Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many and what proportion of undergraduates studying in universities are of each social grade.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) publish information annually on the participation in Higher Education by under-represented students groups in their UK Performance Indicators tables. The available figures on participation by National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) can be located in Table 1a at the following link:

https://www.hesa.ac.uk/pis/09/10/urg

HESA figures show that 73,240 (or 32.6%) of young UK domiciled First degree entrants in UK universities came from socio-economic classifications that comprise small employers/account workers, lower supervisory and technical workers and semi routine or routine occupations.