Nueva Zelanda: 1300 visas issued to foreign students at ‘dodgy’ school

Oceanía/Nueva Zelanda/Octubre de 2016/Fuente: RNZ

RESUMEN:  La Academia Internacional de Nueva Zelanda (IANZ), pasaba estudiantes que deberían haber fracasado. Las cifras, publicadas por el Partido del Trabajo en virtud de la Ley de Información Oficial, muestran 857 visas de trabajo que se publicaron el año pasado a estudiantes de IANZ, y 464 de este año.  La primera denuncia contra IANZ fue en 2014, pero una investigación formal sólo se inició en abril de este año. «En ese momento, más de 1.300 visas de trabajo se conceden sobre la base de las calificaciones que  parecen bastante poco fiables en retrospectiva, sobre la base de las pruebas que se ha hecho en algunas cohortes.» RNZ informó ayer que NZQA llevó a cabo una revisión focalizada de las evaluaciones de la institución de educación superior privada este año.

A later investigation found the now-defunct school, the International Academy of New Zealand (IANZ), was passing students it should have failed.

The figures, released to the Labour Party under the Official Information Act, show 857 work visas were issued last year to IANZ’s students, and 464 this year.

Labour’s tertiary education spokesperson David Cunliffe said that was despite government agencies knowing about the rort.

The first complaint against IANZ was in 2014, but a formal investigation only began in April this year, he said.

«In that time, over 1300 work visas were granted on the basis of qualifications which look pretty dodgy in hindsight, based on testing that has been done on some cohorts.»

RNZ reported yesterday that NZQA conducted a focused review of the private tertiary institution’s assessments this year.

When NZQA looked at 77 examples of students’ work that IANZ said met those standards, it found all of them should have been failed.

Some answers were unintelligible, and some work was not up to scratch even though IANZ tutors had described it as being of high quality.

There had been similar results form other cohorts, Mr Cunliffe said.

«One … showed only 14 percent of those tested were able to pass a retest.»

The system for picking up poor quality institutions was almost entirely reliant on whistleblowers, he said.

«There’s no proactive monitoring, there’s no spot-checking.»

It was also clear the problem was getting worse.

«There are 13 live investigations into potential student visa fraud at the moment by Immigration New Zealand.

«The Tertiary Education Commission’s got 19 private tertiary institutions classified as high risk [and] the Serious Fraud Office is investigating five.»

Fuente: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/316727/1300-visas-issued-to-foreign-students-at-‘dodgy’-school