What happens after the course

The student's actual goal starts where your programme ends.

A student leaves an intensive programme for a university course, a workplace, or a life conducted in English, and the transition is where the gap between test-ready and functional becomes apparent. Programmes rarely hear about this because the student has gone.

Where a provider has a pathway relationship, the information exists and is worth collecting: how do students who came through this programme perform in their first semester, and where do they struggle. That is the only real measure of whether the teaching worked, and it is far more informative than exit scores.

The findings from providers who do collect it tend to be consistent. Academic writing at length, listening to unstructured speech at natural speed, and participating in discussion with native speakers are the recurring difficulties, and all three are underpractised in programmes oriented to test formats.

Adding even a small amount of authentic material, unscripted listening and extended writing addresses most of it, at the cost of time that currently goes to practice tests.

There is a further reason not to treat attendance punitively, which is that these students are frequently subject to attendance requirements with consequences beyond the school. That makes an honest conversation both more valuable and less likely, and a teacher who can distinguish between the pastoral conversation and the compliance process is in a much better position to have it.