Diagnostic information in high-stakes assessment data: NBT indicators for student support скачать в хорошем качестве

Diagnostic information in high-stakes assessment data: NBT indicators for student support

Tatiana Sango, University of Cape Town Assessment data from the National Senior Certificate (NSC) and National Benchmark Test (NBT) provide insights into incoming first-year students' academic profiles, helping to design appropriate curriculum support. The NBT, a high-stakes assessment, evaluates readiness in Academic Literacy (AL), Quantitative Literacy (QL), and Mathematics (MAT), with MAT targeting students aiming for mathematically demanding disciplines like Engineering, Health Sciences, or Commerce, probing depth within the NSC curriculum context for higher education competencies. However, few universities use these assessments systematically to determine students' support needs and evaluate their own institutional capacity to meet them. This presentation reports on ongoing Centre for Educational Assessments (CEA) efforts to investigate whether, and how, diagnostic indicators can be retrieved from these high-stakes assessments to inform student support initiatives. Shifting from assessment of students to assessment for students, we explore connections between NSC subject knowledge and NBT literacies. By analysing patterns in NBT performance alongside NSC results, we ask: What diagnostic indicators might emerge? When and how should students acquire academic literacies? How can we help learners develop AL, QL, and MAT competencies through familiar contexts, making the transition to university-level thinking explicit, gradual, and personalised? These ideas and questions point toward collaborations across the sector and beyond higher education to translate data into actionable projects that benefit students. This presentation shares CEA's approach to identifying diagnostic information in high-stakes assessment data and leveraging it to design evidence-based support interventions.