The UKCAT-12 study: educational attainment, aptitude test performance, demographic and socio-economic contextual factors as predictors of first year outcome in a cross-sectional collaborative study of 12 UK medical schools

Most UK medical schools use aptitude tests during student selection, but large-scale studies of predictive validity are rare. This study assesses the United Kingdom Clinical Aptitude Test (UKCAT), and its four sub-scales, along with measures of educational attainment, individual and contextual socio-economic background factors, as predictors of performance in the first year of medical school training

Some observations on the factors that influence strategies for educational improvement in post-1992 universities

Along with the rest of the education sector universities have been encouraged to develop strategies for educational improvement. The strategies that have emerged have been heavily influenced by the policies and priorities of the government and government agencies, such as the Quality Assurance Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council, and the targets set as a consequence of these policies and priorities. The government's emphasis has been on such things as fitness for purpose and value for money, whilst at the same time demanding high standards of quality assurance and widening participation. To what extent are the demands for educational improvement and the approach to this taken by the post-1992 university sector justified or supported by the current research in this area? It is the conclusion of this article that there is a paucity of directly relevant research, but that the research that does apply indicates that the sector needs to rethink its approach to educational improvement if it wishes to avoid the impoverishment of the education it provides