of sustained and progressive outreach intended in the programme design . Moreover , less than one in five learners in this cohort are understood to have attended a school in Key Stage 4 which was later recorded as having engaged with the Uni Connect programme in all four subsequent years .
118 . Second , both the 2020 and 2021 cohorts were applying ( or at least receiving offers ) during the COVID-19 pandemic . For the 2021 cohort in particular , the gap in application rates is likely to have been influenced by both the pandemic and the Uni Connect programme . It is impossible to definitively separate their impact , or to know the application rates of learners in target areas , had they not engaged with the Uni Connect programme . Nonetheless , the reason for ensuring the two groups had the same mix of personal characteristics was to minimise any underlying differences between them , including their behaviour in response to the pandemic . Therefore , the extent to which the pandemic may be influencing the estimated change in the application gap over time depends on whether the behavioural response to the pandemic of those living in Uni Connect areas was the same as those who were not , even after ensuring these groups had the same mix of personal characteristics .
Placed rates
119 . The same analysis described above was carried out on the gap in placed rates , which is defined as the proportion of the Key Stage 4 population which were placed on a higher education course at age 18 by the end of the application cycle .
120 . Recall that the gap in placed rates is the application outcome closest aligned to the aim of the Uni Connect programme which this report is intended to evaluate , but that the gap in application rates was found to make the single greatest contribution to the gap in placed rates .
121 . As previously shown in Figure 10 , the gap in placed rates between learners from the Uni Connect areas and those from other areas widened from 14.6 percentage points in 2016 to 15.2 percentage points in 2021 , for the Key Stage 4 population as a whole .
122 . Figure 15 below shows that a similar trend can be seen in the gap in placed rates when compared with the gap in application rates , after differences in matched characteristics are taken into account . The gap in placed rates initially narrowed , from 4.8 percentage points in 2016 to 4.4 percentage points in 2020 , before widening again in 2021 to 5.3 percentage points .
Figure 15 : Gap in placed rates between learners from Uni Connect areas and the average placed rate of 1,000 matched counterfactual groups of learners from non-Uni Connect areas
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