Lifelong Learning Project - School Inclusion - Preventing Early School Leaving

Dropping Out: A Study of Early Leavers from Higher Education - 2003

Rhys Davies and Peter Elias

Department for Education and Skills

United Kingdom 2003

Research Report No.386

English

English

Slightly dated but comprehensive report aimed at trying to find out why so many students drop out of higher education and how the drop out rate could be reduced.

The main influencers identified then were:

A mistaken choice of course (24% of respondents)
Financial problems (18% of respondents)
Personal problems (14% of respondents)

The main factors which would have encouraged them to stay on were:

More financial support (18.7% of respondents)
Encouragement from tutors (12.2% of respondents)
Ability to change course (9.4% of respondents)
More advice prior to entry (8.8% of respondents)

Interesting report but I found the content disappointing in that lessons do not appear to have been learned since 2003.

Many of the reasons and beneficial actions identified then were again identified as reasons and actions which would have helped, during our interviews conducted in 2008, for this project.

www.dcsf.gov.uk then put in document title in search box

Roger Murfin

Wilsthorpe Business & Enterprise College

Business Manager