Annex C : Entry into higher education by age 19
1 . This annex provides an early assessment of the available higher education entry data , which , although slightly more lagged , includes information on higher education participation that is otherwise out of scope in the UCAS application data . This provides insight into alternative routes of entry into higher education courses , such as part-time study and entry into higher education by age 19 .
2 . We find that the gap in rates of entry by age 19 appears to have narrowed over the available period , which is two years shorter than in our analysis of application rates . However , after differences in characteristics are taken into account by matching learners from each group , this narrowing trend is no longer evident .
3 . This information may be of particular interest given the additional aim of the Uni Connect programme to ‘ support young people to make well-informed decisions about their future education ’. For some young people , alternative routes of entry into higher education , such as entry by age 19 or part-time study , may represent better informed decisions . Therefore , in this annex , we begin to examine whether patterns in these types of entry vary between learners from Uni Connect areas and elsewhere .
4 . However , the most recent academic year for which higher education entry data is available is 2020-21 . This means that the latest GCSE cohort for which we can calculate rates of entry by age 19 is that of learners who were in Key Stage 4 in summer 2017 , many of whom will have already made their application decisions by the time their Uni Connect engagement began . This annex therefore sets out a methodology which could be adopted in future evaluation , when more recent higher education administrative data becomes available .
5 . As with the linked NPD and UCAS data , Key Stage 4 pupils on the NPD were linked to records in the higher education data from HESA and the ILR by ‘ fuzzy matching ’ of personal characteristics . This allows us to track which Key Stage 4 learners were recorded as having started a higher education course by age 19 .
6 . Figure C1 below shows the proportion of Key Stage 4 learners who were identified as having entered higher education by age 19 , split by their POLAR3 quintile . As with application rates , a substantial gap in rates of entry by age 19 exists between learners from the most represented areas ( POLAR3 quintile 5 ) and the least represented areas ( quintile 1 ).
7 . However , unlike the gap in application rates , the gap in rates of entry by age 19 appears to have narrowed over the available period , which is two years shorter than in our analysis of application rates . The gap in rates of entry by age 19 between POLAR3 quintiles 5 and 1 reduced from 31.1 percentage points in the 2012-13 entrant year to 28.7 percentage points in the 2019-20 entrant year .
Figure C1 : Gaps in rates of entry by age 19 between POLAR3 quintiles 1 and 5
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