Special courses

What is required is a series of courses, designed on the one hand to correct specific deficiencies and on the other to provide students with necessary skills: these courses to be of maximum efficiency should be systematically planned and introduced, tested for effectiveness, and revised where necessary. The present facilities while welcomed by students provide little or no feedback to the organisers of those facilities; and surely a course without an evaluative tallow-up is not capable of built-in improvement?

In terms of guidance and tutorial functions it is reasonable to observe that members of the academic staff can function in some ways like a counsellor: Many already assist in this way. It has already been observed that one of the ways in which students are most inadequately prepared by the secondary schools is in the field of basic mathematical skills.⁶

It can legitimately be argued that such deficiencies should be corrected before entry to the university; furthermore members of the academic staff, already under considerable pressures as a result of staff shortages, can, and do argue that while they may have the inclination they do not have the time to provide pre-university level courses.