That is a worryingly high failure rate, too much cost cutting by bean counters no doubt with the college staff taking all the flack.
We started as a course of 60 and 44 of us graduated after 3 ratings with most failures at the procedural rating, as they no longer do that you would think the pass rate would be higher. Although the pay may account for some of it, not attracting some potentially excellent candidates, I would find it hard to believe that the selection process is letting the system down so badly.
Reducing the length of courses is to the long term detriment of NATS and we risk losing people who just needed a little longer at the college ?