Higher Education: Care Leavers

(asked on 17th May 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many care leavers entered high tariff higher education institutions in each of the last three years for which the data are available; and how many entered each institution.


Answered by
Baroness Barran Portrait
Baroness Barran
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This question was answered on 31st May 2022

The enclosed attachment contains the department’s analysis of the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) student record showing the number of care leavers who entered courses at English higher education providers (HEPs) in each academic year from 2018/19 to 2020/21. Coverage refers to entrants domiciled in England prior to study and care leavers are defined as codes 01 and 04 in the HESA care leaver collection documentation. Further information can be found here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/collection/c20051/a/careleaver.

The summary table below shows the number of care leavers who entered courses at high tariff[1] English HEPs in each year, along with total care leavers entering courses at all HEPs. A full breakdown by institution can be found in the attachment.

Academic year

Care leavers entrants at high tariff providers

Care leavers entrants at all providers

2018/19

435

3,570

2019/20

505

3,895

2020/21

580

4,290

[1] The tariff grouping used here is the same as that which the Office for Students defined in Annex A (pg 20) of their technical guidance, available here: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/6591e671-624a-4ebf-a5fb-1be904a5eb9f/technical-gudiance-to-accompany-provider-modelling-finalforweb.pdf.

They are based on the average UCAS tariff score of their young (aged under 21) UK-domiciled undergraduate entrants in the 2012-13 to 2014-15 academic years. Providers in the top third of the ranking by average tariff score form the 'High tariff' group.

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