HC Deb 16 November 1998 vol 319 cc405-7W
Mr. Hancock

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many higher education students have withdrawn from courses before completion in each of the last five years. [59341]

Mr. Mudie

The available information is given in the following table which is taken from the Departmental Annual Report 1998.

Academic Year Full-time and sandwich first degree drop-out rates1(percentage)
1991–92 17
1992–93 17
Academic Year Full-time and sandwich first degree drop-out rates1 (percentage)
1993–94 217-18
1994–95 217-18
1995–96 218-19

Notes: 1The institutional coverage of the drop-out rates is restricted to the former UFC universities in the UK and former polytechnics in England. first degree students in other UK HE institutions are excluded. Drop out covers all those leaving degree courses because of exam failure, ill health, personal and other reasons. It includes those switching to a lower level course but it excludes students transferring between degree courses or subjects. The rate for each academic year reflects the progression of students through the whole length of course. The rate is a weighted sum of the separate university and former polytechnic figures based upon graduate numbers. The calculation for the polytechnic drop-out rate is necessarily approximate because of significant limitations in the underlying data, in practice it has been necessary to estimate drop-out in 1991–92 to 1995–96 from the change in two successive years for a sample of around half of the 29 English former polytechnics. 2 A range is given because the introduction of a new data source made it difficult to measure drop-out accurately.

The Department is currently working with the higher education funding bodies in the UK to develop a method of calculating drop-out rates which can be applied to all UK higher education institutions and which takes into account the non-traditional routes that some students follow. These routes may include changing courses or institutions, repeating years or leaving higher education for a year or more before continuing their studies. The Department expects to be in a position to publish figures based upon the new methodology by the time of next year's Departmental Report.

Caroline Flint

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many students from Doncaster Borough gained higher education places for the academic years(a) 1998–99, (b) 1997–98, (c) 1996–97 and (d) 1995–96; and what proportion the figures represent of those leaving school at 18 years. [59305]

Mr. Mudie

Figures for the number of accepted applicants are given in the table. (Data for 1998 are not yet available.) It is not possible to show these figures as a proportion of the number of 18-year-old school leavers in Doncaster because school leaver data by age and local authority are not available centrally.

Accepted applicants to higher education courses1 from Doncaster local education authority
Accepted applicants
Year of entry Aged 18 All ages
1995 654 1,052
1996 653 1,042
1997 588 991
1Full-time and sandwich undergraduate courses

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