§ Dr. Lynne JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many home-domiciled applicants aged under 21 there were to(a) full-time and (b) sandwich undergraduate courses in each of the last three years; and how many acceptances there were onto such courses, indicating (i)the proportion of the age group in each socio-economic group this represents and (ii) the proportion of acceptances that were (A)to former polytechnics and (B)accepted in an institution in the locality of the applicant's home address. [127724]
§ Mr. WicksThe available information is shown in the table.
Applicants and acceptances to full-time and sandwich undergraduate courses in the UK via the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) Home domiciled students aged under 21 1997 1998 1999 Applicants 300,926 303,729 306,809 Acceptances 237,519 239,663 245,626 Percentage of acceptances to former polytechnics 35.2 35.5 35.1 Percentage of acceptances to institutions in the applicant's home region1 42.2 42.3 43.5 Participation rates by social class2 Non-manual household head4 48 45 345–46 Manual household head5 18 17 317–18 1Based on Standard Statistical Regions in 1997 and Government office Regions in 1998 and 1999. Data at a more disaggregated geographical level are not available centrally. 2Derived from the number of initial entrants to full-time undergraduate courses and population data from the 1991 census. 3Provisional estimates. 4Social Classes, I, II, IIIN (Professional, Intermediate, Skilled non-manual). 5Classes IIIM, IV, V (Skilled manual, Partly skilled, Unskilled). The social class mix of the underlying population is taken directly from the 1991 Census. Over time this approach becomes less reliable, particularly at a disagreggated level and the social class groupings have therefore been aggregated.
Over the period shown, participation rates of young people by social class have fluctuated in line with overall participation. These overall trends in part reflect a large increase in the size of the age-group and the decision by some students to pull forward their year of entry to higher education from 1998 to 1997 in advance of the introduction of fees. Over the same period the proportion of young students who come from the lower social classes (HIM, IV, V) has remained constant at around 27 per cent. and the proportion who come from the higher social classes (I, II, IIIN) has remained at around 73 per cent.