Half of students receiving university places with lower grades

Nearly 50% of young people were given a place at university this year with lower A-level grades than those advertised by universities, new figures show.

The figure emerged from the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS)’s recently published “End of Cycle Report”, which states that 49% of 18-year-olds in England, Northern Ireland and Wales were accepted into university with lower grades than those that were advertised on their websites.

This was the case for 60% of those students from disadvantaged backgrounds, who could have potentially received contextual offers. Furthermore, the poorest students are now 61% more likely to begin studies at university than they would’ve been 10 years ago.

Although improvements have been made to the number of disadvantaged students applying to and attending university, Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said that it remains “far too wide”.

While highlighting that the gap has been narrowing over the long term, the report agreed that more needs to be done to raise awareness of this issue.

The report further stated that there was a significant growth in the rate of offers being made across all subjects. This was not the case for Mathematics however, with significantly fewer students choosing to take this degree, according to The Times.

“Mathematical sciences saw the largest proportional fall of minus 9.9 per cent (915 acceptances) to 8,285, the lowest number since 2012, coinciding with the launch of the new maths A level, which saw nearly 6,000 fewer students taking the subject in summer 2019,” the report stated.

This comes after criticism of the difficulty of the Edexcel Mathematics A-level, which was met with controversy after sections of the Paper 3 exam were leaked “around 12 hours prior to the exam on several social media forums”.

[The report] shows the unprecedented opportunity for anyone currently thinking of applying to university to be ambitious with their choices

– Clare Marchant

However, overall statistics for university admissions looked positive, with an overall record 541,240 students being accepted to undergraduate degrees, 97.8% of UCAS applicants receiving at least one offer and 73.6% earning a place at their firm choice.

These statistics include 73,320 students finding their university places via Clearing, an increase of almost 10%.

UCAS has pointed to the report suggesting to students that now is a “good time to apply to university”.

The chief executive of UCAS, Clare Marchant, stated that the report “shows the unprecedented opportunity for anyone currently thinking of applying to university to be ambitious with their choices”.

This follows the report’s claims that “the current 2020 cycle is an ideal time to be applying”, citing the low population of 18-year-olds in 2020 “likely to be the biggest influencing factor in increased offer rates”.