OAT Exam Results

[aaaaa]

OAT publish the % of JAA ATPL exam success. Can someone please advise why in all the latest results the sponsored students had better % marks than self-sponsored.

Am I to believe that people who have found their own £55K plus to pay for the course are less dedicated to achieving the best results than those who have not paid (or at least not as much).

I also dont believe that all the self sponsored students are not as bright, dedicated etc as the sponsored ones.

I am not knocking those with sponsorship - the lucky few - but am interested in your views out there.

[oxford blue]

Khalifa, mainly, though there a few other (foreign) airlines and government organisations as well.

[aaaaa]

Oxford Blue

Not quite sure what your reply means about Khalifa but if you can shed some light on the exam results that would be good

[oxford blue]

Air Khalifa. Big Algerian airline.

[aaaaa]

Oxford Blue

Sorry but the original question was about exam results at OATs, nothing to do with any algerian airline - large or otherwise.

Would be grateful if you could advise aoubt original post

Ta

[moo]

there are BA students there now according to the BA News 'cos they have just held some fancy do for charity........

[Alex Whittingham]

'Sponsored' students have been through a selection procedure that, in most cases, picks as few as one in a thousand applicants according to ability. It is not really a surprise that their marks are best. 'Self-sponsored' candidates are folk who paid for the course themselves and, whilst dedicated, were not subject to the same selection process.

These published statistics have deserve to be challenged for some time. At the very least the statistics are incomplete, they leave out distance learning students but give the impression that they relate to all their candidates.

[Kapooley]

Warning: Statistics is the science that says if your feet are in the freezer and your heads in the cooker, you'll be nicely warm!!!!!!!!!;) ;)

[aaaaa]

Alex

Thanks for response. I realize that the sponsored students are the real hi flyers but I cant believe that some of the other 999/1000 dont have at least the same abilities - they all couldn't be chosen. I would have thought investing the substantial amounts required would have been incentive enough to be up with the best (at least sometimes), lets face it, they have massive loans to pay back so have to make sure they are as good as the rest.

[pugzi]

Many self sponsered students freely admit that they do not have the natural aptitude as the "selected" sponsered students and will therefore will not do as well. They know it will take them longer to pass the exams, more hours etc. But they know it and get on with the job. They try just as hard, if not harder because of what is at stake. Sponsered students will always out perform the self sponsered if taken as a whole goup. They have been put through the "test" to pick out natural ability and apptitude. We are not all racing drivers, but the airline will of course pick out those with the talent for it.
But I have seen self sponsered students with an aptitude and ability that knocks the socks off the average sponsered student.
Don't for one minute think I'm saying ALL self sponsered have less ability. There will be a string of abuse at me if i did.

Just accept and be who you are. It helps when you dont kid yourself. If you get 100% or 76%, you have PASSED.

Good luck

[sally at pprune]

They may publish groundschool pass rates, but you try and get them to tell you their CPL and IR pass rates ;)

Rumour has it that those are well down on average - one of the reasons I've chosen someone else to train with.

[Ali Ronn]

There are many critisisms levelled at Oxford some of which are fair and some of which are not. I have to say the quality of the ground school cannot, in my opinion, be faulted.

My course finished about a year ago and several self sponsored students achieved first time ground exam passes which exceeded the 'sponsored' results.

Oxford does not however (or at least did not at the time) screen self funded applicants for ability. But why should they? If you have the cash then it must be up to you to decide whether or not you have what it takes...

Khalifa, by the way, was the answer to 'who is sponsoring at the moment'. Fancy emigrating?

[buttline]

Do the results matter as long as you pass? I would have thought so but have also heard the opposite viewpoint expressed. I've also heard things mentioned like "full pass" (all passed first attempt).

If so, what marks are considered 'good'? Also, if someone averages 85% and passes all first time, how does that stack up against someone who got 97% on re-sits? If it's the final result that counts, I'd make sure I fail on my first 3 attempts and get 100% on the 4th - doesn't make sense right? - so it can't matter that much.

