Getting the right students on the right post-16 courses for them 

Whether you’re a tutor helping Year 11s complete their college application forms or a post-16 teacher, one thing you’ll hope for are students choosing courses that are right for them. But time and again many make choices against the advice of their school teachers, they seem to ignore the information and guidance they receive from post-16 tutors and stubbornly start courses on which they are unlikely to fulfil their potential. The result is students dropping-out or underachieving.

Strategies used to guide students

Different approaches aim at guiding students to reflect on their choices, to understand the demands of a course and consider where their academic skills and aptitudes would be best placed.

Warning students of the struggles ahead

Some centres aim at communicating plainly to students about their chances of success on given courses. This can be done thoughtfully and sincerely, but still experienced from a student’s perspective as stoking fears of failure. Linked to this is the use of predictions based on value-added data. 

The problem here is that most of us, including students, don’t believe misfortune will strike us. Young people can hear anecdotes about similar students who made the wrong choices, they can be presented with statistics which show students with a similar GCSE profile struggles to achieve good grades in this or that A-Level, but most will continue to believe they’ll be different. For a few students this approach can backfire more seriously, creating doubts that affect their perceptions of the soundness of their choice processes more generally, undermining their learning confidence. 

Many centres increase specific GCSE entrance grades for A-Level subjects that are considered particularly demanding. While there is strong evidence of the overall predictive power of GCSE results for post-16 and university degree achievement, this approach has limitations because it can end up arbitrarily denying young people opportunities for a fresh start. It also does little to address the key problem of students choosing subjects they are not suited to. The situation is similar in the case of using value-added predictions. These can be valuable in terms of evaluating performance, but it must be remembered they are merely based on averages. Many factors affect a students’ academic performance, not least of which is the strength of their interests in the course contents. 

More & more information

Many schools and colleges resort to offering students more information about courses, more opportunities for taster sessions, more chances to speak to course teachers.

It is quite right to provide good, clear and well-presented information to students about the courses on offer.  Reviewing and improving this provision is often worthwhile. However, the evidence suggests young people are often not good at processing this effectively. There is also the danger of information overload, where students simply have too much to read, process and evaluate. It becomes very difficult for them to objectively weigh up competing options. With these pressures, the default is toward simple biases: I did well in GCSE, so a post-16 related course will be easy too; I’ve never done this before, so it might work out for me; I’ll make more of an effort at post-16 because it’s my choice, so I’ll do whatever I think will be easy. These biases work to block objective (and more difficult) reflection on the courses. Students will rarely admit this; they employ what researchers describe as post-hoc rationalisation. This involves making a quick decision based on assumptions and then finding something in the information provided to latch onto and use this to rationalise the choice. 

More experiences

The competitive market-place environment of post-16 education plays subtle games that make it hard for centres to ensure taster sessions or other events hosted by course leaders accurately reflect the tough realities, breadth and curriculum balance of a course. There is a need to ‘sell’ courses too, in order to broaden horizons, especially for those from more disadvantaged backgrounds. Taster sessions are valuable in this respect, but they need to be decoupled from the period of decision-making and application submission. Also, students often use the offer of sessions to experience just the courses they have doubts about. In this respect, they do little to clear up their misconceptions about courses they are more inclined towards.

Careers advice

There are a relatively small number of degree courses or careers that are dependent on specific post-16 qualifications. Those careers, where this is important, do need to be clearly explained. Careers guidance is essential in many key ways, helping young people to appreciate and understand the diversity of careers available to them, providing clear information about what those careers entail, and explaining, where relevant, the kinds of pathways to these careers. 

However, there is something important to remember here. Although our ideas about possible careers begin to take shape from around 10 or 11 years of age, it takes time for us to develop sufficient understanding of ourselves and the world around for definite plans to be either meaningful or helpful. In the meantime, what always matters is that we engage and succeed in the learning experiences and curriculum provided by school. 

Another approach used, which is related to careers, is the profiling of young people in relation to so-called personality types or aptitudes. There is no evidence to suggest the effectiveness of personality profiling in relation to providing valid career related guidance. What matters most is not what personality traits a person may have (if these can be accurately measured!), but a person’s adaptability and responsiveness to the challenges they encounter. These learning dispositions and capabilities are acquired through purposeful and committed study. More effort would be better spent helping develop a deep interest in curriculum knowledge and skills, than the confusing and pseudo-scientific methods of personality typing.  

