PIs 2005/06: Non-continuation rates

These tables look at non-continuation rates for students at an institution. They are presented in two ways. The first considers students who start in a particular year, and looks at whether they are still in higher education one year later. The second method looks at projected outcomes over a longer period.

The non-continuation rates for students at an institution are of widespread interest, but need to be carefully defined and interpreted. The two methods are explained in more detail below.

This method is the easiest to explain and shows how good an institution is at retaining the students it recruits. It is based on tracking students from the year they enter an institution to the following year and provides information about where the students are in that second year.

Tables T3a to T3d show what happens to a student who enters a course at an institution in 2004/05. In the following year, 2005/06, that student may continue at the same institution, either on the same course or elsewhere in the institution, transfer to another institution, or be absent from higher education completely. A few of these students may qualify at the end of their first year, either with a first degree (for example if they have transferred from a diploma course) or with an other undergraduate qualification and these have been included with those who continue.

The indicators have been produced for full-time undergraduate students only and have been calculated for young and mature students separately. They have also been calculated for young first degree students from low participation neighbourhoods, young first degree students from other neighbourhoods, mature first degree students with no previous higher education qualification and mature first degree students with previous higher education qualifications.

Note that these rates do not take progression into account, that is of moving from year 1 to year 2. They also ignore course changes within the institution and changes to mode of study. They simply look at whether or not a student is still in higher education after a year.

Students may leave higher education at various times during their first year, or simply not return after the end of the year. When a student leaves very early in the academic year, there may be reasons for this, which are unconnected with the course or the institution. To allow for this, students who are recorded as leaving before 1 December in their first academic year have been removed from the figures.

Of course, some students who leave higher education during or at the end of the first year will return after a year out. Table series T4 includes statistics about such returns. These are not provided as indicators, but to give some extra information which may be used with the indicators in table series T3 to give a fuller picture. Table series T4 gives the percentage of students who were absent from HE in 2004/05 (having entered in 2003/04) who returned to higher education, either at the same institution or at another institution, in 2005/06. The final column expresses the number of students who did not return to HE as a percentage of the entrants in 2003/04.

The other method for producing non-completion rates projects what proportion of the full-time first degree starters in 2004/05 are likely to be in each of the 'end states' after a period of fifteen years (that is, having gained a qualification, transferred to another institution, or been absent from HE for two consecutive years). The fifteen year period has been chosen as an over-estimate of the amount of time that the majority of full-time first degree students should have reached one of these end states.

The projection is based on the current pattern of students at the institution. Firstly, we define a 'transition population' which consists of students who were active on a full-time first degree course in 2004/05 plus students who were active on a full-time first degree course in 2003/04, excluding those who have obtained a degree. For each student in the transition population, we look at their 'state' (mode of study, level of study, institution, year of programme and if applicable, qualification obtained) in both 2004/05 and 2005/06. Assuming that this pattern of students is typical for the institution, we use this to anticipate the state of the full-time first degree entrants in 2004/05 fifteen years on. The list of possible 'states' a student can be in are listed in the technical document. Due to the nature of this method, a very small number of students may not have reached one of the 'end states' after fifteen years and are shown in a 'not known' column of the table. High numbers in the not known column are often a result of institutions which have made major changes, either to the format of their degree programmes or to the way they record that format.

In technical terms, projecting students is equivalent to multiplying a scalar matrix of starters by a matrix of students in the transition population a total of fourteen times to represent a period of fifteen years. Full details of the method used can be found in the technical document.

The supplementary tables SN1 to SN3 below relate to non-continuation after year of entry (table series T3), while SN4 and SN5 relate to projected outcomes (table T5).

Enquiries

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