Purpose: 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. Design/methodology/approach: Data mining was used to obtain records of 806 first-year students, of whom 45 had attended the writing centre and 761 had not. Findings: A highly significant association between writing centre attendance and achievement was found. Progression to year two was also significantly associated with writing centre attendance. Originality/value: Further, quantitative evaluation of writing centres is advocated using random allocation to a comparison condition to control for potential confounds such as motivation.