Tackling post-16 course drop-out & improving attainment

What is the cost when a student drops a course they enrolled in post-16? Is poor retention a result of wrong recruitment practices or poor course delivery?

I've been working on new recruitment processes and analytical methods which deliver effective, efficient and economical results. Is this something you're interested in?

In post-16 education the following are often evaluated separately:

• Centre and course recruitment
• Course retention and attainment
• Teaching quality
• Course management quality.

It’s easy to see connections between some of them: students who are given poor pre-enrolment information, advice & guidance (IAG) are more likely to pick the wrong course; course retention is often caused by poor teaching; course management mistakes can lead to students failing exams. A centre’s teachers blame marketing for encouraging the wrong kinds of students to apply for their course, resulting in poor performance; the leadership team blame course leaders for poor retention, while course leaders blame the leaders for not allowing them to set adequate entrance requirements.

No one wins when students drop out of course, least of all the students.

I carried out systems analysis to find the critical loops between recruitment, course delivery and student performance. Including reviewing data on success rates and value-added in combination with evaluations of the effectiveness of centre marketing and recruitment strategies. This last area involved assessing how many programme changes students make between first contact with a centre and finally settling on the programme they end up completing. The general wisdom is that GCSE results are the most significant cause of change. But I’ve discovered this is only partially true and the most successful centres help students choose much more realistically.

Sifting through all the data and analysis, I recognised there are three key issues which need to be remembered:

1. Poor course choice is the prime cause of student drop-out;
2. Successful attainment is strongly linked to students’ motivation towards the
   contents of their chosen courses;
3. Despite the provision of course specific information, most students don’t
   carefully read it or use it when making their course choices.

Addressing these three areas together is a challenge. Centres just do not have a measurement tool to do it. When students drop-out of a course they tend to blame the teaching rather than admit they made a mistake choosing the course. Separating whether poor study motivation is caused by inadequate teaching or because students are not interested in the course is difficult. Finally, if you simply asked students whether they’ve read the course information before enrolling, they’ll say “Yes”, even if they’ve actually only read one sentence – the one bit they’re interested in.

How to make better course choices

The solution I’ve worked out involved the design and testing of an interactive on-line prospectus tool. This helps students make better choices and generates the missing data necessary to evaluate the recruitment process and course delivery systems. From the student perspective, it helps them navigate and weigh their choices through prompting them to reflect on the contents of courses and their motives for choosing them. The students’ responses to course related questions in the tool provides data which is highly valuable to monitor course performance and give teachers insights into the areas of the course where students are likely to struggle. This is because analysis reveals strong relationships between students' course interest ‘scores’ and performance.

When students drop-out of one course they are less likely to fulfil their potential in other courses studied, the disruption of drop-out often affects class motivation, the student is also more likely to drop-out of post-16 education altogether, and centres can lose significant income. Supporting students make more successful course choices should be top priority from all post-16 providers.

Watch a 1-minute video on the Options tool I developed:

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