Equal Achievement Rates

‘International and Domestic Students show Equal Achievement Rates ’

02/12/04

‘The two key findings from a just completed study of international vs domestic student achievement in New Zealand secondary and tertiary institutions are that International students in New Zealand schools are achieving at a similar rate to domestic students, and the presence of international students in an institution does not adversely affect domestic students’ said Stuart Boag, Communications Director for Education New Zealand. He was commenting on just completed student research initiated and funded via the Education Export Levy and undertaken by a Massey University led team working to a brief drawn up the International Education Research Levy Reference Group (LRG).

‘This is a positive result for international education’ said Dave Guerin, Chair of the Research LRG. ‘The researchers noted that available data sources were in an early stage of development, especially at a tertiary level. However, the overall findings supported the view that the presence of international students in New Zealand institutions is not detrimental to the achievement levels of either domestic or international students, at least not in those institutions that were surveyed.’

‘At the NCEA level 2 stage, international students slightly outperformed Kiwi students in the Merit and Excellence grades, whilst at Bursary level (the study was undertaken using data that predates NCEA Level 3) the Kiwi students had a slight edge at the B and A levels’ said Stuart Boag. ‘In classes where international students made up more than 12.5% of the total class, the achievement rate of international students was significantly higher than in classes where they were a small minority. However, Kiwi students were not disadvantaged in this situation, and achieved at a similar rate no matter how many international students were in the class’.

‘Looking at those international students that took English at NCEA level 2, the achievement rate was comparable to domestic students’ said Stuart Boag. ‘However, international students were far more likely to take maths and science subjects than social and arts subjects. Mathematics was the discipline that showed the strongest achievement rates for international students.’

ENDS

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