§ Dr. KumarTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if she will make a statement on the percentage of school leavers(a) nationally and (b) in the Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East constituency who have entered higher education in each of the last four years. [16212]
§ Margaret Hodge[holding answer 19 November 2001]: Figures for the number of school leavers who go on to higher education are not collated centrally on a constituency basis. The available figures for Great Britain, showing the proportion of under 21 year olds who enter higher education for the first time, are given in the table. There was an increase in the index in 1997–98 related partly to changes in the funding arrangements for higher education, with students choosing to enter HE rather than wait until 1998–99. There was a corresponding reduction in 1998–99 before the entry rates started to increase again in 1999–2000. Between 1997–98 and 2000–01, total HE students in English universities and colleges rose by 83,000.
Age participation index (API)1 for Great Britain Percentage API 1997–98 33 1998–99 31 1999–2000 32 2000–012 32–34 1 The API is defined as the number of GB domiciled initial entrants to full-time and sandwich undergraduate HE aged under 21, expressed as a percentage of the average number of 18 and 19 year olds in the population. 2 Projected: final data on initial entrants are not yet available.