Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of degrees were awarded at first class in each year since 1994.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), now part of Jisc, collects and publishes data on student qualifications across all UK higher education providers, including data on degree classifications. Counts of first degree qualifications by class of degree for academic years 2006/07 to 2021/22 are published in Chart 9 of HESA’s Student Data, which is available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/chart-9.

The data includes students studying for first degree qualifications and excludes students who qualified with an unclassified first degree (mainly including degrees that do not have a classification, such as Medicine).

Counts for academic years 1994/95 to 2005/06 can be found in HESA’s publication archive, and can be accessed for the relevant years via the links below:

• 1994/95 to 1998/99: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/01-02-2000/sfr37-qualifications-and-examination-results.
• 1999/00 to 2003/04: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/11-01-2005/sfr82--qualifications-and-examination-results.
• 2001/02 to 2005/06: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/09-01-2007/sfr107-enrolments-and-qualifications.