The Leaving Certificate and First Year University Performance

1. INTRODUCTION The manner in which students are admitted for third level education and in particular the points system have become matters of increasing public controversy in recent years. While the subject is understandably emotive, a sad feature of many of the arguments presented to date has been the very limited factual support. Our purpose in this paper is threefold: firstly to introduce some research which has and is being carried out at University College Cork on the effectiveness of performance in the Leaving Certificate examination and in such alternatives as scholastic aptitude and personality tests, as measures of subsequent university performance; secondly, to suggest some statistical methodology for the analysis of data in this area; and thirdly to offer some personal comments on aspects of the overall problem in an effort to establish a fair and hopefully constructive viewpoint and to redress some misconceptions. Our measure of university performance in this paper is the result of the First University Examination which is held in the summer following entry. Although performances in subsequent years and in degree examinations are also of interest and are under analysis it is obvious that the First Year Examination is of particular significance. A student who passes this examination has certainly been fully accepted by the university in accordance with its own criteria for assessment and any subsequent failure to graduate is indicative of faults in this assessment rather than any pre-university assessments. The restriction to first year has also the important advantage of allowing the analysis of very recent university and school examinations to be presented. Such analyses cannot, of course, provide definitive answers to many important questions concerning entry to third level, as many of these are essentially political in character. Statistical investigations can hopefully inform such political decisions and may encourage the various groups concerned to construct and agree on systems which are as just, reasonable and effective as can be, for selecting students for education and education for students. 2. SOME RELATED WORK 2.1 The literature on the predictive value of school leaving, scholastic aptitude and related tests for subsequent university performance is immense. Virtually all of this work has been undertaken outside Ireland and the only detailed research published in the Irish context has been Nevin (1974). Our review of such work will be confined to what we consider most relevant and useful in the Irish context. It is hoped …