Higher Education: Males

(asked on 1st March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for each of the last fifteen years how many young men (a) turned 18, (b) aged between 18 and 21 entered university, (c) commenced a level 6 qualification in higher education and (d) completed a level 6 qualification in higher education; and what proportion of those who (i) commenced and (ii) completed a level 6 qualification in higher education did so in STEM subjects.


Answered by
Michelle Donelan Portrait
Michelle Donelan
Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
This question was answered on 7th March 2022

The department’s annual publication ‘Participation measures in higher education’ provides a time series of the initial participation of students in higher education (HE), available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/participation-measures-in-higher-education. This release includes age-specific data showing the number of English domiciled entrants to higher education in the UK who participate for a minimum period of six months for the first time. It also includes age-specific population estimates for England, which were calculated from Office for National Statistics population data, available here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/analysisofpopulationestimatestoolforuk.

These two sources are combined to derive the Higher Education Initial Participation measure, calculated as the sum of age specific participation rates for 17 to 30-year-olds in England. Statistics are published for the 2006/07 to 2019/20 academic years.

The bespoke table below has been generated from the publication containing age and gender breakdowns for initial entrants to higher education, as well as the associated population estimates for England. The table is available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/debf7f5f-9481-40d7-8f7e-0e915c21c7c6.

This shows, for example, that the 18-year-old population estimates for England in 2019/20 were 301,745 for females and 318,390 for males. There were 163,370 female initial entrants and 134,285 male initial entrants aged 18-21 in the 2019/20 academic year.

The other breakdowns requested are not available on the same basis as the figures stated above. However, detailed statistics on entry and qualification in higher education have been published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) as far back as 1994/95.

HESA statistics refer to HE students at UK higher education providers only[1]. Explicit data mapped to National Qualifications Framework level 6 are not published by HESA, however first degrees can be selected as an indicative estimate to observe trends over time. Further details on the qualifications are available here: https://www.gov.uk/what-different-qualification-levels-mean/list-of-qualification-levels.

Counts of student entrants and enrolments are available by subject (including science subject areas) and sex for the academic years 2019/20 to 2020/21 in Figure 13 of HESA’s Higher Education Student Data pages, available here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb262/figure-13.

Counts for the academic years 2014/15 to 2018/19[2] are available in Table 9 of HESA’s Higher Education Student Data pages: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-9.[3]

Counts of student qualifiers are available by subject (including science subject areas) and sex for the academic years 2019/20 to 2020/21 in Figure 17 of HESA’s Higher Education Student Data pages: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb262/figure-17.

Counts for the academic years 2014/15 to 2018/19[4] are available in Figure 17 of HESA’s Higher Education Student Statistics: UK, 2018/19 publication: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb255/figure-17.[5]

HESA’s publication archive for academic years prior to 2014/15 can be found here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/publications#students-higher-education.

[1] This does not include students studying higher education qualifications at further education colleges.

[2] Figures prior to the academic year 2019/20 exclude a small minority registered at Alternative Providers.

[3] A new subject classification system, the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) was introduced in the academic year 2019/20, hence figures for 2018/19 and earlier are not directly comparable with the following years.

[4] Figures prior to the academic year 2019/20 exclude a small minority registered at Alternative Providers.

[5] A new subject classification system, the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) was introduced in the academic year 2019/20, hence figures for 2018/19 and earlier are not directly comparable with the following years.

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