An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1996-1998: THE RUDGE YEARS 125candidate. The term was subsequently endorsed, emphasising that it would havedemonstrably to bring the candidate to the appropriate exemplifying standard.Entry RequirementsA further provision taken over from ‘Competence and Commitment’ was that of specifyingminimum entry requirements to accredited courses - there was mounting evidence that someuniversities, to meet their requirements for funding, had dropped their entry standards toextremely low levels, resulting in large drop-out rates or dubious output standards. Theexemplifying entry standards in SARTOR 3 were declared as:for MEng courses 24 ‘A-Level’ points equivalent to 3 grade B passes;for BEng(Hons) courses 18 ‘A-Level’ points equivalent to 3 grade C passes;for degree courses leading to Incorporated Engineer, 11 ‘A-Level’ points.The entry standard requirement turned out to be by far the most contentious provision in thenew SARTOR with around 80-90% of the comments and objections being related to this.When the university Vice Chancellors were invited to consider the SARTOR97 draft, onlysix out of about 100 were in favour. However, a prior copy sent for comment to the DTI [stillthe EngC sponsoring Government Department] had elicited only one observation - thespecified entry standards for IEng were too low! The Royal Academy of Engineering alsoindicated broad support in a letter of 24 February 1997.All those universities that felt their students would not meet the requirements – and therewere many of them, especially the former polytechnics – argued, for example, that studentsfrom deprived backgrounds should be given a chance and that judgement should be made onoutput rather than input standards. This sounded persuasive until the practicalities wereconsidered.The IWG continued its work in the teeth of opposition but to help meet such pointsSARTOR-3 policy was modified on the basis of creating a “teachable group”. This was aterm introduced by Dr Judith Secker to denote a group of students of sufficient academicstrength to be able to assimilate the material at the necessary rate, yet allowing some latedevelopers to participate. Accordingly a “teachable group” was defined as one where at least80% of the class reached the exemplifying entry standard. The other 20% could be admittedat the discretion of the university and would not affect the case for accreditation. Also, to givetime for university engineering departments to acclimatise, the 80% rule was phased in,beginning with 50% for the 1999 entry.The Engineering Professors’ Council (EPC) was, at best, ambivalent about setting inputstandards, many of their members coming from the post-1991 universities – the formerpolytechnics where, in general, student aptitude as measured by ‘A’ Level grades was lowerthan that accepted by the older universities. EPC members voiced the view that the emphasisshould be on output standards - though that of course was part of the purpose of theaccreditation process. The EPC established a working party to develop an output standardsapproach and over the next few years produced a number of perceptive and useful paperswhich complemented SARTOR-3.© Engineering Council UK 2004