EER KEQs: How UPCs’ partnerships respond to KEQ #2

Demonstrating how our learner outcomes meet the needs of industry and stakeholders, and our students

In this this post, we’ll look at how the programmes we teach at Unitec, and the skills our students graduate with, meet the needs of industry and the communities we serve. We use data (refer below), to show how we are meeting these needs and take a look at a case study, Unitec Pathways College’s work with secondary schools, to demonstrate how we are doing this.

KEQ 2: What is the value of the outcomes for key stakeholders, including students?

We use data and documents from these sources to respond to this KEQ:

• Graduate Survey 2020
• Industry Engagement Framework 2020
• Industry Engagement Report 2019 – School of Environmental and Animal Sciences
• Alumni Survey 2018
• Graduate Destination Report 2019 – BCONS
• Student Net Promoter Score Semester 1 2020
• Unitec Research Strategy 2015-2020
• Research Annual Report 2019

Case study: Unitec Pathways College

The number of 15-19 year-olds (school leavers) transitioning from secondary school into tertiary study at Unitec has grown greatly in the last few years, with over 1,000 EFTS enrolling in 2019. This is largely due to significant effort put into improving secondary-tertiary partnerships and the establishment of the Unitec Pathways College (UPC) in 2016.

Our UPC team develops courses in partnership with 22 secondary schools and kura (39 in 2021) to bridge the gap to tertiary study, and provide learning pathways that lead to improved employment outcomes for learners and their families/whānau. While at school, students can now select Unitec study as part of their subject selection, and gain NCEA-aligned unit/achievement standards in areas such as carpentry, automotive, creative and design, health and computer science.

In 2019, 64.4% of UPC students completed all their unit/achievement standards, making this form of study a critical ‘hook’ to keeping young people engaged in school and into further study, with the support of their whānau. Targeted, learner-centred pastoral care from the highly enthusiastic and dedicated UPC team is a critical part of its success.

Some of the indicators of success for UPC and its learners are:

• Between 26-35% of NCEA Level 3 students have progressed into Unitec annually for tertiary study post engagement with UPC programmes since 2017
• Over 75% of NCEA Level 2 students who have studied in a UPC course have then returned to their respective secondary school or kura for Year 13 – meaning that they are retained in study
• 15-20% of NCEA Level 2 students that studied in a UPC programme, have returned to Unitec for an NCEA Level 3 programme
• Many UPC students return to school to complete Year 13 and then return to Unitec again after completing secondary school study

Through UPC, Unitec has seen a resurgence of valued relationships with Kura Kaupapa Māori and Rumaki Reo providers, from which many young rangatahi now transition to Unitec. In 2020, 38% of UPC students are Pacific and 26% are Māori.

During COVID-19, UPC has been showcased by the Ministry of Education’s Trades Academy as an example of a best practice response. Te Rina Leonard, Deputy Chief Executive, Learning Delivery, Huarahi Trade Academy provided this feedback:

“We appreciate the way that you have quickly enabled the delivery of services to students remotely, either via telecommunication and/or digital platforms… We are thankful for the continued opportunity to work together to overcome difficulties in the delivery of STP programmes to Huarahi Trade Academy students as New Zealand moves between Alert Levels so that together we ensure the safety of our learning community.”

The 15-19 year-old group is the only priority group with steadily increasing participation rates at Unitec. Under 25s are increasingly likely to promote study at Unitec, reflecting the value of their study experience and UPC’s contribution. 

Other examples

A snapshot of other examples of evidence we can provide to support the value of the outcomes for key stakeholders and our students:

• Graduate Survey – Graduates Employed, Studying or Combining (GESC) has been relatively stable over 2016-2018 at around 84-86%, and broadly comparable to other ITPs in 2018 (MIT 76%, Ara 87.2%, Otago Polytech 94%). Employed has also been steady at 74-76%
• 2018 Alumni Survey – Graduates responses showed 75% in paid employment and 8% had started their own business
• Employment – 2019 GESC target of 85% was met in areas where strong employment demand is continuing during COVID-19, including the Schools of Nursing, Social Practice and Community Studies, and Computing
• Industry feedback – Consistency review outcomes have been good with 17 out of 18 reviews being “Sufficient”
• Connecting learners, teachers and employers – Our 2019 Career Connect events hosted over 80 businesses and 680 students attended. 2020 has been more challenging but our three-day Virtual Career Fair in August enabled over 900 students to meet employers from 40 different industries
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – Our NPS in 2020 is +19, a significant improvement from -2 in 2017. This shows that our students value their study experience with us and the opportunities it provides for employment, further study and other outcomes. The NPS also showed that 87.2% said their learning needs were met, 64.1% rated their qualification as “worth the investment”, and 68.8% said their qualification met job requirements

_____________________________________________________________________

Next week our focus will be on the process questions starting with KEQ #3: How well do programme design and delivery, including learning and assessment activities, match the needs of students and other relevant stakeholders?

What are ‘key evaluation questions’ – KEQs?

The KEQs – key evaluation questions – are the questions that the EER panel are particularly interested in when reviewing institutions and are what we use when evaluating our programmes.

There are six KEQs; two are outcome questions and four are process questions. They ask us to talk to student achievement, value of outcomes for students and stakeholders, programme effectiveness in design and delivery, student support and engagement, governance and management, and compliance.

It’s important that you are familiar with the KEQs which are not only essential for our EER in October but for the day-to-day analysis of what we do, to ensure our academic quality supports and drives student success.

Getting familar with the  KEQs

To learn more about the NZQA KEQs we’ll post a new story each week that captures an example of the KEQs in action, as well as the data and dcouments we have to demostrate how we have responded.

Previous post in this series:

KEQ #1: EER key evaluation questions: How the Learner Outreach Programme responded to KEQ #1
– 13 September 2020

KEQ #3:EER key evaluation questions: Demonstrating how our Āta Kōrero programme responds to KEQ #3 – 30 September 2020