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The impact of guidance on retention in post-16 education
Shown immediately below is the original stimulus material that was posted on the site to stimulate online discussion. Members of the group responded separately to each of the key questions raised and a summary of their responses is shown in subsequent sections.
"Student Services Guidance people keep sending us the wrong students, students who don`t really understand what the course is all about and students who are not particularly up to it; no wonder we get so many dropping out. It was different in the past when we could recruit our own students."
Statements like this from college lecturers were not uncommon in my experience in further education firstly as a teacher, and then as a manager of College Student Services. Of course, the criticism wasn`t always one-way. Student Services advisers would sometimes point out to teaching staff that they had a responsibility to make their courses more student-centred, and more likely to engage and retain students. A common riposte was: "When are teaching staff going to understand that the students we have are the students we have, and we have to adapt to them and not vice versa."
Are the college lecturers right - does the quality of pre-course guidance really make that much of a difference in terms of retention and drop out? If it does, where`s the proof? Can anyone point to convincing evidence in the published literature? Or, can anyone provide relevant case study material, possibly from their own experience as practitioners?
Or, could it be that pre-enrolment advice and guidance is not that important and that other factors, such as the availability and variety of courses, are more significant?
Could it be that some 16-18 year olds are just not suited to full-time post-16 education and that it is the responsibility of guidance workers to be more challenging in pointing out the likelihood of drop-out when this is clearly indicated?
Last cached: 2008-06-04 11:31 AM