School-leaving Examinations, Selection and Equity in Higher Education in South Africa

Herman, Harold

doi:10.1080/03050069529146

Cited by 26 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Baine & Mwamwenda, 1994;Hartshorne, 1992) that the secondary school curriculum remains dominated by factual, contentoriented requirements, with examinations testing mastery of facts from the syllabus rather than application of skills and learning. Third, school-leaving examinations are proving of little validity in predicting African students' performance at university level, at which point the application of knowledge is thought to become more critical for success (Herman, 1995).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting through Grade 2: Predicting Children’s Early School Achievement in Rural South African Schools

Liddell¹,

Lycett

Rae³

1997

International Journal of Behavioral Development

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Children in the second-grade classrooms of three rural schools (n 5 150) completed a variety of psychometric and curriculum-based tests, and were rated by their teachers and parents on dimensions of their everyday behaviour; demographic data (e.g. socioeconomic status, presence of mother in the home) and biographical information (e.g. gender, age, birth order) were also collected for each child. Some of these data (e.g. child's age and gender) were more cost-ef cient to collect than others (e.g. parent ratings). Measures were evaluated in terms of their salience for constructing a multivariate model that would predict subsequent grade 2 outcome, with the most cost-effectiv e variables being inserted rst. In this way, both the cost-ef ciency and predictive power of independent variables (IVs) were taken into consideration when attempting to build a predictive model. A model containing three IVs (scores on curriculum-based tests, teacher ratings of children's attention span, and teacher ratings of helpfulness) ultimately predicted 51% of the variance in grade 2 outcome. These results demonstrate, rst, that it is possible to build a relatively strong predictive model of grade 2 outcome, although not based on variables that are cheap and quick to measure. Second, that doing well in grade 2 is not so much a matter of having well-develop ed, broad-ranging psychometric abilities, but more a matter of mastering elements of the at OhioLink

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting through Grade 2: Predicting Children’s Early School Achievement in Rural South African Schools

Liddell¹,

Lycett

Rae³

1997

International Journal of Behavioral Development

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“…Taking the latter into account, this study has shown no statistical relationship between high school academic performance and suc cess of black students in physiotherapy. Uncertainty about the validity of the matriculation mark as a predictor of further performance has long existed for lowscoring, disadvantaged students from the previous DET (Department of Education and Training) blackonly educational systems (Herman, 1995;Yeld and Haeck, 1997). Herman (1995) questioned whether the matriculation examination is primarily a prognostic test to predict future academic success or whether it is an assessment of a standard of general education.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Uncertainty about the validity of the matriculation mark as a predictor of further performance has long existed for lowscoring, disadvantaged students from the previous DET (Department of Education and Training) blackonly educational systems (Herman, 1995;Yeld and Haeck, 1997). Herman (1995) questioned whether the matriculation examination is primarily a prognostic test to predict future academic success or whether it is an assessment of a standard of general education. Almost certainly, the latter is significant, but as shown in this study, candidates with poor edu cational background are capable of success and the challenge is to identify and nurture the relevant factors and/ or attributes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predictors of success for african black physiotherapy students in South Africa

Mbambo-Kekana

Rothberg

Bruce

et al. 2011

South African Journal of Physiotherapy

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“…It is often pointed out that satisfying the requirements of fairness and effectiveness in an efficient and acceptable way is difficult (Drenth, Van der Flier and Omari 1983;Altink and Thijs 1984;Herman 1995). This is especially true in a society where past injustices have left members of certain population groups more disadvantaged than others.…”

Section: Fair Effective and Efficient Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Zaaiman¹,

Flier

Thijs

2000

Higher Education

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The selection of students is a critical issue currently facing South African higher education institutions. The identification and selection of disadvantaged students with the potential to succeed in mathematics-and science-based study is a particularly pressing problem. The new South African higher education law requires that selection is done in a fair and transparent manner. Selection has to be followed by adequate support for selected students to succeed in their study programmes. Issues of access are closely coupled to issues of retention and success. The research results discussed in this paper illustrate how these issues can be successfully addressed and how selection fairness and effectiveness may be optimised under the constraints of selection efficiency. An optimal solution can be found by developing test specifications and selection cutoff values based on the teaching programme for which the selection is done. The resulting close fit between selection testing and teaching after selection leads to a reasonable expectation of success for selected students in the study programme. Under such conditions, selection can be seen as a contract to teach at the student's level.

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School-leaving Examinations, Selection and Equity in Higher Education in South Africa

Cited by 26 publications

References 3 publications

Getting through Grade 2: Predicting Children’s Early School Achievement in Rural South African Schools

Getting through Grade 2: Predicting Children’s Early School Achievement in Rural South African Schools

Predictors of success for african black physiotherapy students in South Africa

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