I was under the impression employers don't have access to your CAA exam record anyway?

[Teroc]

One thing to add as well.

Oxford ask/advise, quite strongly, that their integrated students who dont do well on their school finals do not sit the JAA exams.

While I was there 4 people from one "sponsored" class were pulled from the JAA sittings. While they might recommend the same thing to their modular students they dont have a tendency to follow it up so rigorously.

This will definitely affect the integrated average

[diamodel]

Are the exam results for self sponsored studends broken down into those taking the modular/distance learning routes and those taking the integrated ATPL or are they all combined.

I admire anyone who can do the modular/distance learning route -talk about discipline.

I am not OAT bashing - would just like to know as I am in the process of making big expensive decisions myself.

[oxford blue]

Oxford's "self-sponsored" results include those doing the integrated course and those doing the 26 week full-time modular groundschool, but not the distance learning modular students.

There is nothing sinister in this - we are not trying to 'massage' the figures. But distance learning students make their own arrangements to take the exam, sometimes at Glasgow, sometimes at Silsoe, etc. We only find out their results if they bother to let us know. Some do, some don't. We suspect that those who do are more likely to be the ones who have passed and that this will bias the results in too favourable a direction. So, in the interests of ethical business practice, we leave them out when publishing our figures.

However, we're quite happy to explain how we compile the figures, so there are no dark secrets here.

[Keith.Williams.]

Oxford Blue

The OATs statistics sound very good indeed, and I have no doubt that the school is justifiably proud of them. But I do think it would be helpful if you could explain how the "back classed sudents" appear in the figures.

In a previous string in which you quoted the OATS first time pass rates, it became apparent that some low scoring students are routinely invited to delay their exams. This is a perfectly rational practice, but there is a danger that it might skew the statistics more than a little.

If a standard course is about 30 students, the delaying of 4 (as indicated in a post above) means that only 87% take the exam
on time. If 94% of these pass the exams, it means that less than 82% of the total has completed training on time and passed first time.

Can you please give a comparison for the following groups?

What percentage of students are back classed?

What percentage of all students achieve first sitting passes in all subjects.

What percentage of students achieve first sitting passes in all subjects without being back classed.

This is not intended to be a dig at you or OATs. A considerable number of the students attending my POF and PERF consolidation courses have informed me that the majority of the students at their school (not OATS) fail these subjects at last once.

[oxford blue]

I'll try. The only trouble with answering these sort of queries is that even when I do it in perfectly good faith (which I do - as I repeatedly make clear, I am not employed by the Marketing Department), suspicious people accuse me of hiding facts and try to use it as a way of beating Oxford about the head and generally hurling abuse at us on this forum. It is much easier not to respond - that way you don't get dragged into acrimonious and increasingly sterile debates about points of trivia.

That said, I'll answer what I can of Keith's questions.

A standard course isn't 30 students. We don't like taking more than 18 on any one course. We did, when PPSC and 4Fforces failed and we were inundated with demands to help those who had been let down and, greatly against our inclination, ran CBL06, which was more than 20. It didn't really work terribly well, by our standards, and now that some of the Khalifa courses have passed through into the flying phase, we have have been able to find enough classrooms to be able to split them into 06A and 06B, which we think is better.

It isn't typical to give as many as 4 on a course a futher 4 weeks study before they take JAAs. THe way we do it it to split the 14 exams into 2 phases, mainly Techs in Phase 1 (8 subjects), followed by VFR flying, followed by JAA Navs in Phase 2 (6 subjects), followed by IFR flying, including about 50 hours Seneca. Two weeks before each set of JAA exams, the students take a mock JAA exam (which we call School Finals) which we believe is either exactly representative of the JAA standards or, in some cases, just very slightly harder.

