Sydney Uni, My School and Abraham!

Through my study in ICT’s for learning I have found Google reader to be a very useful tool. Everytime I jump onto the Computer I like reading online newspapers from across the country to catch up state issues as well as the news in Sport. Using Google reader helps me find the news stories that I find interesting alot quicker as I am not going to individual sites. This morning I found another interesting article that I would like to blog about.

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story on the University of Sydney’s proposal to introduce quota system that sets targets to increase the number of disadvantaged and regional students (Link: http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/quotas-planned-for-uni-students-20100318-qiff.html ). It is suggested that this quota system will put less importance on HSC results and more importance in identifying skills such as leadership skills and general academic aptitude. There was also a plan to give applicants that come from designated disadvantaged schools a five-point bonus to their Australian Tertiary admissions rank. There are varying views on the proposal with some people believing that are always going to be disadvantaged students in every school, while other arguments suggest that many Universities hold prejudice against students coming from certain disadvantaged schools.

Research by Abraham (2006) suggests that the first stage of a recruitment process is based on data such as IQ, GPA’s or HSC’s. This first stage does not look at an individual’s overall emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence includes an individual’s perceptions on linguistic, special, numeracy, environmental and body smart intelligence. Abraham (2006) also suggested that many applicants that make it to the second stage of the recruitment process lack qualities such as interpersonal skills, compatibility with the firm, oral communication skills, enthusiasm and maturity.

Another interesting issue that relates to the Article on Sydney University and Abrahams research is the My School website (Link: http://www.myschool.edu.au/ ). There has been criticism of the website by the Australian Teachers Union on the validity of the results shown on the site. The NAPLAN test used to collate data on individual schools does not suit the data generation given by the My School website. Another issue is that schools can compared, however when the compare application is used results can show a school like Geelong Grammar being similar to a small primary school in country Queensland. This argument about the My School website highlights that the results and conclusions cannot be made of one standard test.

My point of view on the article directly correlates to the views shared by Abraham (2006) and his studies and conclusions. To many recruitment processes rely on data produced from test that do not paint the whole picture to an individual’s intelligence. I am all for the University of Sydney’s proposal to introduce a quota system for disadvantaged and regional students. Hopefully with this quota system desirable emotional intelligence can be identified rather than relying on one of tests that may not suit an individual learner. It could also avoid alot of upper high school teachers teaching to a designated test.