Wastage: Natural, built-in and imposed

Summary 1.Wastage is a characteristic of all forms of further education, full-time and part-time. 2.Wastage can be defined in more than one way, and the severest definitions obviously include amongst the wastage many students who have benefited from their participation in further education. 3.Failure rates from first to final year in English Universities are at least 10 per cent on the average, to which have to be added the group—some 5 per cent—who withdrew for reasons other than academic failure. This gives an average total wastage of 15 per cent, from first to final year. 4.Even in the relatively superior conditions of university life and teaching, precise prognostication is not possible; therefore, either some failures must be admitted or some who would succeed must be excluded. To eliminate failures altogether would mean applying selection procedures that would exclude large numbers of those who now succeed. 5.Wastage is a product of multiple causation. Hence, there are no simple or sweeping remedies. On the other hand, such success as is achieved remains unknown because it is not recorded and published. 6.Wastage in technical education can be classified into three sorts: natural, built-in and imposed. 7.Natural wastage is largely, if not entirely, irremediable (in the given conditions). It is valuable to identify it, important to estimate its size and sensible to devote to other causes efforts to improve the situation. It seems likely that natural wastage amounts to something like 25 per cent of the entrants to a five year part-time course—although there is no evidence of a convincing kind to support any particular figure. 8.Built-in wastage is a feature of part-time technical courses. It could very easily be much reduced. The place to begin is with craft courses which are not hedged in by so many Rules and such powerful vested interests as are the National Certificates. The steps to take are simple, and are within the competence of Principals and Heads of Department. The examination results now available annually should be used differently; in particular, the results in the ‘noncrucial’ years should not, in general, preclude students from passing on to the next year of the course. Gross built-in wastage on the average five-year course amounts to 70 per cent or so, having allowed an off-set for students who repeat a year. 9.It will be seen that 70 per cent built-in wastage plus 25 per cent natural wastage amounts to 95 per cent wastage over a five-year course. A success rate of 5 per cent in such courses is often exceeded—it may rise to 25 per cent, but a success rate even lower is by no means unknown, though the recording of some such instances by Lady Williams appears to have shocked many of her readers. 10.The advantage of going through a course may be quite real to a student who does not gain a certificate. Presumably this is truer of craft courses than of other courses. 11.Imposed wastage is remediable to some extent, though not perhaps as completely as might be hoped. At present there is much emphasis on selection, and it is most desirable that selection procedures should be improved. 12.Even more important as an antidote to imposed wastage is an improved teaching force: improved in numbers and quality. This is not to say that teaching in technical colleges is bad—far from it. There always have been excellent teachers in technical colleges and their numbers have grown hearteningly since 1945. Nor is it to say that the need is for more graduates or more teachers with second degrees—although such are most welcome. What is needed is greater total numbers of teachers and far more whose main interests are in their pupils, in the difficulties of their pupils, in teaching rather than in scholarship. Senior lecturers promoted to that position because they are good teachers, because they are educationists, are more important to a college than those elevated on the strength of the letters after their names. Both kinds are valuable. Some splendid fellows are themselves of both kinds. 13.In approaching any particular problem of wastage, it is necessary to know, or to estimate, how much is natural, how much built-in, how much imposed. Obviously the built-in wastage figure needs breaking down. It includes the out-and-out duds and slackers, a small number, probably no more than 2 per cent or 3 per cent over a five-year wastage of 70 per cent. It includes also the weak and doubtful who just don't make the grade—perhaps 7 per cent or 8 per cent more. And it includes a fair number affected by imposed wastage in its many forms—perhaps 25 per cent. The breakdown in a five-year wastage of 95 per cent in a part-time course might then take the form: Where wastage in such a course amounts to 75 per cent of the first-year entrants, and on the assumption that natural wastage is at the same rate in all such courses, the total wastage might be classified as follows: No validity is claimed for these figures. They are presented to sharpen the idea that an attack on wastage can only be made if it is known what is being attacked. For example on this analysis, in a five-year course with 75 per cent wastage, improved selection could only hope to affect a proportion of the imposed wastage plus the weaklings, i.e. a proportion of 25 per cent of the total wastage of 75 per cent. A somewhat higher proportion of this 25 per cent wastage could probably be prevented by improved teaching. 14.The need for enquiries and research into these problems is acute. Much information is available, and ready for analysis. On the other hand, on some problems nothing at all has been done and no information exists. For instance, no college, so far as is known, has systematically followed up the part-time students of one year who do not enrol for a succeeding year. Such an enquiry, done over one or two typical National Certificate and craft courses might be illuminating. 15.The price paid for a part-time system of education includes a high wastage rate. As long as part-time education goes on, wastage will be very high. As a route to a major qualification—professional or craft—part-time education is a wasteful anachronism; in its purely evening form it should be abolished immediately.