Many of the students who drop out of MCAST realise that leaving the college “was not such a good idea in the first place” and, given the opportunity, would willingly resume their education and take up a new course of study, an Education Ministry spokesman told The Malta Independent on Sunday.
MCAST will continue to satisfy this demand as well, because apart from 120 full-time day courses, it also offers 300 evening class courses at different levels and of different duration, the spokesman added.
He was replying to questions following a statement made by Opposition education spokesman Evarist Bartolo who, in his recent criticism of the sector, said that 14 per cent of students who attended the Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology had dropped out during the past academic year.
While commenting that 86 per cent of students had continued their studies, which he described as being a considerable achievement, the spokesman pointed out that the college offers a second chance to students with different qualifications – including those who leave secondary school with no formal qualifications – in the hope that they may “re-engage to succeed”.
MCAST’s efforts “to be of restorative service to these students have been consistent and the results achieved encouraging,” said the spokesman. Before MCAST was established, these students abandoned their studies, whereas with MCAST, and using Mr Bartolo’s argument, “86 per cent have been saved”.
Statistics published recently show that 80 per cent of the students who sat for SEC exams were successful, the spokesman explained. Some of them join MCAST courses, while of the remaining 20 per cent, many take the MCAST Foundation courses.
“Foundation students are the most vulnerable and MCAST makes a huge effort to ensure that they get as much assistance as possible. Upon entry, these students are subjected to an appraisal test in order to establish what support they require. This means that mainstream students will get additional lectures, in small groups and in specific subjects like mathematics, English and Maltese.”
The number of learning support teachers has increased from six to 10 during the last scholastic year to meet the growing demand of students needing support. Last year, there were 184 students who requested support, up from 140 the previous year.
Year after year, MCAST “saves a large percentage of these Foundation learners. Hundreds of these students have been successful in progressing to higher levels of study. These students would have otherwise had nowhere to go and hardly any opportunity to succeed, had it not been for MCAST,” the spokesman said.
Through its Learning Support Unit, MCAST has also continued to invest in effective staff to strengthen the remedial facilities and programmes for students in Malta and Gozo. In fact, in order to extend students’ learning time, the college has just announced that, as from September 2010, it will be introducing an extra year of Foundation Studies at Level 1.
Asked why some students drop out during an academic year, the spokesman said that with the aim of identifying the reasons for withdrawal, the MCAST guidance and counselling office is in the process of completing a research exercise involving all the students who resigned from the Foundation Course during 2009-2010. “With the aim of finding new remedies, the College wants to determine which students and which identifiable groups are mostly at risk of non-completion,” he said.
The real reasons why students leave are complex and very often related to more than a single factor, he added. A significant number resign because of external factors. Research has shown that an inverse relationship exists between drop out and unemployment rates. “A percentage of students drop out because of personal family problems, others find it difficult to cope with the course. There may be those who have a lack of confidence in the quality of teacher support. Others withdraw because of unrealistically high expectations. Failure to pass one or more study units also discourages learners from facing up to the challenges of the programme.”
MCAST would obviously like to see all learners succeed, but realistically it has to be accepted that, desirable as this may be, a number of students will find the going tough. “Non-compliance with course requirements such as compulsory attendance, high absenteeism, poor classroom behaviour, a failure to submit work, are regularly cited as major causes for students’ disengagement. MCAST cannot be immune from such situations. Students who do not reach the required standards of skills and competences cannot be allowed to move on and progress to higher levels of study,” he said.
This year the college has re-examined the entry requirements for the various programmes and has carried out an exercise to ensure that these are harmonised across the various levels. The purpose of this exercise is to enable students to better identify what level of preparation they need in order to be able to cope with the course requirements and to check whether they have the necessary academic tools to complete the programme successfully.
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