BAE0011
Written evidence submitted by Dr Paul Martin, Institute of Education, University College London
I currently work as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Education, University College London. I present this evidence in a personal capacity.
My research expertise is in the area of widening participation in higher education, and as such I present written evidence on only one of the terms of reference which is “How can the UK improve the progression of boys into higher education?”. In this evidence submission I focus primarily on the situation in England.
As well as carrying out research in this area myself, I have also spent many years working in administrative and managerial roles within UK universities working on the design and delivery of widening participation outreach programmes which are intended to support disadvantaged and underrepresented groups of people to take part in higher education.
1. Gender inequalities in HE access have varied over time. Historical data suggests that parity in access to HE by gender was achieved for a brief period in the mid-1990s. Prior to this, young women were underrepresented in HE, however from 1995 onwards women overtook men and HE participation gaps by gender have grown steadily wider ever since (Department for Education, 2023; Smith, 2018).
2. Recent data from the Department for Education shows that, for those school pupils in England who took their GCSE exams in 2018, 53.6% of all girls had progressed to HE by the age of 19 compared to 40.2% of all boys, a progression gap of 13.4 percentage points (Department for Education, 2023). Ten years prior to this, the corresponding gap was 7.6 percentage points. Whilst the HE participation rates of both young men and young women have been increasing in recent history, the rate has increased more sharply for young women. Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) shows that 58% of all UK-domiciled undergraduate students were female in 2021/22 (HESA, 2023b), while the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) report that 57% of all UK-domiciled applicants in the 2023 application cycle were female (UCAS, 2023).
3. Young women are more likely than young men to progress to more selective ‘high-tariff’ universities, defined as those in the top third when ranked according to average grades achieved by entrants. For the cohort of English school pupils who took their GCSEs in 2018, 15.3% of girls progressed to high-tariff HE compared to 11.7% of boys, a 3.6 percentage point gap (Department for Education, 2023). As with access to HE in general, this gap has been growing over time. Similarly, young women are more likely than young men to attend the most prestigious universities – in 2022, 53.1% of accepted UK-domiciled students at the University of Oxford were female, while the corresponding figure at the University of Cambridge was 51.5% (University of Cambridge, 2023; University of Oxford, 2023).
4. Gender disparities in HE participation do not appear to be unique to the UK and are common in other developed countries. For example, it has been reported that in 2022 only 42% of 4-year college students in the US were male (Fry, 2023).
5. HE participation by gender varies across different degree subjects. Recent data from HESA shows that men make up a minority of students in 15 out of 22 HE subject areas and are in the majority in the remaining 7 areas (HESA, 2023a). Men make up the majority of students in the areas of biological and sport sciences, business and management, physical sciences, mathematical sciences, architecture, building and planning, engineering and computing (HESA, 2023a). It is therefore clear that young women are still less likely than young men to study for degrees within the ‘STEM’ disciplines. Men are poorly represented in the disciplines of education, veterinary sciences and psychology where they comprise 14.5%, 15.2% and 18.3% of undergraduate students respectively.
6. It is well established that boys, on average, do not perform as well as girls in school examinations. At age 16, not only do boys tend to get lower grades in their exams, they are also less likely than girls to achieve good grades in traditional academic subjects such as English, maths and foreign languages, evidenced by fact that they are less likely to meet the criteria for the ‘English Baccalaureate’ (Department for Education, 2024). This means that boys in turn are less likely than girls to go on to study qualifications (such as A levels) which are likely to faciliate their access to unversity.
7. In England, the linking of the National Pupil Database (which contains details of the attainment and characteristics of all state school pupils) with the HESA dataset (which reveals whether or not students participate in HE) has enabled comprehensive statistical analyses to be undertaken to establish whether gender gaps in HE participation can (or cannot) be attributed to disparities in school attainment. One such analysis was undertaken by Crawford and Greaves (2015), concerning those cohorts of pupils who took their GCSE exams in 2003 and 2008. For the 2003 cohort, the analysis revelaed that gender disparities in HE participation were indeed commensurate with attainment disaprities in school examinations. For the 2008 cohort, boys were in fact found to be slightly more likely than girls to progress to HE once their lower level of school attainment had been controlled for statistically.
