There is an articulation gap for many students between the literacy practices developed at school and those demanded by higher education. While the school sector is often well attuned to the school-leaving assessments, it may not be as aware of the implicit quantitative literacy (QL) demands placed on students in higher education. The National Benchmark Test (NBT) in QL provides diagnostic information to inform teaching and learning. The performance of a large sample of school-leavers who wrote the NBT QL test was investigated (1) to demonstrate how school-leavers performed on this QL test, (2) to explore the relationship between performance on this test and on cognate school-leaving subjects and (3) to provide school teachers and curriculum advisors with a sense of the QL demands made on their students. Descriptive statistics were used to describe performance and linear regression to explore the relationships between performance in the NBT QL test and on the school subjects Mathematics and Mathematical Literacy. Only 13% of the NBT QL scores in the sample were classified as proficient and the majority of school-leavers would need support to cope with the QL demands of higher education. The results in neither Mathematics nor Mathematical Literacy were good predictors of performance on the NBT QL test. Examination of performance on selected individual items revealed that many students have difficulty with quantitative language and with interpreting data in tables. Given that QL is bound to context, it is important that teachers develop QL practices within their disciplinary contexts.

中文翻译：

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南非有资格接受高等教育的离校生的定量扫盲

在学校发展的扫盲实践与高等教育要求的扫盲实践之间，许多学生之间存在衔接差距。虽然学校部门通常对离开学校的评估很满意，但它可能没有意识到对高等教育学生提出的隐性定量扫盲（QL）要求。QL中的国家基准测试（NBT）提供诊断信息，以指导教学。调查了编写NBT QL测试的一大批学校毕业生的表现（1）以证明学校毕业生在此QL测试中的表现如何；（2）探索该测试与同类学校的表现之间的关系。 （3）向学校教师和课程顾问提供对学生的QL要求感。描述性统计数据用于描述绩效和线性回归，以探讨NBT QL考试与学校科目数学和数学素养之间的绩效之间的关系。样本中只有13％的NBT QL分数被归类为“熟练”，并且大多数上学的学生将需要支持来应对高等教育的QL要求。数学和数学素养的结果都不能很好地预测NBT QL测试的表现。对所选个别项目的表现进行检查后发现，许多学生在使用定量语言和解释表中的数据方面存在困难。鉴于QL取决于上下文，因此重要的是，教师应在其学科上下文中发展QL做法。