between subjects, and at different levels of the same subjects, it was reasonable to ask whether it was possible to discern any pattern or factors within these variations

Professor Mitchell, together with Dr. J. J. Small, lecturer in education at Canterbury University, and Dr. W. G. Parkyn, director of the Council for Educational Research, took part in a symposium on success and failure at the university.

Professor Mitchell said that he had taken a survey of eight subjects at stage one and two level over seven years to see whether there was a variation in the pattern of failures. The small difference between the average mean failure at stage one (27.3) and stage two (21.7) suggested that more attention should be paid to examination failures ”t advanced levels, he said. There was a greater variability in some subjects than others, and stage two failures varied more than stage one. A high failure rate in stage one was not followed by stage two results to be expected from the sifting. This was an interesting feature because it bad been

popularly supposed that, where culling was done at the stage one level, the failure rate at higher stages would be lower.

It was commonly claimed by university lecturers that there were good and. bad academic years at the university, said Professor Mitchell, but that was disproved when it was seen that a good pass rate in one year was not necessarily followed by a similar occurrence at the stage two level.

This variation in failure rates in subjects from year to year was cause for concern, he said.

Where a department found that its pattern of failures showed a marked aberration the result should be looked into by the department, he said. Asked whether the variation in failure rates could be associated with changes in lecturing staff, Professor Mitchell said that that did not appear to have any effect. Nor did he have any reason to doubt the reliability of the examinations.