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Recent academic performance of students in their chartered accountancy professional examinations has been under scrutiny by the business community in South Africa, especially examination performance amongst Black, Coloured and Indian (BCI) students (SAICA 2019a; Ryan 2019). Noting the importance of preparing higher education students for future professional examinations, this study focused on Thuthuka Bursary Fund (TBF) students in accounting. The study participants were all from BCI groups whilst the study aimed to gain insight into TBF students' perceptions regarding the value of two academic support structures. These structures involved additional tutorials, only offered to TBF students and individual learning program sessions, offered to all accounting students. The study aimed to understand the support format required to equip students to better prepare for examinations. Student perceptions were analysed to identify those aspects which could potentially make the offered support structures more conducive to the learning needs of students. Understanding student perceptions about the effectiveness of academic support is critical in promoting the study success of students and meeting their learning objectives. The study found that certain aspects of academic support are judged to positively contribute to students' learning, while others can be improved upon. Students seem to prefer smaller support class sizes, language-specific facilitators, support classes being scheduled during normal class hours instead of after hours, an emphasis on exam writing techniques and, to a lesser extent, course content being covered. The findings suggest more regular student feedback about the academic support offered which could result in revisions to existing support structures. Such revisions might contribute to better assistance to students, potentially increasing their performance-also in continued professional learning after graduation.

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Current emphasis on students' academic adaptation in higher education necessitates the evaluation of predictors of successful preparation of first-year students. This study evaluated the implementation of early assessment (EA) in two first-year financial accounting courses at a South African university, namely an introductory financial accounting course, aimed at students without prior exposure to accounting, and a professional body accredited accounting course, aimed at students with prior exposure to accounting. This module-specific benchmark assessment, early in the academic year is often used as a predictor of preparation, adaptation and potential future academic performance. Given the discontinuation of a university, wide EA protocol within a faculty the academic contribution of the EA has been questioned. The study's focus comprised two research questions, namely whether the EA can be used as a predictor of future academic performance of two different academic performance groups and whether students in a lower academic performance group are able to achieve success despite a low result in the EA. The research methodology included an analysis of variances to determine the correlation between the early assessment and either midyear or final marks, as well as significance evaluation of the measured variance analysis using the Bonferroni test. The findings suggest that whilst the EA could potentially be used as an early warning sign for at-risk academically low performing students, the EA could also result in a misleading representation to students in the high academic performance category. Principally, the EA was found not to be a reliable predictor of future academic performance. In addition, the mixed results obtained from the evaluation of the effect of the nature and format of the assessment suggested that it had a low and non-meaningful effect on the predictive value of the early assessment. The fact that students in the academically low Bruwer and Ontong Early assessment as a predictor of academic performance 12 performance group were largely able to pass the module, however, suggests the success of intervention utilising the EA as an early warning. Higher education module developers could therefore consider the implementation of an appropriate EA in various undergraduate modules, based on the findings.

Promoting critical thinking skills in the higher education setting is noted as a key skill required by students. Using a questionnaire approach, this study examined whether first-year students perceived the use of past assessments in preparation for upcoming assessments as a deductive learning tool and used them solely as a study aid and predictor at a South African university, with the focus on the deductive and conductive learnings styles, with specific reference to whether students perceive the past assessments to be used as tools to indicate specifically what will be assessed in terms of historical frequency. The findings suggest that students utilise past assessments as a deductive tool in order to predict future areas that will be assessed, as well as certain characteristics, such as the level of difficulty of question papers. The authors argue that when past assessments are used as a deductive "predictor" of future assessment, this then potentially acts as an inhibitor of developing critical thinking skills. The findings therefore, although acknowledging the value added in terms of higher education students of the revision and practising of past assessments, highlight that assessors in higher education need to be conscious that the use of past assessments as a "predictor" through the repetitive nature of the items being assessed may result in students who are able to pass assessments but who are unable to necessarily demonstrate critical thinking skills as required by module outcomes. The findings of this study therefore present various streams of areas for future research into the better understanding of how past assessments can be used in order to promote critical thinking within higher education modules.