8. I have also undertaken an analysis of the National Pupil Database and HESA datasets and found that, for the cohort who took their GCSEs in 2015, gender disparities in HE participation can be explained primarily by the lower average attainment of boys in exams at age 16 (Martin, 2023). Young men appeared to progress to HE at a rate which was 2.4 percentage points lower than might be expected once their lower average school attainment was taken in to consideration. Furthermore, my own analysis revealed that the proportion of high-attaining (defined as being in the top 20% of attainers overall at GCSE) boys progressing to HE is the same as the proportion of high-attaining girls who progress. However, as girls are much more likely to be high-attaining in the first place, the number of high-attining girls participating in HE is greater than the number of high-attaining boys who participate. The proportion of boys in the reamining 80% of attainers who progress to HE is slightly lower than the proportion of girls who progress at this attainment level.
9. Predicted attainment – as well as actual attainment – at age 18 can have a considerable bearing on the likelihood of a young person progressing to HE given that offers of university places are typically made on the basis of predicted grades provided by teachers at the point an application is submitted to UCAS. A recent analysis by Leckie and Maragkou (2023) of predicted versus achieved A level grades found that, whilst all teacher predicted grades err on the optimisitc side, predicited grades tend to be somewhat more optimistic on average for girls than boys once other factors are controlled for statistically.
10. Universities in England spend a considerable amount of their tuition fee income on various initiatives to support disadvantaged and underrepresented groups to participate in HE. During the 2022-23 academic year alone, English HE providers forecast that they would spend £184.9 million of fee income in total on initiatives to support disadvantaged or underrepresented groups to access HE (Office for Students, 2019), a figure which excludes spend on direct financial support such as bursaries.
11. Following the guidance of the Office for Students (OfS), universities primarily target their widening participation expenditure on initiatives which aim to reduce socioeconomic disparities in access to HE. This includes providing a large number of interventions for socioeconomically disadvantaged students which seek to raise aspirations, provide information and guidance or offer students mentors or role models (Robinson & Salvestrini, 2020). These interventions do not appear to have been especially effective given that their proliferation since 2012 has not coincided with any reduction in socioeconomic gaps in HE participation (Martin, 2024). This is likely to be explained by the fact that these programmes typically do not have the effect of raising the school attainment of their participants, and previous analysis has found that socioeconomic disparities in HE participation tend to be solely a function of socioeconomic disparities in school attainment (Crawford & Greaves, 2015; Croll & Attwood, 2013).
12. Since its inception in 2018, the OfS has not placed any particular emphasis on gender inequalities in HE access and none of its key performance measures relate to gender inequalities (Office for Students, 2024). OfS regulatory guidance – such as its recently published “Equality of Opportunity Risk Register” tends to either overlook gender inequalities in HE participation entirely or imply that the low HE participation rate of young men is a phenomenon confined to socioeconomically disadvantaged young people who are eligible for free school meals (Office for Students, 2023). In practice, the percentage point HE participation gap by gender is in fact slightly narrower for FSM students than it is for those students who are not eligible for FSM (Department for Education, 2023).
13. It is unlikely that universities will place any particular emphasis on addressing gender disparities in access to HE unless they are encouraged to do so by the OfS. With such encouragement, universities might then set themselves targets relating to improving the participation of young men in their Access and Participation Plans (APPs). These are documents which set out the steps universities are taking to improve equality of opportunity. APPs must be approved by the OfS in order for universities to be permitted to charge fees above £6,125 per year for UK-domiciled undergraduates (Office for Students, 2020).
14. In the event that universities do decide to try to increase the number of young men participating in HE, they should do this by supporting schools and colleges wherever possible to raise the attainment of boys, given that this is the main driver of gender disparities in HE access. Universities should be reluctant to invest money in other strategies targeted at boys such as programmes which aim to raise aspirations, provide information or expose prospective applicants to role models given that – as noted in paragraph 11 – such interventions appear to have been largely unsuccessful so far at addressing socioeconomic disparities in access to HE.
15. Whilst young women have been overrepresented in HE for almost 30 years, this has not had the effect of eradicating the overall gender pay gap within the wider workforce given that on average men continue to earn higher salaries than women (Office for National Statistics, 2023). This illustrates that the relationship between HE participation and labour market outcomes is not an entirely straightforward one.
