Entrance exam to be changed

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32873, 23 March 1972, Page 3

Entrance exam to be changed

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, March 22. The university entrance examination system may be used in its present form for the last time this year.

A committee of the Education Department and the University Grants Committee has recommended that the present pass-fail system be replaced by one requiring candidates to gain an average

of four “C” passes on a scale graded from “A” to “E”.

The committee felt that some measure of achievement would be much more worth while to employers of the 40 to 50 per cent of sixth-form leavers not wanting to go to university than was the present system, in which studjents either passed or failed I the examination.

There was a small but I growing group of sixth formers who were not university oriented, the secretary of the University Entrance Board (Mr J. R. Caldwell) said today. The recommendations are included in a questionnaire sent to schools, universities and local Education Department offices.

The proposals also call for a new sixth-form certificate to replace both the present sixth-form certificate and the present university entrance examination.

Accrediting would continue, but on a subject-by-subject basis. If only two of a student’s four subjects were accredited and he wanted to enter university, he would have to sit only the remaining two, the following year if he wished. Students would be able to ■ take either University Entrance Board subjects in which four passes would aljlow entrance to a university, or Education Department subjects, which would go on a student’s certificate but would not allow entrance to a university.