Aptitude profiling is sometimes closely associated with personality tests.  Genuine aptitude assessments are designed to reflect the level of ability an individual has in relation to generalised skills seen as relevant to a particular career or course of further study. There are a number of problems with using these within the post-16 context.  First, they are tests and tests in general are a performance, the quality of which depends on complex processes of construction and assessment. The more you practice them, the better you become. The more specific they are, the greater the chances of ensuring their reliability and validity. Young people will already be preparing for GCSEs in some subjects they may continue post-16, but for all other subjects, only those from more advantaged backgrounds will be able to adequately demonstrate relevant aptitudes¹. Second, aptitude is highly context dependent. We’ve all experienced times when knowledge and skills feel fresh and lively at home or at work, but when these same aptitudes are called upon in another context, we feel lost. 

More generic measurement of aptitudes is a poor substitute for IQ testing, which is also problematic in terms of academic progression, a key reason why school admission based on this at 11 remains controversial. Linking these back to potential careers and then to courses on offer post-16 sends many confusing messages to young people about who they are, what their potential is and where their educational efforts and aspirations should be placed.

The decision-making support gap

A range of other approaches with similarities to those described above are used by schools and colleges to guide learners to the right post-16 courses. Alongside these, there are few substitutes for strong and trusting relationships between teachers offering guidance and young people. Those positive relationships lead to openness by learners about the subjects, topics and skills that really engage and excite them, and those that feel burdensome and boring. Responsible and caring teachers will use these insights to help learners to whittle down their choices and consider the full range of options available. 

However, for many more young people these kinds of relationships don’t exist or there is no capacity for teachers to provide the level of support desirable. Can the strategies above adequately substitute for this? What alternative approach could complement the best quality guidance to support learners who miss out on this? 

Rich curriculum engagement is needed

Post-16 learners will be expected to be in class for at least 4 hours per week, per A-Level, more for Level 3 BTECs and more in many centres. In addition to this, their success will depend on a similar number of hours engaged in independent study. Whatever other factors may contribute to their success, both outside of school or in relation to the quality of provision, the most important determiner will be the quality of their engagement with the contents and demands of the courses chosen. They will encounter many aspects of courses that are a challenge. Some topics will be more or less appealing to students; some skills will appear relevant to their wider aspirations, others less so. Their aptitude to cope with the demands of course assessment will also be important. For example, some courses require much greater memorisation of specific content, others require gaining confidence applying concepts and abstract principles successfully. 

When choosing their post-16 courses, the number one priority for students should be careful reflection on the specific contents and demands of the courses they are considering. This needs to be based on detailed information about the curriculum requirements of the courses, as they are taught in each centre. There are significant variations between the same subjects depending on which exam board is followed and which units or modules a centre decides to deliver. Generic information about subjects is unhelpful here. 

The course specific information needs to be presented in a manageable and engaging format to facilitate students’ consideration and reflection. It’s also important that they can compare their responses to different courses to clearly see which courses they would be better suited to, both in terms of their interests and confidence at coping with course demands. How they see courses fitting into broader ambitions is also valuable. 

A new model for improving post-16 course choice

This approach is at the heart of the Options tool - a new application that allows young people to reflect on their choices objectively in relation to the key curriculum contents. A tool that allows them to see, in ranked order, where and how their interests, aptitudes and ambitions would be best placed in relation to the many courses on offer to them post-16. This method ensures that engagement with the curriculum is at the heart of post-16 choices. It allows young people to begin courses in September with knowledge and confidence about what they will have to learn. 

Options also provides centres with crucial data, allowing them to see how well students’ interests are matched to their choices and how well course provision supports students. At present the only data schools and colleges have to evaluate these things are indicators of problems, drop-out and poor value-added scores. These can’t answer the key question, are the right students on the right courses for them? Not only will Options provide this data, it will help to ensure the answer is a strong " yes ! " 

Dr Nigel Newton
Co-Lead researcher with the Education Transitions Across the Lifespan research group at Cardiff Metropolitan University.

References

1. Thiele, T., Singleton, A., Pope, D., & Stanistreet, D. (2016). Predicting students' academic performance based on school and socio-demographic characteristics. Studies in Higher Education, 41(8), 1424-1446.
 

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