HC Deb 16 February 2000 vol 344 cc577-8W
Dr. Lynne Jones

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what data he has collated on the number of people participating in higher education, broken down by socio-economic group, in each of the last three years. [109980]

Mr. Wicks

Figures for the number of acceptances by social class are given in the table.

Home domiciled accepted applicants to full-time and sandwich 1

undergraduate courses in the United Kingdom through the

Universities and Colleges Admission System (UCAS) by social

class 2 1997 to 1999
Year of entry
1997 1998 1999
A Professional 39,644 38,510 38,864
B Intermediate 117,360 115,615 115,667
C1 Skilled non-manual 44,804 44,207 44,474
C2 Skilled manual 37,333 35,610 36,286
D Partly skilled 23,507 22,692 23,097
E Unskilled 5,620 5,329 5,538
Not known 35,050 36,257 39,139
Total 303,318 298,220 303,065
1 UCAS collect data on full-time and sandwich courses only, therefore no information on part-time acceptances is available.
2 For students aged under 21, the social class is that of their parents, for those aged 21 and over the social class is that of the student.