Scathing report attacks standards at foreign student school

An Auckland school for overseas students has received a damning report from the Qualifications Authority, which accuses it of having low educational standards.

The school, Regent International Education Group, has disputed the findings and says its performance is better than many similar institutions in the inner city.

The authority says it does not yet have confidence in the Queen St school's educational performance or in its ability to monitor its own progress.

In a review completed in May, it says the school's marking of Diploma of Business qualifications was inconsistent with external checks.

Some business tutors had also expressed concern that students were being placed on the course when their English was too poor for them to pass.

Reviewers found the school's management was preoccupied with the threat of agents poaching their students by promising lower fees at rival schools.

The school needed to compare its performance with competitors, but struggled to do so because it was reluctant to share information for commercial reasons.

The report said English language teaching resources were "just adequate".

Tutors said they got little feedback about their work and were unsure who their programme leader was.

Regent's new principal, Greg Holmes, said the school was not in the shocking state that the report made out.

"We acknowledge that we can do a hell of a lot better across everything, but we're not as bad as that report indicates, particularly in comparison with some of our colleagues up and down Queen St."

He agreed with the report's criticism that a school teaching English should not have basic syntax and grammar errors on its website.

But Mr Holmes, who worked for the Qualifications Authority until last year and joined Regent a month after the reviewers' visit, said the marking criticism was unfair, as many other schools teaching the Diploma of Business also failed to make the grade.

He said Regent was one of the first Queen St schools to receive a visit from authority reviewers under a new, more rigorous inspection system which began last year.

He believed it had been treated more harshly than other private schools for overseas students.

The school's roll had dropped from 300 to 260 because of the bad publicity.

Regent disputed the report's accuracy on some points, particularly its claim that the school did not keep track of former students.

He said most of the students who started business diplomas with poor English had come from other courses, which created a problem.

"I have difficulty declining a student enrolment if they have already achieved half of their [diploma] at other institutions."

The school had since decided to have an entry test, rather than relying on a student's achievement record.

POPULAR COURSE GETS THE ALL CLEAR
A popular business qualification which featured in two scams in the past year has been cleared of any wider fraud problems.

The Qualifications Authority checked the teaching of the New Zealand Diploma of Business after the New Zealand Academy of Studies was caught selling one for $12,000 and an investigation revealed the API Institute of Education was awarding pass marks to failing students.

Deputy chief executive (quality assurance) Tim Fowler said a review of 23 institutions found no further evidence of fraud.

However, all except two needed to improve their procedures and five required follow-up visits.

The main issues were entry requirements and acceptance of cross-credits, which could allow inadequately prepared students on to the course.

Asked if many international students were enrolled despite very poor English, Mr Fowler said the fact those students passed indicated they understood the work. But a former NZQA official, Greg Holmes, who runs the Regent International Education Group school in Queen St, said there were widespread problems with the popular course.

Random sampling showed that less than half the work submitted was marked fairly and consistently.