We make an assessment of the students' performance on all 8 (Phase 1) or all 6 (Phase 2) School Finals and decide whether, on balance, we think they're going to pass most of them (not all of them). If we think that they probably won't (we let them get on with it if we think they might just fail one or two) we ask them to delay. We give them help and extra tuition - mostly extra private study - they know what they've got to do - but also private sessions with individual instructors. We don't do this to improve our exam percentages - we didn't even start using this for advertising except as an afterthought. We do it in the best interests on the student. We don't want them to have to take too many bites of the cherry in order to pass - the weak ones might run out of numbers of attempts, and also we don't want the 18 month clock to start one month too early if it's not necessary.

To answer Keith's specific points, we don't compile statistics for delaying students by 4 weeks, but my guess is that it's less than 10%.

We don't compile statistics for students who pass everything on first attempt, but my guess is that it's about 60 - 70%.

I would guess that very few indeed who achieve full passes first time have been held back. We don't hold people back unless we have real doubt about their ability to pass first time and so those that we do are weak anyway. Often, they still don't pass everything first time, but at least they only fail one or two, and that makes the re-sits manageable.

The reason that we don't do any more detailed breakdowns is because we don't have any need for this information. Our computer already produces the statistics we quote because it's programmed that way, and it's easy to stick the results on the website. But they are not produced for advertising purposes and so to get authentically correct answers to your queries would mean my going through all the results over the last 2 years to break them down into the format you require. I'm not going to take time to do that - I'm too busy teaching students and re-writing the Oxford Jeppesen notes. But nobody at Oxford has anything to hide and so I've given you a 'feeling in the water' best guess estimate. It may not be completely accurate, but I think that it's about right.

I hope that that helps.

[fly-half]

I'm a student at OAT and am half way through Phase 1 so been there just over 2 months! I'm fortunate to be self-sponsored and right from my first day there I realised that I had come to probably the best FTO in Europe with amazing facilities and ground instruction!

There are only 17 people on my course and only two of them are sponsored. We all get on very well with eachother in the group and hope that everyone pulls through the Phase 1 exams in one piece. There's a great rapport with all the instructors and their concern for us in passing the course is taken very much as genuine.

In reply to the original question regarding the difference between sponsored and self-sponsored students, it is very clear that the sponsored students have gone through a rigorous and intensive selection process (in preparation for an intensive course!) and have the CONSTANT PRESSURE of being inder the spotlight from the sponsor airline. They are also invariably placed in the on-site accomodation where they have no other option but to study! Having these guys round to my house with my other housemates on the course for dinner and they are in Heaven, so glad to be away from the airport for a few hours! Self-sposored students like myself are aware how fortunate they are to have the health and money to do flight training and now it is up to us to prove we have the aptitude. That's all any of us can do now. I strongly believe that being at OAT is the best option over any FTO - ask me an a year and I hope to say the same thing!

[Keith.Williams.]

Oxford Blue

Thanks for that. It may be just your best guestimate but you are in a better position than most people to make such a guestimate.

If I may precis your comments for the benefit of potential customers and their financial backers (parents):

A student of average ability, applying average effort:

a. Can expect to pass 94% of subjects at the first attempt.
b. Has a 65% probabilty of passing all subjects at first atempt.
c. Has a 35% probabilty of needing at least one resit.
d. Has a 10% probability of requiring 4 weeks of additional
training before making their first attempts, in which case
they are likely to require one or two resits.
e. Class sizes are currently less than 20 but might increase as
the business recovers from the current downturn.

I realise that these are only estimates, bur they are probably more useful than the bald statement that "the first sitting pass rate is 94%"

If you would amend any aspects of this list that you feel are unfair, we will then have a reasonable starting point, from which potential customers can compare other ftos.

Personally I think these are good reults, which compare well with those achieved by most ftos in the old CAA system. My own gut feeling for that time is that abour 80% of all students passed all subjects at the first attempt. Of the remaining 20%, about 80% then passed at the second attempt.

