Performance Measure emphasis on achievement

29 October 2004

Performance Measure emphasis on student achievement

Today Associate Minister of Education Steve Maharey announced the introduction of the new Performance Measure for funding tertiary providers. The Performance Measure completes the programme of incremental changes that have redesigned the way providers are funded.

The new mechanism to gauge performance of universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, wananga and private providers includes a sector wide survey of students at qualification level to reflect the views of those learners. In addition, the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) will analyse the course retention rates and successful course completion rates of each tertiary provider. Together the measurements will be used as an indicator of how successful tertiary providers are at facilitating successful outcomes for their students.

Each year a portion of the weakest performing public and private institutions will be required to develop remedial action plans to lift their performance. Failure to do so will result in the removal of 3% of tuition funding for the following year and 5% if failure continues for the second year.

"We welcome the introduction of the Performance Measure" says the Aotearoa Tertiary Student Association (ATSA) president Julie Pettett. "ATSA are constantly advocating for the increased retention of tertiary students and this mechanism will place grater emphasis on the learning results of tertiary institutions as opposed the previous emphasis which has been on enrollments. However, TEC will need to closely monitor the measurements of at risk learners to ensure that they are continuing to enroll at institutions. We will watch with interest to see what work will be done to devise remedial action plans where institutions are failing to meet the performance threshold."

ENDS

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