UNIVERSITY ENTRANCE

Evening Star, Issue 21013, 29 January 1932, Page 6

UNIVERSITY ENTRANCE

RESULTS NOT EXAMINERS' AWARDS NEW “SCALING" METHOD CHALLENGED [Special to the ‘ Star.’] AUCKLAND, January 28. Professor \V. Anderson, Auckland University, . writes to the ‘ Star ’: “ With reference to the entrance and entrance scholarship examination results now being announced by the University of New Zealand, it ought to be generally known that these results do not, as hitherto, embody the verdict of the University teachers who have been appointed as examiners.’ On this occasion recourse has been had to a system of a ‘ scaling ’ of the marks awarded by the examiners, a system which has long been urged upon the Un!**rsity in the name of pedagogical 1 science,’ by Professor Shelley, of Canterbury College, agitated for outside by a small, but vociferous, group of secondary teachers, and finally adopted by the Senate last year. The consequence is that, in all, probability, the order of merit in the scholarship examination this year is entirely different from what it would have been if, as on previous occasions, direct effect had been given to the marking of the examiners themselves. ■ “ Without going into details of the system now adopted, one may say that it reduces the part played by the examiner to the mere arranging of candidates in a certain order. The final alllotment of marks in each subject is the work of the office staff, whose business it is to see that the run of marks in any one subject is the same as that in any other. The University authorities of to-day are too prone to forget that their examinations are a contract with the pubic. It is the reputation of the examiners as atuhonties on their subjects which constitutes the basis of the standing which these examinations possess in the eyes of the public. Is the University keeping faith with the public in substituting for the standard which the public understands, and in which it has confidence, a secret process administered by individuals without personal knowledge of the subjects of examination, and based on a highly questionable series of assumptions'? ”

So far as the general reader can make out, the new _ system, means this! The examiner in English may fix a higher maximum of marks and the examiner in Latin may adopt a lower scale, and the object is to harmonise those findings to some extent, lowering the one and increasing the other. a