16. Some evidence suggests that women tend to benefit more financially from HE participation than men. This is not because graduate women earn more than graduate men, but rather because non-graduate women earn much less than non-graduate men (Walker & Zhu, 2013). It is therefore possible that some young women will perceive there to be few good career options available to them if they do not go to university, whereas young men may enjoy more latitude to choose not to go to university, believing that they will still be able to find a well-paying job.
17. Gender inequalities along different possible pathways are inevitably zero-sum contests. Given that young women are overrepresented in HE, they are inevitably underrepresented along other possible pathways at age 18 such as apprenticeships and school leaver training programmes. Any (successful) efforts to tackle these inequalities would then inevitably have the knock-on effect of leading to greater parity in access to HE by gender.
Crawford, C., & Greaves, E. (2015). Socio-economic, ethnic and gender differences in HE participation. Department for Business Innovation and Skills. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/higher-education-participation-socio-economic-ethnic-and-gender-differences
Croll, P., & Attwood, G. (2013). Participation In Higher Education: Aspirations, Attainment And Social Background. British Journal of Educational Studies, 61(2), 187-202. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2013.787386
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Department for Education. (2024). Key stage 4 performance: academic year 2022/23. Department for Education. https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/key-stage-4-performance/2022-23
Fry, R. (2023). Fewer young men are in college, especially at 4-year schools. Pew Research Centre. Retrieved 14 May 2024 from https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/12/18/fewer-young-men-are-in-college-especially-at-4-year-schools/
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Leckie, G., & Maragkou, K. (2023). Student Sociodemographic and School Type Differences in Teacher-Predicted vs. Achieved Grades for University Admission. University of Bristol. https://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/education/documents/bristol-working-papers-in-education/Leckie%202023_Student%20Sociodemographic%20and%20School%20Type%20Differences%20-%20Working%20Paper.pdf
Martin, P. (2023). An exploration of the factors which predict the likelihood of young people in England progressing into higher education. University of Warwick. https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/184496/
Martin, P. (2024). Understanding and addressing socioeconomic participation gaps in Higher Education in England ( CEPEO Briefing Note Series, Issue 29). UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities. https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/uclcepeob/29.htm
Office for National Statistics. (2023). Gender pay gap in the UK: 2023. Retrieved 9 January 2024 from https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/genderpaygapintheuk/2023#cite-this-statistical-bulletin
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Office for Students. (2020). Value for money as a student. Office for Students. Retrieved 15 May 2024 from https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/for-students/student-finance/value-for-money-as-a-student/fees-and-other-costs/
Office for Students. (2023). Equality of Opportunity Risk Register. Office for Students. Retrieved 15 May 2024 from https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/promoting-equal-opportunities/equality-of-opportunity-risk-register/
Office for Students. (2024). Key performance mesaures. Office for Students. Retrieved 15 May 2024 from https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/about/how-we-are-run/key-performance-measures/
Robinson, D., & Salvestrini, V. (2020). The impact of interventions for widening access to higher education: a review of the evidence. Education Policy Institute. https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/impact-of-interventions-for-widening-access-to-he/
Smith, E. (2018). Key Issues in Education and Social Justice: 2nd Edition. SAGE.
UCAS. (2023). UCAS undergraduate end of cycle data resources 2023. Retrieved 9 January 2024 from https://www.ucas.com/data-and-analysis/undergraduate-statistics-and-reports/ucas-undergraduate-end-cycle-data-resources-2023
University of Cambridge. (2023). Undergraduate Admissions Statistics: 2022 cycle. University of Cambridge. https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/files/publications/undergrad_admissions_statistics_2022_cycle.pdf
University of Oxford. (2023). Annual admissions statistical report. University of Oxford. https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/AnnualAdmissionsStatisticalReport2023.pdf
Walker, I., & Zhu, Y. (2013). The impact of university degrees on the lifecycle of earnings: some further analysis. Department for Business Innovation & Skills. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/229498/bis-13-899-the-impact-of-university-degrees-on-the-lifecycle-of-earnings-further-analysis.pdf
May 2024