§ Mr. Kenneth ClarkeTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what is the Government's latest estimate of the proportion of young people in England entering higher education at the beginning of the academic year 1999–2000 from(a) semi-skilled and (b) unskilled family backgrounds and (c) from disadvantaged localities; and what were the comparable figures for each of the last three years. [97153]
§ Mr. Wicks[pursuant to his reply, 4 November 1999, c. 321–22W]: I apologise that the figures for 1999 in my original reply related to all students, including mature students, whereas the figures for the years 1996 to 1998 covered students aged under 21. The following is a revised table showing the figures for under-21s in 1999.
Accepted young1 home domiciled applicants to full-time and sandwich undergraduate courses—United Kingdom Percentage Year of entry Proportion from social class2 1996 1997 1998 19993 IIIM—Skilled manual 16.4 16.7 16.9 17.0 IV—Partly skilled 7.5 7.6 7.6 7.7 V—Unskilled 1.9 2.0 1.9 2.0 1Aged under-21 2The classification system used to assign social class to undergraduates is that used in the National Census—the Standard Occupational Classification published by the Office for National Statistics 3Accepted applicants as at November 1999