Academic writing is often considered to be a weakness in contemporary students, while good reporting and writing skills are highly valued by graduate employers. A number of universities have introduced writing centres aimed at addressing this problem; however, the evaluation of such centres is usually qualitative. The paper seeks to consider the efficacy of a writing centre by looking at the impact of attendance on two “real world” quantitative outcomes – achievement and progression.
Data mining was used to obtain records of 806 first‐year students, of whom 45 had attended the writing centre and 761 had not.
A highly significant association between writing centre attendance and achievement was found. Progression to year two was also significantly associated with writing centre attendance.
Further, quantitative evaluation of writing centres is advocated using random allocation to a comparison condition to control for potential confounds such as motivation.
