The first ‘league table’ ranking nursing schools’ performance in supporting Maori nursing students shows wide disparity in student success rates.
The 2011 scorecard ranking the 16 schools has recently been released by Nga Manukura o Apopo, the Maori nursing and midwifery workforce development programme, using data drawn from the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC).
Northland’s NorthTec, the school with the highest percentage of Maori students, came out on top, followed by Eastern Institute of Technology. Trailing at 16th was Auckland’s Unitec and 15th was Massey University.
Dr Denise Wilson, a Nga Manukura spokeswoman, said the first scorecard was based on a snapshot of data from 2010, using four benchmarking indicators* (see box) and was hoped to become an annual exercise.
The aim of the scorecard was to promote and monitor nursing school’s responsiveness to Maori nursing students by identifying successful initiatives and areas for improvement. Wilson said Nga Manukura was committed to improving the recruitment and achievement of Maori in nursing programmes to help boost the overall Maori nursing workforce, which at 6-7 per cent, was low when Maori make up 15 per cent of the population.
She said Nga Manukura’s attempts to get student data directly from the nursing schools had raised privacy issues. Instead, it sourced its nursing student data from TEC, which stressed that it could not guarantee the quality of the data, which was supplied by the tertiary institutions primarily for funding purposes.
As this was first scorecard, she said there had to be some caution in how the results were interpreted and acknowledged there were probably ‘”some surprises” in the mix, but she hoped it would initiate discussion amongst nursing schools.
Jane Henderson, head of the top-ranked nursing school NorthTec, believed one key reason for its Maori students’ success rate was many of its students came through from its foundation studies and enrolled nursing programmes.
“We simply want to make sure that they are better prepared before embarking on the degree programme so that they have the required skills to successfully achieve degree level education,” she said.
Thirty per cent of NorthTec’s nursing students in 2010 were Maori, and it had a 75 per cent graduation rate that year. Anderson said her staff’s relationship with students, particularly understanding cultural nuances like meeting whanau commitments, also played a large part.
Kathy Holloway, chair of NETS (Nurse Education in the Tertiary Sector), said it was useful to have baseline snapshot data to help identify specific workforce strategies that were useful. However, the next step would be further analysis to tease out the details behind the numbers.
The two schools with a dedicated Maori stream (Waikato Institute of Technology) or dedicated Maori degree programme (Whitireia) came eighth and ninth, respectively.
Holloway, who is dean of Whitireia Community Polytechnic’s health faculty, said for Whitireia, the data on qualification completions reflected that its largest number of Maori enrolments were in its Bachelor of Nursing Maori, which did not graduate any students until this year.
Sue Gasquoine, head of Unitec’s nursing school, which ranked bottom on the scorecard, believed that an upsurge in Maori enrolments in 2010 had skewed its graduation results and seen them dropping from 86% to 22%.
“This is not a true reflection of the success of our students, and it is ironic that our success in attracting Maori nursing students has, due to the formulaic nature of this indicator, given a perception of poor performance.”
The scorecard showed Unitec having the lowest percentage of Maori students (4%) and second to lowest graduation score for Maori students (22%), but Gasquoine said it anticipated its completion rate to be more like 50-60% for 2011. She said Unitec was implementing a range of measures to increase Maori student success, including the appointment of a Maori nurse staff member to support Maori students, mentoring of Maori foundation course students heading to nursing, and staff participation in te reo classes.
Annette Huntington, head of Massey University’s second-to-last ranked school, said it supported the principles behind the report and it was a valuable “wake-up” call, but it had question marks over the quality of the scorecard data and was “extremely concerned” about how it reflected Massey’s programme. The scorecard showed Massey having 6 per cent Maori students and a 31 per cent Maori graduation rate in 2010. Huntington acknowledged its numbers were low but said one of the reasons was a dedicated Maori nursing degree programme at the neighbouring Whitireia nursing school. She said she was unable to provide statistics on Massey’s Maori student success rate and acknowledged that Massey could do better and was working to do so, including talking to staff from Te Rau Puawai, Massey’s scholarship and support programme for Maori mental health workforce students, on how it could better support its Maori nursing students.
The scorecard can be found at: www.ngamanukura.co.nz
*The scorecard indicators
* The percentage of Maori nursing students.
* The percentage of Maori completing their nursing degree that year.
* The percentage of Maori nursing students retained (i.e. re-enroll or graduate).
* The percentage of Maori nursing students successfully completing courses that year.
NB: the first two indicators are weighted highest at 60 per cent and the latter two at 40 per cent, to come up with an overall ranking score.
