单选题Direction: In this part, you will have 15 minutes w go over the passage quickly and anger the questions on Anger Sheet 1. For question , choose the best answer from the four choices marked A, B, C, D.
In or out?
　　British further education colleges did not traditionally have any concerns about student dropout, because the origins of the sector were in vocational apprenticeship training for employers where the apprentices could not &op out without endangering their job. In the 70s, this sector began to expand into more general education courses, which were seen both as an alternative to school for 16 to 18-year-old and a second chance for adults. The philosophy was mainly liberal
with students regarded as adults who should not be heavily monitored, but rather free to make their own decisions; it was not unction to hear academic staff argue ?that attendance at classes was ?purely voluntary.
　　In the 80s, with an increased consciousness of equal opportunities, the focus of the further education colleges moved to widening participation, encouraging into colleges students from previously under-represented groups, particularly from ethnic minorities. This, in turn, led to a curriculum which was more representative of the new student body. For example,there were initiatiatives to ensure the incorporation of literate by black writers into A level literature courses history ?syllabuses were altered to move beyond a purely Euro centric view of the world; and geography syllabuses began to look at the politics of maps.
　　A turning point came in 1991 with the publication of a report on completion rates by the government inspection body for education, Her Majesty's Inspectorate for England and Wales, (HMI 1991 ). However, this report was based on academic staff explanations of why students had left. It suggested that the vast majority .left either for personal reasons or because they had found employment and that only 10% left for reasons that could in any way be attributed to the college.
　　Meanwhile, Britain had been going through the Thatcher's revolution and, in parallel to the Reagan politics of the US, a key principle was the need to reduce taxation drastically. At this point (and to a large extent still ), further and higher education colleges were almost entirely funded from the public purse. There had been many cuts in this funding through the 80s, but no one had really looked at value for money.
　　However, in the early .90s, the Audit Commission with Office of Standards in Education (OFSTED) (the new version of HMI) turned the spotlight onto further education and published a seminal report, Unfinished Business (Audit Commission and OFSTED 1993), which showed that drop-out was happening on a significant scale and, crucially, given the politics of the time,attributed a cost to the state of ￡500 million, arguing that this was a waste of public ( i. e.taxpayers) money.
　　To quote Yorke (199