Prognostic value of university entrance examinations in Scotland.

Date:
1934
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Prognostic value of university entrance examinations in Scotland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/140 (page 8)
    A full Report of the proceedings of the Eastbourne Conference has been published by the International Institute of Teachers College under the title of Conference on Examinations.1 Before the Conference dispersed it was agreed that the repre- sentatives of each country should undertake certain specific inquiries into their national systems of examination with the object always of elucidating their social effects. The Scottish delegation on its return home was strengthened by the addition of Dr William Boyd, Dr Shepherd Dawson, Professor Drever, Mr D. Kennedy-Fraser, Professor M‘Clelland, and Dr John Mackie, and was constituted as the International Examination Inquiry Committee of The Scottish Council for Research in Education. Besides engaging to co-operate generally with the International Institute in its investigation of examinations, the Committee undertook as its immediate contribution (1) to assist in the completion of two minor inquiries already undertaken by The Scottish Council for Research in Education, and (2) to initiate an inquiry into the methods at present employed in Scotland for the selection of pupils for higher education at Secondary Schools and Universities. The two “minor inquiries” concerned teachers’ estimates and the time devoted to examinations. These were completed in the course of session 1931-32; the results were embodied in Research Council Supplement No. 7, and issued with The Scottish Educational Fournal on 13th May 1932. The major inquiry branched out at once into two distinct investigations, the one prospective, the other retrospective. The prospective inquiry was suggested by the fact that just before the Eastbourne Conference the Research Council had decided to undertake a mental survey of Scottish school children on an extensive scale. A year was occupied in preparations; then, in the first week of June 1932, a complete age-group of 87,498 children, comprising with negligible exceptions all the children in Scottish schools born in 1921, was tested by means of a Group Intelligence Test devised by Professor Godfrey H. Thomson. In addition, 1000 of these 87,498 children, so taken as to give a representative sample of the whole age-group, were tested individually by means of the Terman revision of the Binet-Simon scale. The individual tests were completed in October 1932, + Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City.