OAT Exam Results
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OAT Exam Results
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.
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.
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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
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
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'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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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
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
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Selective Quotes
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.
Rumour has it that those are well down on average - one of the reasons I've chosen someone else to train with.
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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?
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?
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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?
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?
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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
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
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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!
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!
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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.
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.