Student Self-Assessment of Quantitative Skills: A Pilot Study of Accounting Students

How well do we know our students? How well do our students know themselves? Both are important questions in the context of students new to higher education (HE) as the former impacts on curriculum design and teaching strategies at first year level while the latter can influence student engagement and retention particularly if student academic self-perceptions turn out to be overly optimistic. Unfortunately it is often the case that in recruiting new students for HE it is entry qualifications that take precedence over a more informed assessment of the student's previous educational experience or their perception of their own strengths and weaknesses. In this paper we focus specifically on the mathematical skills of students undertaking an accounting course in the UK HE sector. This focus is brought about by worries over the preparedness of students to study quantitative subjects in HE which has been of concern to educators and the UK Government for some time. In fact these concerns prompted the UK Government to commission a report into mathematics education (the Smith Report) which found that the perception of many young people was that mathematics is boring and irrelevant and that there is a perception among non-specialist students that mathematics is difficult (Smith, 2004). Although things have subsequently improved through educational reforms at secondary