HC Deb 08 December 2003 vol 415 cc285-7W
Michael Fabricant

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what percentage of students in higher education did not complete their degrees in(a) the last year for which data is available, (b) 1997 and (c) 1992. [141959]

Alan Johnson

Since 1996–97, information on non-completion rates has been published annually by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in 'Performance Indicators in Higher Education'. The latest figures cover students starting courses in 1999–00; overall non-completion rates for students starting full-time first degree courses in the UK are as follows.

Students starting courses in: Non completion rate (percentage)
1999–2000 17
1997–98 17

Non completion rates for earlier years were calculated and published by the Department and figures are shown in the table below for 1992/93. These figures also cover students on full-time first degree courses, but the methodology and institutional coverage used by the Department was different to that used by HEFCE, so the two sets of figures are not directly comparable.

Students starting courses in: Non completion rate (percentage)
1992–93 17

Figures published in 2003 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that the UK as a whole has one of the lowest non-completion rates among OECD countries.

Mr. McLoughlin

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what percentage of(a) GCSE and (b) sixth form students have continued to higher education in (i) West Derbyshire, (ii) the East Midlands and (iii) England in each year since 1990. [141449]

Alan Johnson

Figures at constituency level are not currently available. However, the available information on participation rates by local authority and region shows the proportion of 18-year-olds entering full-time undergraduate courses in the UK via the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), and is given in the table. Comparable figures for the years prior to 1994 are not available centrally.

It should be noted that the proportions in the table are based only on the number of 18-year-olds entering full-time HE. This is a different definition to the Department's main measures of HE participation: the Age Participation Index (API), which measures the proportion of UK domiciled students who enter full-time HE by the age of 20, and the Initial Entry Rate (IER) which measures the proportion of 17–30 year old English domiciled first time entrants to full or part-time HE. Neither the API nor the IER are calculated for each LEA, because of the lack of detailed data at local authority level.

Proportion of 18-year-olds entering full-time undergraduate

courses via UCAS
Students from:
Year of entry City of

Derby1

 Derbyshire1 East

Midlands2

 England
1994 — 16.1 17.1 17.9
1995 — 16.2 18.6 19.5
1996 — 17.6 19.1 19.9
1997 17.6 19.1 19.8 20.5
1998 16.3 19.9 19.5 20.0
1999 17.9 19.9 19.3 20.0
2000 17.9 20.4 19.8 20.6
2001 19.5 21.9 21.3 21.5
2002 18.5 22.5 21.5 22.0
1The local education authority of Derbyshire was split into the City of Derby and Derbyshire due to local government reorganisations in 1997.

2Covers the local education authorities of City of Derby, Derbyshire, Leicester, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire and Rutland.