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Photo: University of St. Andrews
The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) has published phase two of its latest Report on Widening Access.
The two-phase approach is the result of a delay in receiving data from sources outside SFC, and the new version completes the findings of the study of student populations for 2022-23.
The first phase, published in October, established that both the number of care-experienced students and their percentage within the total higher education student intake had continued to increase every year since 2013-14.
With the inclusion of data on retention rates, the full report looks at the proportion of undergraduate Scottish students returning to study for the second year of their course, including those from disadvantaged areas and from care-experienced backgrounds.
In both these groups, and for the overall student population, retention levels fell in 2022-23, with the overall level falling by 3.5 percentage points. For students from Scotland’s most deprived areas the decrease was 5.5 percentage points and the figure for care-experienced students dropped by 6.4 percentage points.
Martin Boyle, Interim Chief Executive of the Scottish Funding Council, said:
“Previous SFC reports covering the period of the COVID 19 pandemic have reflected its various impacts on college and university students.
“We believe there are complex ongoing reasons for the impact on retention levels we’re seeing in this report, and these could involve factors such as the special measures introduced for assessing students’ performance across the system, including for exam results and entry to university.
“SFC sees the successful completion of degree courses as a vital part of our ongoing work for widening access and we will be further exploring the reasons for this change.
More widely, we will continue to work alongside colleges and universities to make sure that talented students from all parts of society flourish within Scottish tertiary education.”
The full Report on Widening Access 2022-23 is now available along with supporting materials.
