STEM Subjects: Ethnic Groups

(asked on 14th July 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what data they collect regarding (1) the participation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students in STEM subjects, and (2) their access to engineering qualifications at vocational or degree level.


Answered by
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Portrait
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
This question was answered on 28th July 2021

The Education and Skills Funding Agency collects information from further education providers via the Individualised Learner Record (ILR). The ILR specification for the 2019/20 academic year is published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ilr-specification-validation-rules-and-appendices-2019-to-2020.

The attached table contains the number of STEM enrolments for both adult (19+) education and training, and apprenticeships at all ages by people from ethnic minorities in the 2019/20 full academic year, and the 2020/21 provisional academic year. Please note that these counts are of learning aims [1]. If someone were to enrol on more than one learning aim in a given academic year they would be counted twice.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collects and publishes data on students enrolled in higher education in the UK. Latest statistics refer to the academic year 2019/20.

Data on student enrolments at UK higher education providers are available by subject of study and ethnicity in the academic year 2019/20 in Table 45 of HESA’s Higher Education Student Data pages: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-45.

Further details about data collected by HESA is available at the ‘Student record 2019/20’ and ‘Alternative Student record 2019/20’ data collection pages, available here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/collection/c19051/a/locsdy and https://www.hesa.ac.uk/collection/c19054.

More data on access to higher education are published by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). These include breakdowns by subject of study and ethnicity, available in the End of Cycle Data Resources pages: https://www.ucas.com/data-and-analysis/undergraduate-statistics-and-reports/ucas-undergraduate-sector-level-end-cycle-data-resources-2020.

[1] A learning aim constitutes the package of learning being funded and delivered separately, such as an apprenticeship standard, an individual qualification, a module or a short non-qualification bearing course.

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