Benno Benno Mwitumba Ulingeta Obadia Mbamba Predictive Ability of Advanced Certificate of Secondary Education Results to First Year University Undergraduate Studies: The Case Study of Bachelor of Science with Education, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Benno Benno Mwitumba Ulingeta Obadia Mbamba

What is quality? A high standard or level. Degree of excellence. Distinguishing feature. Faculty, skill, accomplishment. Satisfaction of a customer’s needs or requirements. Quality is “totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs”. ORSEA Conference 2014

Introduction Most of developed countries invested a lot in education Same approaches have been adopted in the URT through different programs such as Primary Education Development Program, Secondary Education Development Program. There are 4,102 secondary schools 300 more than the previous year and 4 times as many as in 2000 ORSEA Conference 2014

Introduction However, in year 2008 form two examination pass rates dropped to 72% for boys and 65% for girls The number of pupils taking the examination rose from 280,000 in 2007 to 415,000 in 2008, but only around the same number of pupils passed in both years ORSEA Conference 2014

Introduction This draws some areas of interests to learn more on what should be done in order to improve the education system of Tanzania. Admission and the graduates draw large area of interests to answer questions: What should be done to improve the admission criteria during the selection processes? Are these criteria good predictors of first year university performances? ORSEA Conference 2014

Statement of the Research Problem UDSM has been admitting the best students and, therefore, expected them to have better performance during all years of studies A number of students admitted at the UDSM do either, abscond studies or obtain poor results such as supplementary, carry over and some discontinued completely from studies Need to analyze whether these criteria are good predictor of undergraduate performance of first academic years ORSEA Conference 2014

Main Objective The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the predictive ability of secondary schools performance to first year undergraduate performance ORSEA Conference 2014

Significance of the Study Model of evaluation of performance in Universities will probably need be revised following the results of analysis of this study as to whether undergraduate grade points average (GPA) should be revalued or not? ORSEA Conference 2014

Literature Review Theoretical Framework – Prediction and expectancy theories were used in this study Empirical framework: based on several studies done in Tanzania and in the world ORSEA Conference 2014

Hypothesis The performance level from form six results (ACSEE) significantly affects the first year undergraduate results at the University level. ORSEA Conference 2014

Methodology Positivist, used secondary data first year undergraduate studies (dependent variable) advanced level certificates (independent Variable) Other variables were also captured – sex, subject combinations, academic year at the University Used three cohorts of 2011, 2012 and 2013 used regression analysis – observing all assumptions of regressions ORSEA Conference 2014

Results – Sample characteristics ORSEA Conference 2014

Results of Regression Analysis 11% predictive ability Model is significant Both constants and F6 results are significant ORSEA Conference 2014

Other Analysis Same results were obtained when analysis done based on Sex Subject combinations Year studied ORSEA Conference 2014

Conclusions and Recommendations Sufficient to conclude that Form Six results points have moderate contribution towards our prediction model Policy makers and other stakeholders need to review the admission criteria to incorporate other criteria ORSEA Conference 2014

Study Limitations Prediction of admission criteria focused only on quantitative analysis ignoring the qualitative characteristics during analysis. Only first year grades points were quantified focusing university undergraduate performance while there might be several contributing factors towards the performance of University Students Used one university and one degree ORSEA Conference 2014

Thanks! ORSEA Conference 2014