§ Mr. Anthony CoombsTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many people achieved a recognised engineering qualification at degree or post-degree level in Britain in 1987; and what the comparable figures were for France and West Germany.
Mr. JacksonThe latest readily available information is for 1983 and is given in the table together with qualification rates. Higher education below degree level is included because the assignment of courses between the degree and sub-degree categories tends to vary from country to country.
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Home students successfully completing higher education programmes in engineering, trade, craft and industry in 1983 1France 1 2West Germany 3United Kingdom Qualifiers/thousands Below degree level 17.3 14.0 20.5 First degree 11.5 17.7 14.4 First degree and below 28.8 31.7 35.0 Post graduate 2.4 0.8 2.3 First degree and post-graduate 13.9 18.6 16.8 Total higher education 31.2 32.5 37.3 Qualification rates4/ percentages Below degree level 2.0 1.5 2.3 First degree 1.4 1.8 1.6 First degree and below 3.4 3.3 3.9 Post graduate 0.3 0.1 0.3 First degree and post-graduate 1.6 1.9 1.9 Total higher education 3.7 3.4 4.2 11 May include a small number of students from abroad completing programmes in trade, craft and industry. 2 Some below degree level data estimated. 3 Includes estimates for professional qualifications at public sector institutions. Excludes private sector institutions. 4To aid comparison, the qualification rate used is the percentage of successful completions relative to a derived single year group. The latter is calculated by taking the total populations for the ages providing at least 70 per cent. of the qualifiers and dividing by the number of ages involved. For the United Kingdom this is the population of ages 21 to 24 divided by 4. OECD recommend this procedure.