Prognostic value of university entrance examinations in Scotland.

Date:
1934
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Prognostic value of university entrance examinations in Scotland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    125/140 (page 117)
    PART III GENERAL SUMMARY Tue object of this inquiry was to investigate the prognostic or predictive value of the qualifications on the strength of which a student enters the University, z.e. the extent to which success in an entrance examination is an augury of success in University studies. At the secondary school-leaving age (16-184) two measures were available: (A) teachers’ estimates in individual subjects based on the pupils’ class work together with the general estimate of the Head Teacher, and (B) the marks based on the Leaving Certificate examination conducted by external examiners under the supervision of the Scottish Education Department. There are also two sets of data from which it is possible to estimate University success: (C) the students’ marks in the class examina- tions set throughout the session by the professors themselves, and (D) the marks in the degree examinations set conjointly by the professors and external examiners in the various subjects at the end of each session for the ordinary degree, or at the end of the four or five years’ course for the Honours degree. These marks were collected and statistically analysed for a group of students who had entered on degree courses in Arts or Pure Science at one of the Scottish Universities in the autumn of 1928. This group contained 231 men and 241 women, a total of 472. In this group 266 were admitted solely on the results of the Leaving Certificate Examination and 84 others on a combination of this examination with another. The con- clusions reached in this Report are based on these data. (See pp. 15-16.) On the one hand, there are the Head Teacher’s general estimate, the teachers’ estimates in special subjects, the collective value of the Leaving Certificate, the number and grades of passes it contains, and the marks of the Department’s revisers in special