[oxford blue]

The only point I would take issue with is the second part of (e). The current downturn has not affected us much in terms of student throughput because of the Khalifa contract, which has helped to see us through. We are running at near to our maximum capacity.

We have an intentional policy of not increasing class sizes. This is partly because of the normal concerns about instructor-student ratios and partly a matter of sheer logistics - most of our classrooms don't have room for more than 18. We can manage a class of 20, but the room allocation needs a lot of planning. When we had a class of more than 20, there was only one classroom they could use and, anyway, as I said, we didn't feel that they should be disadvantaged compared with everyone else - they were paying the same fees.

So I don't think that the class sizes will ever go above 18 - perhaps 20, at a pinch.

[Yorkshire-Pud]

Anything more than 75% is wasted effort !

[Keith.Williams.]

Oxford Blue

My suggestion that class sizes might rise above 20 when the upturn arrives was based on your statement that since the Kalifa students have moved on to flying you have recently found classroom space to split the courses. I suspect OATS are unwilling to give any guarantee that classes will not rise above 20 in the future, so it should be viewed as a possibility. One of my students told me that he attended an OATs consolidation course of between 24 and 26 recently.

More importantly, we have now moved to a point where potential students have some meaningful statistics on which to make their judgements. It would be nice to think that the other ftos will now volunteer similar data, but I suspect they will not. Potential students must therefore ensure that they ask the right questions (and draw the appropriate conclusions if answers are not forthcoming), when looking for a place to invest their money.

[aaaaaa]

Thanks all of you for the interesting and informative comments.

My original question was genuine and not OAT bashing in any way.

I am in the middle of researching which fto to apply to to take my integrated ATPL considering the massive investment involved. As someone said - sponsorship? what is sponsorship??????

I too would be extremely interested in the Cabair and BAE results - further research is called for!!!

Oh well - off to the day job now - got to carry on earning so that I can reach for the sky

By the way, if Sally reads this - I am female and work in basically a male orientated environment in ATC - no problems - they are all great, helpful and supportive - also the commercial pilots I know - all say - go for it, there is nothing better!!

[PFD]

.....the published results on the website

http://www.oxfordaviation.net/corporate/services/news/exams.htm

start by saying;

JAA ATPL EXAM SUCCESS
PLEASE NOTE THESE RESULTS DO NOT INCLUDE OUR DISTANCE LEARNING STUDENTS - ONLY FULL TIME COURSE AT OXFORD


I fail to see how this implies that it includes distance learners

[Alex Whittingham]

Since you ask, they have only just added this caveat to their website. Up until very recently the Oxford marketing team pointedly failed to mention that their published results covered only the best half of their students. To his credit Oxford Blue was the first to confirm the distance learning students were not included.

Oxford apologists would also presumably be able to explain why their banner ad (now removed) claimed that more than 90% of their students passed everything first time, the stats now being given seem to suggest rather less than this.

I assume the reason that they are quoting me as a 'jealous competitor' is that I complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that many of the statements they made in their adverts were untrue (best in the world, oxford students have a better chance of leading industry jobs etc...). Being unable to substantiate any of them they have had to retract some and modify others. Tough luck, I reckon.

[Keith.Williams.]

OXFORD BLUE
Having just looked at the OATS Website quoted above, I see that it states that the figures are based on 6513 examinations taken by 727 students. This gives an average of only 8.96 examinations per student. I realise that some students are currently only part way through their training, but this seems to be a very low figure. Can you shed any light on how these figures work.


ALEX
Now that Oxford Blue has produced some more detailed statistics for OATS, can you do the same for BGS. As stated above, I am not trying to have a dig at any school, but realistic information would be very useful to potential students. I recognise the problem with distance learners not sending back results, but that shouldn't preclude the provision of some useful data

Suiatble headings might include:

What is your standard time for completion of the two modules of your ATPL course?

What percentage of students complete the course within the standard time?

