A recent study at the University of New South Wales Canberra (UNSW Canberra) concluded that one state's performance is "well below that of the others".
UNSW Canberra conducted the recent study to find if student performance in 1st year engineers subjects Engineering Mathematics and Engineering Physics.
Allowances were made for variables such as population distribution, commencement semester and nil previous tertiary study. UNSW Canberra's student intake is roughly proportional to the distribution of the national population. NT and SA were combined for the purposes of size and considering their school Certificate studies are aligned.
In Engineering Physics, Tasmania scored the highest, followed closely by Victoria and Western Australia. ACT came second last only to Queensland. In Engineering Mathematics, the combined group of South Australia and Northern Territory had the highest score, with Tasmania and Victoria again in the top three. ACT came second last by a short margin and once again, Queensland brought up the rear.
Why is there a significant difference regarding Queensland as the state of Year 12 study?
It is proposed that possible explanations might be:
UNSW Canberra is attracting students of lower ability from Queensland compared to other areas of Australia. However, we have considered the mean ATAR scores from each jurisdiction. Results indicate that while the mean ATAR scores across the states and territories are significantly different, the differences between the mean ATAR scores of Queensland students joining UNSW Canberra are either not statistically significant or significantly higher than students from these other jurisdictions.
Queensland students being younger than many of their counterparts. However, Queensland students at UNSW Canberra have not always performed poorly in Mathematics relative to their colleagues. An analysis of results for students studying first year Mathematics at UNSW Canberra from 1986 to 1996 showed that, although there was a statistically significant difference between the mean results across the states and territories (p<1 × 10-3), Queensland students did not perform significantly worse than students from most other states and territories.
A significant difference between the education system in Queensland and the education systems in other states and territories. We are not qualified to answer this question but would be keen to collaborate with other experts to better understand this issue. We acknowledge that Queensland students may be learning important skills that are not being assessed in Engineering Mathematics 1A and Engineering Physics 1A. However, the content covered and the assessment methods in our courses are similar to those of many other Go8 universities and our Engineering degree program has been accredited by Engineers Australia.
To contact the authors, visit the UNSW Canberra website.
Read the original paper here:Arnold, J.F., and Sidhu, L.,A., 2015, "A Statistical Analysis of the Performance of First Year Engineering Students at UNSW Canberra and the Impact of the State where They Undertook Year 12 Study", Submitted 2 June 2015, Accessed on 7 October 2015 http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1506/1506.07400.pdf