The proportion of students from state schools going to UK universities has stalled over the past five years, figures suggest.
And a third of the UK’s top institutions saw a fall in the number of students from the state sector starting courses in 2020/21.
Of young people starting university in 2020/21, nine in 10 (90.2%) were educated at state schools – a slight rise of 0.1 percentage points on the previous year, official data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) shows.
At some institutions, just over a third of UK students who started full-time undergraduate courses in the autumn of 2020 were from state schools, while at others all students were state-educated.
An analysis of the figures by the PA news agency shows that the proportion of state school students is less than 75% in 21 universities and specialist colleges – two fewer than the previous year.
The lowest state school participation rates are seen at City and Guilds of London Art School, where 34.2% of students attended state schools in the 2020/21 intake.
Of this list, nine are Russell Group universities – traditionally the most selective institutions in the UK.
Of the 24 Russell Group institutions, eight saw a fall in UK state-educated entrants between 2019/20 and 2020/21, the analysis shows.
Edinburgh, Durham and Exeter were among the universities with the lowest proportions of state school pupils – 64.5%, 61.6% and 65.5% respectively.