What percentage of examinations does the average student pass at the first attempt?

What percentage of students require more than the standard consolidation course before taking the exams?

[Megaton]

I'm sure Alex doesn't need any help but I passed 14/14 with BGS in about 15 months but that included closure of PPSC, birth of our son and 11 Sep which had a major impact for me work-wise. No extra tuition required beyond the normal refresher.

Incidentally, I understand that Oxford frown upon school's that merely teach people to pass the exams. Why is it then that they place so much emphasis upon feedback from their students. I'm not saying that feedback is bad but it is disingenuous to imply that they are schooling future training captains when so much of their courses revolve around practice exams.

Ho hum. We haven't had this debate for at least 3 weeks! :p

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Whilst i understand the desire to ascertain which is the "best" groundschool it is largely a fruitless endeavour.

Both OATS and BGS run excellent courses with which I would not have a moment hesitation in placing a recommendation.

Bigger deciding factors would be location, price or 'the vibe' you get when you walk in the door.

The same goes for nearly every other well established groundschool in the UK.

There are no definitive statistics on groundschool performance collated in the same way by an independent source such as the CAA. In the absence of this all you have is student claims followed in this case by staff/owner claims.

Whilst everybody is posting with the best of intentions I think this thread is becoming a little pointless.

Carry on if you want though.

Cheers,

WWW

[Alex Whittingham]

I'm sorry Keith, you have completely missed the point.

The truth is there are no sound statistics here, only numbers which the charitable would call 'an opinion'. They can't be verified and, as we have seen, it is too easy for an advertiser to create a false impression. I could give you my opinion, but it would be worth as little as Oxford's. Until the CAA publish authenticated stats the only schools that really know their distance learning results are those with so few students they can count them on one hand.

It is a shame that we have been dragged down this road. Statistics look very convincing, we tend to believe them because we assume that adverts in the UK must be legal, honest and truthful. It devalues the whole industry when Joe Bloggs Aviation or some such makes exaggerated statements they can't prove, it takes away an element of trust.

[Send Clowns]

You thinking of anyone in particular, Alex, with so few students? :D

I would support what Alex says. From what I know (and I have given private tuition to students from many distance-learning courses, and students strugging to pass after full-time) all the groundschools mentioned so far here are good. There are others that are (or, in two much-missed cases, were) good.

However trust statistics as you would trust Gordon Brown - i.e. don't!

[PFD]

Alex

I presume this means you won't be publishing any figures here.

I loved the politicians statement ;)

Regards to all

[Alex Whittingham]

Well I can tell you my opinion. My opinion is that while I'm sure Oxford are very good we are unquestionably better. I have thoroughly researched this point of view and of the people I asked in the street 98% agreed with me except the ones I decided not to include in the survey because they looked unreliable. Unfortunately I can't prove this because my dog ate the original survey data. Can we drop this?

[PFD]

With pleasure

[Keith.Williams.]

ALEX,

It is possible that I have missed your point, but that is not the only point of interest here.

As I said above, I accept the fact that many distance learners will not return their results, so any pass rate statistic will be incomplete. But surely you are able to give accurate figures for the average duration of study and the number of students who require extra coinsolidation from you before taking their exams.
Is it not also possible to give figures for those who have returned their results. If you wish you can add the health warning " These results are incomplete"

As I have said before, this is not intended to be a dig at any fto, but ,merely an attempt to get some usefull information published. The originator of this string was clearly attempting to do just that. So far, you have assisted him by criticising the OATs stats but have offered none of your own.

Your school has an excellent reputation and clearly provides an outstandingly good product. If any fto is able to produce credible statistics it is probably yours. I have heard the cry that such stats will never be possible, but they also said that about heavier than air flying machines! Unfortunately all of the ftos appear to see this as a game of "I'll show you mine, but only if you show me yours first".

I also recognise the fact that comments such as those made by Send Clowns are unlikely to encourage anyone to stick their necks out and offer information.