Dead Ends and Doorways: Attainment and Equity in Upper Secondary School Qualifications Pathways

Abstract

Upper secondary school exit qualifications pathways can lead to inequitable outcomes and qualification dead ends, or more equitable outcomes that open doorways to post-school learning and qualifications opportunities. Qualifications pathway provisions and attainment are thus indicators of education equity provisions. This premise was investigated in two related but independent mixed methods studies. The first compared countries and the second focussed on a single country, New Zealand, with an overarching lens of attainment and equity. In the Study 1 cross-country comparison, qualifications pathways were examined in 16 countries classified by their PISA results as low or high performing and low or high equity; Study 2 focussed on 30 New Zealand schools classified by their National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) Level 3 and University Entrance outcomes as low or high performing. This approach facilitated a focus on the role that countries and schools play in constraining or enabling qualifications success through their pathways, policies and procedures. Combined findings across the two studies were aggregated into three main themes, showing key differences between low- and high-performing countries and schools. The first theme, access and opportunity, showed low-performing countries and schools offered a broader range of pathways and subjects, notably for vocational education, but typically had early specialisation or streaming into these, with reduced access to degree-level study. The second theme, systems and procedures, showed high-performing schools were more likely to have high-expectation systems, including for career education and guidance programmes, and effective procedures for monitoring and supporting progress. The third theme, assessment content and practices, showed low-performing countries and schools tended to have more centralised prescriptiveness than their high-performing counterparts, enabling different levels of responsiveness to local circumstances. However, the facility for responsiveness in New Zealand (a high-performing country) has resulted in an emphasis on vocational pathways in low-performing schools, paradoxically compromising fair and equitable access to University Entrance credentialling and accentuating inequity and disadvantage. Implications of the findings for policy and practice informed a model of a large-scale, high-stakes qualifications system, through which it is proposed that fairness and equity--and qualifications attainment--can be increased by incorporating culturally responsive approaches.