Benchmarks and Threshold Standards —A New Zealand Polytechnic's Perspective on the Approach

Benchmarks and threshold standards affect every part of our lives. New parents assume their children will walk, talk and balk at certain stages and worry if they don't. In schools, teachers ensure that standards, sometimes unstated, are met in such things as clothing, equipment and behaviour. What children learn and what they are to achieve are also benchmarked by society at large, by institutions, by parents and even by students. In further and higher education in New Zealand as elsewhere (see descriptions in other chapters in Part IV) a mixture of stated and unstated benchmarks and threshold standards have always applied.