A blurred signal? The usefulness of National Senior Certificate (NSC) Mathematics marks as predictors of academic performance at university level
A blurred signal? The usefulness of National Senior Certificate (NSC) Mathematics marks as predictors of academic performance at university level
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信号模糊？
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发表时间：
2010
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通讯作者：
Karen Hunt
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作者：
Volker Schöer;Miracle Ntuli;Neil A. Rankin;C. Sebastiao;Karen Hunt
在国际上，学校数学成绩被认为是大学商业课程成绩的可靠预测因素。根据离校成绩的预测能力，大学利用离校数学考试的结果，根据学生的预测能力对申请者进行排名。然而，2008年，南非的毕业考试的结构和范围从以前的高级证书考试改为新的国家高级证书考试。这种结构性的断裂似乎造成了离校成绩的信号能力的波动。南非大学不确定目前的NSC数学成绩是否反映了学生的基本数学能力，因为2009年入学的学生中有很大一部分没有通过第一年的核心课程。本文通过比较2008年和2009年一年级学生在两门商业科目（经济学1和计算数学）的类似首次考试中的表现，估计了新的NSC数学分数相对于以前的高等数学分数的平减指数。结果表明，NSC数学分数的信号能力显着降低。新的NSC数学分数不是根据学生的能力来区分学生，而是将具有各种能力和残疾的学生压缩到一个非常狭窄的百分比分数范围内。
Internationally, performance in school Mathematics has been found to be a reliable predictor of performance in commerce courses at university level. Based on the predictive power of school-leaving marks, universities use results from school-leaving Mathematics examinations to rank student applicants according to their predicted abilities. However, in 2008 the structure and scope of school-leaving examinations changed in South Africa from the former Senior Certificate (SC) to the new National Senior Certificate (NSC). This structural break seems to create fluctuations in the signalling ability of the school-leaving marks. South African universities are unsure about how well the current NSC Mathematics marks reflect the underlying numerical competence of students, given that a high number of the 2009 student intake failed their first-year core courses across faculties. This paper estimates a deflator for the new NSC Mathematics marks relative to the former Higher Grade (HG) Mathematics marks, by comparing performance in similar first tests of two commerce subjects, Economics 1 and Computational Mathematics, between the 2008 and 2009 first-year cohorts. The results indicate that the signalling ability of the NSC Mathematics marks is reduced significantly. Instead of differentiating students according to their abilities, the new NSC Mathematics marks compress students with a wide range of abilities and disabilities into a very narrow range of percentage marks.