STUDENT RETENTION IN ADULT EDUCATION PROGRAMS

Student Retention in Adult Education Programs

Student Retention in Adult Education Programs

Introduction

This is a good time to take stock of the state of our knowledge of retention and achievement issues in the learning and skills sector. It is often useful to take a couple of steps back to review a field of knowledge:

It is particularly important now for three reasons.

? Improving student retention and achievement has, first, a particularly high priority for the college, and, indeed, the new learning and skills sector.

The success of the sector may well be measured against improvements in these performance measures. It is essential, therefore, to summarize messages from research undertaken to date.

? Much of this research is not in the public domain. Research reviews have a limited shelf-life, but a single review of what has been done should be helpful.

? There is a growing recognition that, in comparison with schools, post-compulsory education is relatively under-researched. The sponsors of research (DfES, ESRC, Scottish Executive) seem to be willing to devote more resources to research in the learning and skills sector. It should be helpful, therefore, to identify some priorities for future research, based on a review of what has already been accomplished.

The structure of this report follows this rationale:

? messages from retention and achievement research

? Description of available research

? Priorities for future research.

This report is based in parts on a comparison between college and school research. This will appear as 'Effectiveness and improvement: school and college research compared' in a forthcoming issue of Research in post-compulsory education.

Messages from Research

Broadly speaking, research in retention and achievement falls into two broad categories:

? Research that investigates the perceived problems of drop-out or failure to achieve qualification goals

? Research that identifies possible solutions:

How providers can improve or raise retention and achievement rates.

As we shall see, the great majority of this research has been undertaken within the college part of the learning and skills sector.

The questions addressed most frequently in college research on retention and achievement are:

? what causes student withdrawal?

? which causes of withdrawal are within the influence or control of colleges?

? What makes the most difference to student completion and withdrawal?

? Where should colleges concentrate their energies to make improvements? At the beginning of the 1990s, the prevailing view, faithfully reflected in an authoritative report from HM Inspectorate (1991), was that drop-out was largely due to factors external to colleges. The main thrust of research since then has been to displace that view.

Demographic Factors

In Britain, withdrawn students do not have a markedly different profile from completing students in terms of age, ethnicity or gender (Martinez 1995, 1997a, Martinez and Munday 1998, Stack 1999).

Unlike schools, colleges do not have entitlement to free school meals to serve as a convenient indicator of social class. The proxy indicator used in the FE sector is therefore the relative economic and social deprivation of the electoral ward where a student lives. Research has demonstrated, however, that social deprivation measured in this way correlates poorly with retention and achievement across ...