Life, as no less a philosopher than Ferris Bueller noted, comes at you pretty fast.
This is the ninth year I have analysed data on A level results and clearing for Wonkhe; it is the first time that I have a personal stake in the data.
A close member of my family (OK, my actual child, who in no way can possibly be old enough to do so…) took A levels this year, did well, and has a place on the university course of their dreams.
There is nothing unusual about that: there are 284,250 English domiciled people (61.1 per cent of all UCAS applicants from England) who have a place at their firm choice at this point on JCQ (all level 3 qualifications in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland) results day. But within these enormous datasets there are any number of personal stories – of triumph, of reckoning, or of disappointment.
We talk a lot about data and trends on Wonkhe, but behind every number is one of these stories. If that’s you, or someone you know, I’m sure there’s other things that will be more important right now than year-on-year changes and recruitment patterns.
Placed applicants and entry rates
A record 262,820 UK 18 year olds have been accepted on to a higher education course this UCAS cycle – that’s three per cent more than last year. Some 79 per cent of 18 year old applicants from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland who held an offer have been placed at their first choice of provider and course, up very slightly from last year.
In total 446,690 people are heading to a higher education provider this autumn to study. That’s another record.
Among all this record setting there is one indicator pointing another way – the JCQ results day entry rate for UK 18 year olds has fallen very slightly, from 32 per cent last year to 31.6 per cent this year. A bumper crop of 18 year olds is going through the system right now, so the numbers are higher while the proportion falls.
Here’s the state of play on results day, in comparison to previous years.
You can see that, as expected, firm and insurance placements are up numerically from last year, but – unexpectedly – the proportion of firm placements has fallen for 18 year olds in England. The surprise here is that the widespread expectation was that universities would be very keen to recruit as many students as possible, and that entry requirements would be likely to flex to ensure that those who had already made a firm choice get in.
So clearing is busier this year than last (I’ll be keeping an eye on updates from tomorrow as it continues). Which will be good news for many providers.
Clearing will be a particular concern for middle and lower tariff providers. Once again, high tariff providers have been very successful in placing students, with 188,480 (a record number, which includes 117,340 UK domiciled 18 year olds) accepted on JCQ results day morning.
Traditionally it is medium and lower tariff providers who do the heavy lifting in offering access to university for non-traditional students. If we look at entry rates by TUNDRA (a measure of the likelihood of people from a specific small – LSOA or equivalent – in the UK) we can see that this year’s slight overall decline in the UK 18 year old entry rate on results day (and this year’s growth in accepted applicant numbers) is reflected across all areas.
However, there has been a 0.9 percentage point decline in placement among applicants from quintile 5 (the most likely places to send 18 year olds to university) compared to just a 0.2 per cent decline from quintile 1 (the least likely) and a 0.6pp decline overall. I need hardly add that if what tends to be the best off 18 year olds were still placed in the same proportion as last year, the overall entry rate wouldn’t have fallen.
A glance back in time puts this slightly disquieting finding in context – entry rates are well above the pre-pandemic normal.
It is Andy Burnham’s world, we just live in it. And as such it is worth an eye over entry rates by region. Yorkshire, the North East, and Scotland buck an overarching trend of slight decline – but London, the South East, and Northern Ireland remain more likely to send 18 year olds to university.
International recruitment
Though by no means all international students arrive via UCAS (not least the growing numbers of postgraduates), there are enough of them in the system to get a sense of how recruitment is changing around the world. A large growth in the number of Chinese students placed will be good news for the Russell Group, a small but significant growth in recruitment from India is good news for larger civic providers.
Overall, UCAS-facilitated undergraduate recruitment from overseas is up about 1,000 on last year – a small growth, but not enough to mean that all of those optimistic provider predictions are correct.
Level 3 results and subject choice
Though today is generally known as “A level results day” between them JCQ and DfE publish results for a whole variety of qualifications – this year sees a tidied up approach to presenting the results of vocational and technical qualifications, which means that 421 of these (covering just over 300,000 students at 307 providers) are now presented in the morning data release.
It is difficult to compare different qualifications as approaches to grading systems vary so much – and the increase in VTQ coverage means we can’t even compare year-on-year. The higher education system will be particularly interested in T level results: the fifth year of provision saw 21 T levels taught to 19,665 students (up from 11,909 last year). Of these, 92.6 per cent passed, 68.9 per cent received a merit, 18.1 per cent a distinction, and 0.4 per cent (just 74 people) the top grade of “distinction*.”
A level results are generally static year on year: a (for practical purposes) set proportion of candidates for each qualification will receive each grade, outside of the pandemic grading arrangements. Here’s a way to check that by subject area over time:
You are less likely to get a high grade in some subjects rather than others, and even though this changes slightly year on year (the vagaries of mapping grades to exam performance at each awarding body) there are certain dependable observations: if you take A level law you are much less likely to be awarded a grade C or above than if you take history or economics. Here’s a visualisation to help you see how those factors played out in comparison with last year:
A levels can (but do not always) inform subject choice. This year mathematics, psychology, and biology A level saw most entries – with economics the fastest growing subject(up 10 per cent on last year. And if we look at the subject areas of the higher education courses that people are entering we see a different pattern.
Two years of rapid growth in business courses has paused, while social studies (which includes economics) continues a rapid rise (up nearly 10 per cent on last year). There’s strong growth in engineering, subjects allied to medicine, psychology, and architecture – while once popular subjects like computer science and creative arts are declining.
It’s endlessly tempting to draw wider conclusions from these patterns – I’d be inclined to say this shows a growing interest in vocational subjects that link to particular career, and in high earning subjects (like economics, which tops out LEO data most years because of the ludicrously high salaries paid in the financial services sector) alongside a turning away from the more general qualifications that may offer more transferable skills. It’s what you might expect in an economy suffering a range of exogenous and endogenous pressures, and where it is so difficult for young people to enter employment.
What else affects A level results?
Sitting at a desk in the school gym doing a series of very hard exams is a daunting prospect for everyone – but it isn’t just that sweaty afternoon in May that contributes to your result.
A whole host of other factors affect your ability to do your absolute best on exam day, and the first is the kind of school you attend. If your family is rich enough to pay for private school and you did A level maths, you had a 59 per cent chance of getting an A or an A* this year. If you were at your local state school, that chance was nearer 40 per cent. And if you studied at an FE college (as 4,210 people did this year), that chance was just 22.1 per cent.
Likewise, the county or district you were sitting in has an impact. If you sat your maths A level aged 18 in a school in Cheltenham, you had a 70.3 per cent chance of getting an A or above. Just up the road in Tewkesbury, you are looking at 25.8 per cent. In Castle Point over in Essex, that chance was just 14.6 per cent.
We often talk about A levels as if they are a perfect measure of personal achievement and aptitude for study – data like this makes it clear that where and how you live and study make a huge difference too.
No data by ethnicity?