HEPI number Policy Note 53
Observers of education often assume measuring non-continuation – or, more colloquially, ‘drop-out’ rates – among students must be straightforward. Seemingly, someone enrols on a course and they then either finish it or they do not. In fact, there are numerous different ways to measure the phenomenon of noncontinuation that make it challenging to discuss, including:
1. leaving a course in the first few days or the first few weeks – so early that the student in question makes little burden on the student support system and does insufficient learning for it to be meaningful;
2. not progressing from year 1 to year 2 for full-time students (assuming the course is longer than one year) or not progressing from year 2 to year 3 for part-time students;
3. not completing the original learning objective that a student had when they enrolled;
