New Zealander Citizenship Test Scores Lagging Behind
January 31, 2008
Kiwis lagging in citizenship test
New Zealand Herald, January 30, 2008
New Zealand migrants have received a ‘must do better’ report card after it was revealed they lagged behind Britain, South Africa, the Philippines and India in Australia’s new citizenship test.
Just eight of the 290 New Zealanders who sat the test between October and December failed, or 2.8 per cent, but it wasn’t enough to put them among the leading performers, according to Government statistics published yesterday.
Of the top 10 nationalities to sit the test, which requires applicants to answer correctly 12 out of 20 multiple choice questions on a computer, South Africa was the winner with just 0.9 per cent of its 341 applicants failing. India wasn’t far behind, with a failure rate of 1 per cent of its 641 applicants, followed by the Philippines (1.9 per cent of 259) and Britain (2.2 per cent of 1128).
The worst performers were Sudan (29.6 per cent of 236) and Afghanistan (24.9 per cent of 262).
In all, 638 of the 9043 people tested failed on their first attempts, a rate of 18 per cent. They can sit the test as many times as they like until they pass.
This moved new Australian Immigration Minister Chris Evans to announce a review of the test.
