Figure A1 : Application rate by number of GCSEs at grades A * to C ( or 9 to 4 ) by summer of Key Stage 4 completion
10 . Figure A2 below compares the application rates between learners from Uni Connect and those from other areas , for each of the GCSE cohorts listed previously in Table 5 . For all cohorts , it is clear that a gap in application rates opens up at higher levels of attainment between those from Uni Connect areas and those from other areas . After more than four or five GCSEs at grades A * to C ( or 9 to 4 ) are held , application rates are consistently lower among learners from Uni Connect areas compared with learners from other areas . This is the gap that defines the targeting of Uni Connect areas ; an area is targeted if it has low participation rates relative to the GCSE results of the young people living there .
11 . If the Uni Connect programme were successful and all else were equal between the two groups of learners , we would expect to see narrower differences in application rates in more recent cohorts , which have had the most potential years of Uni Connect engagement .
12 . This gap is important , because it suggests that any improvement in participation rates is most likely to be brought about by convincing higher attaining learners from low participation areas to apply to higher education when they otherwise would not have . This provides a clear motivation for limiting the Key Stage 4 population to those with at least five GCSEs at grade A * to C ( or 9 to 4 ), which we adopt in the matching analysis in this report , in order to focus on the population for whom we would expect to see any impact from the Uni Connect programme .
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