8 Jan 2018

Auckland college fails to overturn registration cancellation

6:42 am on 8 January 2018
A young man in a classroom, writing, in a file photo to illustrate foreign students.

Photo: 123RF

A troubled Auckland tertiary institution has failed to overturn the cancellation of its registration.

The New Zealand National College went to the High Court to challenge the New Zealand Qualification Authority's decision in November to cancel its registration as a private training enterprise.

NZQA said it had grounds to do so because the college had failed to comply with assessment and moderation requirements in relation to all of its non-English programmes and training schemes.

A number of investigations of the college's courses have uncovered faults.

Assessors who looked into the college's university preparation course found that 30 percent of the students who passed should have received fail grades.

In May, the college decided to stop teaching four business courses after an earlier investigation by NZQA found poor quality assessment and examples of plagiarism.

The 300 students enrolled in those programmes were transferred to another tertiary institution but many were later found to be ineligible to continue their studies because they failed an English test and a double-check of their academic achievement.

The college argued that the decision to cancel its registration was illegal, predetermined and unreasonable.

However, the High Court found that there were no reviewable errors in NZQA's decision-making process.