ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses younger student progress in greater detail in an attempt to ‘explain’ the variability in performance and to identify more precisely the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful students. Throughout this analysis a successful student is defined as one who gained some course credit at the end of the first year and success rates are calculated from a base of all provisionally registered students. The chapter begins by looking more closely at the previous educational qualifications held by younger students. The younger students were most successful on the Arts foundation course with 45% gaining a course credit. Their success rates were lowest for Maths and for Technology. The chapter describes the motivational factors and potential study problems. It examines whether the reasons given by the younger students for entering the Open University and the study problems which they anticipated were related to first year performance.
