Yes – that’s right.
One in ten new university students does not have a single A level.
That, at least, is the claim made this morning by Nicola Woolcock in the The Times. She uses this as a springboard to launch into the debate about student number controls and a minimum entry requirement – drawing on recent comments made by University of Birmingham vice chancellor Adam Tickell (“we’re investing so much money in people who … we are not really capable of graduating”) and friend of the show Andy Westwood (“most entrants without qualifications were joining private providers operating under franchise agreements”).
The Universities UK position, as reported, is:
Universities will take a range of factors into account when considering whether a student is well equipped to succeed on a course. Many students go to university later in life, and arrive with other valuable skills. It is not in the interests of a university to admit a student they don’t believe can succeed.
But it is the “one in ten” claim that makes the headline – and I’m looking at HESA data to try and figure out how she’s got there. Here’s a quick plot of HESA student table 47, which shows the entry qualifications of new students by subject, mode of study, and level of study.
She tells us that 75,000 new students (9 per cent of the total) did not have a “single A level” or equivalent, while 50,000 of these did not have a GCSE or equivalent. She’s looking (for some reason) at all students (undergraduate and postgraduate).
She is using all new students as a basis (despite the fact that entry for postgraduate students are more likely to include non-traditional qualifications such as professional qualifications) and all modes of study (despite the fact that our largest provider of part-time study, the Open University, was explicitly set up to serve a population that may not hold traditional entry qualifications.
If we look at undergraduate students (those who traditionally apply using A levels) and full time students (thus avoiding the OU issue) we can see that 43,845 (8.07 per cent) students entered university with no formal qualifications, and a further 13,270 (2.44 per cent) entered with qualifications at level 2 (GCSEs and equivalent). This figure has risen as a proportion of entrants over the last decade.
Why might that be? One possibility is the rise in enrollment among UK residents born overseas, who may have qualifications that are difficult to assign levels to. Another is the growth of foundation year programmes, which may function as a replacement for level three qualifications. HESA notes that students on Foundation Degrees (a technically focused level 5 qualification) do not have to supply entry qualification information.
We then have the world of accreditation of prior experiential learning – many mature learners enter from industry with a great deal of experience that prepares them for a degree but without formal qualifications.
Undergraduate students that enrol at university without formal qualifications do not attract funding in the student premium, and have not done so since 2006. As non-traditional students are less likely to have suitable qualifications, and would perhaps need more support in the transition to higher learning this has always surprised me.