Students fail the basics

A new requirement for secondary school students to pass in basic literacy and numeracy has been blamed for a drop in numbers getting University Entrance last year.

Just 47.2 per cent of Year 13 students got University Entrance in 2004, down from 51.9 per cent in 2003.

NZQA spokesman Paul Jackman attributed the drop to new UE literacy and numeracy requirements introduced in 2004 after a university complained about the basic literacy skills of some first-year students.

"For some time the universities have been expressing concern that some students have been attending university who shouldn't be there because of their literacy and numeracy limitations."

Colin Prentice, the director of Auckland University's schools partnership office, said many of the students who did not get UE were migrants who had come to New Zealand after Year 11.