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The New Zealand Government is moving towards restricting access to tertiary education and implementing a managed entry scheme. It is therefore important to be able to predict whether a student has a reasonable likelihood of succeeding in tertiary engineering study.New Zealand secondary schools mostly operate on the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) model whereby subjects are assessed on the basis of discrete individual modules. The paper compares the NCEA results to first year grades in tertiary engineering subjects obtained from most New Zealand providers of the BE degree to determine whether these NCEA grades can be used as a predictor of success or failure in tertiary engineering programmes. This is the first nation-wide survey of its kind and has yielded surprising results. For example, predicting success based on whether a student has not achieved is more insightful than basing on achievements, which is counter to the basis of many school league tables worldwide.

This paper details the changes undertaken to the introductory Bachelor of Engineering (BE) course Foundations of Engineering (ENGR101) at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand (VUW) to improve first year student engineering experience. A requirement of the BE is that a student obtains a B average over their core papers in Part I to progress with the degree. The paper also reports on student reactions to these changes based on information gained from surveys. It finds the introduced changes in 2011 increased the students passing with above average grade B from 45.3% to 50%, and further changes including the introduction of a major project in 2012 increased the pass rate to 63.4%

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New Zealand, similarly to many countries, is facing declining enrolments in engineering tertiary study. Students and even their teachers are surprisingly ignorant about engineering study and prospective careers, especially in the more modern engineering disciplines. This paper outlines outreach activities targeted at two levels of secondary school students as well as their teachers and their careers advisors. Students are engaged in the construction of a multi-purpose electronic board which they retain afterwards. Teachers participate in the same activity and are additionally provided with resources to take back into their classrooms to augment the coverage of the relevant curriculum. The response to these activities and the resultant increased desire to consider tertiary engineering study has been exceptionally encouraging.