What the indicators mean

Indicators for tertiary education organisations

The information on the following pages is based on four indicators of educational performance.

The indicators answer the following questions

• How many students are successfully completing their courses?
• How many students are completing their qualifications?
• How many students are progressing to higher level study?
• How many students are being retained in study?

These indicators are used to give a summarised view for each tertiary provider.

This is one source of information for people to learn about students’ achievement at educational organisations.

There are many factors that will determine how well students achieve as well as the quality of the provision. For example, part time and extra mural students often have work or family commitments and cannot devote as much time and energy to their studies, so they may take longer to achieve their course or qualification. They may also have different study goals.

The qualification completion rate can be affected by factors which do not reflect the performance of a TEO, such as embedded qualifications and changes in enrolments across years, particularly when there is a change in enrolments in qualifications that typically take more than one year to complete.  These factors, as well as the calculation methods used, mean that a high course completion rate does not automatically translate into a high qualification completion rate.

We expect the information about student achievement will encourage students to ask questions about tertiary providers, and to seek more information about their services.

Indicators for industry training

The information for industry training looks to provide the following information:

• How many trainees are completing the credits they have enrolled in?
• How programmes are being completed by trainees?