§ Mr. Hordernasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will publish a table, from international sources available to him, of the proportion of school leavers who enter higher and further education in the United Kingdom, France, West Germany and the United States of America.
§ Mr. WaldegraveInformation is not available in the form requested, as routine international publications do 95W not distinguish students proceeding straight from school to higher and further education from mature entrants. Information is given in the OECD publication "Educational Statistics in OECD Countries" (1981) which shows new entrants—irrespective of age—to full-time and sandwich courses of higher education level 3 of the ISCED—(International Standard Classification for Educational Statistics)—as a percentage of the typical age group encompassing most new entrants. However it would appear that whereas the United Kingdom has a significant proportion of students on part-time courses of higher education the other three countries classify all their students as being on full-time courses. The following table gives the information in the OECD publication which is for 1976 together with the corresponding figures for the United Kingdom, including part-time students.
Country Typical*age group Relevant†Population All new entrants as a percentage of the relevant population (000) France 18–20 844.3 27.7 West Germany 19–21 873.7 19.2 USA 18 4226.5 42.8 United Kingdom‡ —full-time and sandwich students only 18–19 850.5 22.7 —full-time and part-time including Open University 33.9 * Age group encompassing at least 80 per cent, of full-time new entrants. † Population for the ages specified in column 1 divided by the number of years for example, for the United Kingdom. 18 + 19-year-olds divided by 2. ‡ The figures published in the OECD book for the United Kingdom were in error. The figures shown are for 1977–78.