2024 Student Equality data dashboards

2024 Student Equality data dashboards

Data highlights 

Domicile

While the population of students enrolled in UK HE continues to increase year-on-year, the growth recorded in 2022-23 is driven primarily by an increase in non-EU students in taught postgraduate programmes. This non-EU student population has increased from 207,530 in 2020-21 to 370,800 in 2022-23, with the proportion of non-EU students making the majority of the overall postgraduate taught population in UK HE for the first time. 

This contrasts a significant fall in the number of EU students in UK HE, from 151,320 students to 94,395 students (a reduction of 21.4%). The proportion of EU students has been declining in all levels of study in UK HE since 2020-21.

“The decrease in the population of EU students coupled with the increase in the numbers of non-EU students is likely to reflect both the end of home fee eligibility for EU students and the introduction of the graduate route visa scheme. With the upcoming levy on international student fees and the reduction of the graduate route to 18 months, it remains to be seen if this trend will remain.” Peny Sotiropoulou, Advance HE Mixed-Methods Researcher

(N.B. The numbering in the titles below refers to the dashboard number.)

Disability

The proportion of students disclosing as disabled continues to increase year by year. Between 2020-21 and 2022-23, students disclosing multiple disabilities were the group with the biggest population increase amongst disabled students (a 52.9 per cent increase, from 50,645 to 77,435). 

Similarly, the population of students disclosing mental health conditions continues to increase. Students with mental health conditions are consistently the second largest group of disabled students, only behind students disclosing learning differences, with the gap between the proportion of these two groups closing across time. 

Between 2019-20 and 2020-21, continuation gaps almost vanished between non-disabled and disabled students.

However, when looking at individual disabled student groups, this is not a universal pattern. Specifically, students with mental health conditions and those with multiple impairments still continue to a second year of their studies in much lower proportions (83.3% and 84.5%, respectively) compared to their non-disabled peers (86.0%), but also some other groups of disabled students (e.g. 88.5% of students with learning differences).

Degree awarding gaps between disabled and non-disabled students have been reversed since 2021-22, with disabled qualifiers outperforming their peers at an increasing rate (from a gap of 0.5 percentage points in 2021-22 to a gap of 1.8 percentage points in 2022-23 between the proportion of disabled and non-disabled qualifiers awarded with a First/2:1). 

At the intersections of disability and sex, both male and female disabled students outperformed their peers in 2021-22 and 2022-23 (with the exception of female students in 2021-22, where 81.1% of non-disabled qualifiers were awarded with a First/2:1 compared to 81.0% of disabled qualifiers). 

Looking at the groups of disabled students in more detail,  the pattern of ‘better’ degree awards for disabled students compared to their non-disabled peers does not hold true for all. In 2022-23, D/deaf and blind qualifiers were those with the lowest proportions of good degree awards (75.3% and 76.5%, respectively), whereas students disclosing developmental conditions and those with mental health conditions had the highest (82.4% and 79.5%, respectively).

"The work of institutions and the influence of initiatives like the Disabled Student Commission and the subsequent Commitment should not be overlooked where we see improved outcomes. However, differential outcomes for different groups of disabled students, and diminishing support and resources available to disabled students in some contexts due to financial constraints, highlight that the picture is more complex. Heterogeneity and intersectionality should be a strong focus for institutions supporting disabled students, nearly a fifth of our student population, to achieve positive outcomes through the wider transformation and change in the sector."  David Bass, Advance HE Director of EDI

Social background

Social background appears to be having a growing impact on continuation – for UK full-time first degree entrants, the gap between the most and least deprived backgrounds has grown between 2020-21-2021-22 (from 1.5 to 1.9 percentage points for TUNDRA, and from 4.1 to 4.6 percentage points for POLAR). The gap grows across parental level of education (from 4.2 to 5.2 percentage points) and state school marker, too (from 4.9 to 5.4 percentage points).

With regards to the influence of social background on degree awards and graduate outcomes, there are varying trends across time based on different social background indicators. One of the most notable patterns is the persistent, growing gap in good degrees (i.e. First/2:1 awards) between the proportion of first-degree undergraduate qualifiers whose parents don’t have an HE qualification and their peers with at least one parent with HE qualification – the gap has grown from 5.5 percentage points in 2020-21 to 6.6. percentage points in 2022-23. 

“With our dashboards allowing analysis of four different social background characteristics as well as intersectional insights, we hope that this resource will enable a better understanding of the barriers and opportunities faced by students and highlight the need for the sector to start thinking of more holistic ways of understanding the influence of social background on the various facets of the student journey.”  Peny Sotiropoulou, Advance HE Mixed-Methods Researcher