Researchers have called for more support for students with BTECs at university as a new study finds that they are nearly twice as likely to drop out than undergraduates with A-levels.
The study, published Wednesday, found that while 60 percent of graduating BTEC students complete college at least 2:1, they are 1.4 times less likely than first-year students to do so.
Funded by the Nuffield Education Charitable Foundation, the report is titled Educational choices at age 16-19 and university outcomes It looked at how students’ backgrounds, entry qualifications, and entry topics affected their educational experience at university.
It is hoped, the Nuffield Foundation says, that a better understanding of the differences in students’ experiences with BTECs and A-levels will reduce the educational barriers that students from lower socioeconomic groups face while studying at university.
The researchers found that even after accounting for a “rich set” of demographic and prior achievement data, the probability of a BTEC student dropping out of university was 11.4 percent, compared to 6 percent for a similar first-level student.
In addition to looking at university dropouts, the study also looked at the entry qualifications for students who repeated their first year. While the number of students repeating the study is lower than the number of dropouts (only 4.3 percent of the overall probability, compared to eight percent), the researchers found a similar pattern. Students with BTECs were found to be 1.7 times more likely to repeat their first year than those with A levels.
Despite BTECs accepting college entry qualifications for some time, and investing millions of pounds in expanding participation, researchers reported that students with BTECs had a 24.9% chance of getting a degree rating below 2:1, compared to 17.7% for first-level students. This gap is larger for students at lower socioeconomic levels.
Dropout rates are low in the UK compared to other countries, and so is the number of students repeating their first year. The report also highlights that BTECs are a very effective way to obtain a degree for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
The student groups studied by the researchers for this work are pre-dated by BTC. This means that it is unknown what these performance gaps would look like for recent generations of undergraduates, who would otherwise have experienced more external assessment as part of BTEC.
The differences in academic performance while studying at university, detected using module scores, are thought to be a large part of explaining the differences in the educational experience of college students arriving with BTECs compared to those with A levels.
The report states that “For a university with data on the method of assessment by first-year unit, we find that the performance gap between students with A-levels and BTEC is greater for units assessed at least partially by written examination, compared to units assessed By coursework only.
Schools, colleges and universities should be more aware of the differences between teaching and assessment at A-level and BTEC when advising about post-18 options, the report says. Furthermore, designing courses to try to bridge these gaps, which disproportionately affect students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, rather than simply focusing on their recruitment, should be an integral part of expanding university participation.
The report’s findings present some challenge to the government’s current approach to reforming third-level qualifications, the Federation of Model Six Colleges (SFCA) said. James Keewen, Executive Vice President of SFCA, told FE . week: “This welcome research from Nuffield shows that the vast majority complete their studies and graduate at a ratio of at least 2:1. The report provides further evidence that revocation of the majority of BTEC qualifications will stop many disadvantaged young people from progressing to university in the future – a major concern of the Alliance Protection of students’ choice.
“If ministers are serious about making evidence-based decisions about the future of these qualifications, they should respond to the concerns in this report by temporarily halting funding withdrawals until data for reformed BTECs is available, and then looking at the evidence in the round, rather than Focus exclusively on comparing results between A-level students and BTEC students.”