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Assessment Forum

For some time now debate hat run hot over the witholding of course passrates. Officially Prof. Board policy is to release the number of passes, failures, and related statistics at the first possible opportunity, but due to bureaucratic holdups somewhere in the registry, neither staff nor students have access to this information when they most need it, and that is before the enrolment each year.

At a recently held Varsity wide student/staff meeting a senior staff member stated that the figures for last year were only just released a few weeks ago. "And yet", he continued, "they were ready for distribution five Months ago".

Without such a comparative set of statistics, combined with a detailed analysis of the numbers and reasons of people who drop or change subjects, no one can claim to give authoritive advice or information to any student at enrolment or any other time. And yet course enrolers and advisors are expected to do so (by '72'73 prof. board policy).

The set of circumstances arising from play in the releasing of the figures have been described by yet another well placed staff member as being,' gross proffessional negliance".

The sorts of things that arise from this restriction lead to a high level of disillusionment with the University in general. For example a University department last year gave not a single "A" pass to any of its students enrolled in it's first year courses.

According to Robert Moore Jones, VUWSA Education Officer, "every student has a right to know these facts and be made aware of them before enrolment can take place".

Many sceptics ask whether this information could be of any real assistance to students taking subjects with specific courses in mind. With the ever increasing (voluntary) relaxing of prerequisites by departments, students do have a greater choice of subjects and courses — and therefore a greater number of decisions to make. Further, up to May this year, in excess of 2,000 individual course changes have been made The number of people changing courses and particularity 'dropping' them, has increased with an almost experiential growth rate in the last twenty years.

It has been argued in the past that many people drop subjects finding the workload or subject beyond their endurance.

It seems that there are three options open to a student experiencing either social or Varsity related problems.

1.	Leave Varsity completely.
2.	Reduce the workload.
3.	Do nothing.

Options one and two appear to be the more likely, and, in fact, are the increasingly popular solutions.

A person leaving Varsity in-term tends to do so (assuming without a degree or other Qualification), for either personal or financial reasons. With the present Government Policies, econimic reasons are at the fore. However an individual changing course options or dropping only one or two subjects seems inclined to do so not for the socio-monetary reason, but more due to the nature of the course.

The first condition is not enhanced by the fact that students like to, can, and do find out what the course is about and how the subject is handled through the numerous texts and resource guides freely available to them from secondary school onwards. Not to mention the numerous interviews held by departmental official officials with prospective students.

Thus course work assessment is the nature of the problem, and this is the one detail of a course that is kept hidden the longest. Varsity students work very hard to get to and stay at university so it is naive to suggest that they 'pike out' for this reason.

But the problem immediately arises in the way people are examined, or otherwise inspected, with the aim of deciding whether or not they are fit for society; and whether they do, indeed succeed.

So it is seen by many students that the problem to grapple with and solve is "Assessment".

As a recently elected student rep said, the need is obvious for there are disgusting things happening that must be stopped and improved upon.

And there is a demand which 2000 people (so far) have silently demonstrated through their frustration. How much more of this sort of thing will students and staff tolerate.

— Paul Norman