How the Medicine and Science programmes can overcome the impacts of low SES secondary school educational disadvantage

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on educational attainment in New Zealand’s undergraduate programmes in medicine and science (N = 750 and N = 4722, respectively), by following four student cohorts over the course of their degree. This research aimed to identify the extent to which studying in competitive academic programmes (Medicine and BSc) attenuate educational disparity related to schools’ socio-economic backgrounds. We found that Science students coming from the lowest Socioe-conomic Status (SES) schools had lower attainment in their first tertiary year but their achievement improved throughout the programme while outperforming all other students in their third year. However, medicine students from lowest SES schools had lower attainment in their first year but from their second year, their attainment was not significantly different from their counterparts coming from higher SES schools. This study’s findings, support the selection processes for these programmes, allowing students from disadvantaged secondary schools to enrol and succeed in competitive academic programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Equity and diversity
• medical school
• science
• student admission

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a grant received from UCAT ANZ Consortium.

Notes on contributors

Boaz Shulruf

Boaz Shulruf is Professor in Medical Education. His main research interest is in the area of psycho-educational assessment in higher education, particularly within the context of Medical and Health Sciences Education.

Sarah Tumen-Randal

Sarah Randal is Programme Director-Evidence and Evaluation at Universities New Zealand (New Zealand Vice Chancellor’s Committee) and manages an Analytics and Insights team that performs sector-level analysis on linked (person-level) administrative data to identify patterns, better predict and understand the pathways and outcomes of university students and graduates.

Phillippa Poole

Phillippa Poole is medical graduate of the University of Auckland and a specialist general physician. Professor Phillippa Poole is currently Head of the School of Medicine at her alma mater. She was head of the medical programme for nearly 10 years.

John Randal

John Randal is a Professor in the School of Economics and Finance. He is partially seconded into a role as Director of the Teaching Intensive Academic Career Pathway, and also serves as the Associate Dean (Students) in the Wellington School of Business and Government.

Daniel Wrench

Daniel Wrench was employed by Universities New Zealand as data scientist. Currently, alongside part-time work at Harmonic Analytics (consultancy firm), he is working towards a PhD at Victoria University of Wellington, researching how to solve the problem of missing data in analyses of turbulence in the solar wind.

Tim Wilkinson

Tim Wilkinson is a consultant physician in geriatric medicine with the Canterbury District Health Board. He is also Deputy Editor of Medical Education, Section Editor of BMC Medical Education, and a member of the editorial board for Focus on Health Professional Education and Australasian Journal on Ageing. Tim is keen to promote independence in old age as well as independence in his students.