“Our job is to deliver a good secondary school student, not a good university student.” Secondary school teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding university preparation

This study investigated secondary school teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding university preparation by interviewing 50 teachers. Teachers most often mentioned study skills as important aspect of university readiness. Although most teachers believed their role involved contributing to university readiness, few teachers had university preparation as explicit goal; instead, most of them mentioned university preparation practices they performed unintentionally. These preparation practices mainly focused on providing students with information about studying at university. As barriers to university preparation teachers mentioned spending most of their time to preparing their students for national examinations and a lack of knowledge of what universities expected from first-year students. More awareness of the importance of preparation and collaboration between schools and universities offer potentially helpful resolutions.