Non-continuation figures are available for full-time entrants to higher education, and these provide an indication of student retention. These figures show the proportion of entrants who do not continue in higher education after their first year. The rates for young (under 21) and mature (21 and over) entrants to full-time first degrees are shown in the table:
Young Mature 1996/97 7.6 15.3 1997/98 7.6 15.3 1998/99 7.9 16.0 1999/2000 7.8 15.9 2000/01 7.1 14.5 2001/02 7.3 14.9 2002/03 7.8 15.4 2003/04 7.7 15.6 Source: “Performance Indicators in Higher Education”, published by HESA
Non-continuation rates have not been published by National Statistics Socio-Economic Class (NS-SEC). However, HEFCE have provided non-continuation figures for young full-time first degree entrants in 2002/03 and 2003/04, broken down by NS-SEC for broad groups of entry qualification levels. These figures are shown in the following table.
Entrants 2002-03 Entrants 2003-04 Entry qualification categories Tariff points NS-SEC 1 to3 NS-SEC 4 to 7 All entrants with known NS-SEC NS-SEC 1 to3 NS-SEC 4 to 7 All entrants with known NS-SEC A-levels or Highers: Unknown 11.6 14.7 12.7 8.1 11.8 9.1 Up to 200 11.3 11.3 11.3 11.1 11.9 11.4 201 to 290 7.8 8.0 7.9 7.6 8.4 7.9 291 to 380 4.7 5.1 4.8 4.9 5.8 5.2 Above 380 2.4 3.2 2.6 2.5 3.4 2.7 Other qualifications 9.4 10.9 9.9 9.2 11.1 9.9 All qualifications 6.4 8.1 6.9 6.0 8.2 6.7 Source: Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)
Figures are not available for earlier years because the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification was introduced in 2001 and was adopted by UCAS and HESA in 2002.
These data pre-date the 2006/07 introduction of tuition fee loans ensuring that no student has to find their fees either before or during their studies, the introduction of non-repayable maintenance grants of up to £2,700 for those from low income households and university bursaries. Alongside this, the Higher Education Funding Council for England's Widening Participation Allocation (WPA) continues to provide the HE sector with funding to improve retention rates (for 2006/07 retention funding amounts to £240 million of the £345 million total WPA).
There are currently no non-continuation figures available which are broken down by ethnic group.