The latest available figures on participation in higher education by constituency were published by the Higher Education Funding Council for England in January 2005 in “Young Participation in England”, which is available from their website at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2005/05_03/ This report shows participation rates for young people who enter higher education aged 18 or 19, disaggregated by constituency, for the years 1997 to 2000. The figures for Stroud, and the comparable figure for England, are shown in the table. HEFCE have not produced participation rates beyond 2000.
1997 1998 1999 2000 Cohort for Stroud2 (Number) 1,190 1,260 1,210 1,220 Young Participation Rate (A) for Stroud3 (Percentage) 36 36 37 38 Young Participation Rate (A) for England (Percentage) 29.2 28.8 29.2 29.9 1 Covers all students studying higher education courses at UK higher education institutions and other UK institutions, for example further education colleges. 2 Cohorts are reported to the nearest 10. 3 Young participation rates for constituencies are reported to the nearest percentage. Source: Higher Education Funding Council for England.
The total number of entrants from Stroud for each year since 2001/02 are given in the table.
2001/02 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 Aged 18 280 230 245 240 Aged 19 205 195 215 205 Aged over 192 580 515 605 520 Total entrants 1,065 945 1,060 970 1 Covers all students studying higher education courses at UK higher education institutions only. Students studying higher education courses elsewhere such as further education colleges are excluded. 2 Includes a very small number of students with unknown ages or ages under 18. Note: Figures are based on the HESA standard registration population for entrants and have been rounded to the nearest 5, so components may not sum to totals. Source: Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).
The Department uses the higher education initial participation rate (HEIPR) to assess progress on increasing first-time participation of English students aged 18 to 30 in higher education towards 50 per cent.: the latest provisional figure for 2004/05 is 42 per cent. The HEIPR is not calculated at constituency level.