TNAG-0795-FCO40-999-Policy-of-Government-of-Hong-Kong-on-education-1978 — Page 184

Introduction

Young home entrants

Appendix I!

Projection of full-time and sandwich student numbers in higher education in Great Britain

1. The methods used by the Departments to project full-time and sandwich student numbers in higher education, though straightforward in concept, include the use of many series and relationships. This Appendix does not attempt to explain those methods and set out the results in every detail. But it is intended to give a sufficient summary for the purposes of the main discussion document itself.

2. The current method of projecting full-time and sandwich student numbers in higher education is to project the three main first-time-entry streams (that is, young home entrants, mature home entrants and overseas entrants) and then to convert the resulting figures to total student numbers. There are separate series for university and non-university sectors over the period for which separate planning figures are fixed. Postgraduate entrants to universities are projected separately and converted to total numbers for inclusion in the overall figures. The table at the end of this Appendix gives key series from 1960/61 to 1994/95 for higher education as a whole.

3. Young home entrants represent about 70% of all entrants. For long-term illustrative projections, calculations are based on the size of the 18 year-old age group and the "age participation rate” (APR), which is the number of home entrants under 21 expressed as a percentage of the age group. The APR reflects both the proportion of the age group represented by the numbers of qualified leavers and the percentage of those qualified leavers opting for higher education, and for short-term projections these underlying series are also examined.

4. For the period up to 1994/94 the size of the 18 year-old age group is known with some confidence - 822,000 in 1976/77, rising to a maximum of 941,000 in 1982/83, declining moderately until reaching 834,000 in 1989/90 then rapidly to 630,000 by 1994/95. This leaves future movement in the APR as the main area of uncertainty, and past experience has shown how difficult it is to predict accurately. A rise of a single percentage point in the APR at any time up to 1994 could add between 22,000 and 31,000 places to total higher education numbers, depending on precisely when it occurred.

5. The APR rose rapidly throughout the 1960s (from 6.9% in 1961/62 to 13.7% in 1969/70), pushing up total student numbers steadily, even in the face of a sharp decline in the 18 year-old age group from 906,000 in 1965/66 to 741,000 in 1969/70. Since then it has remained fairly flat, ranging between 14.3% and an estimated 13.0% in 1976/77. The tendency for it to fall in recent years has been associated with the rapid decline in teacher training entry. The prospect of an end to that decline gives ground for expecting some recovery in the APR after 1978 to reach a little under 15% in 1981/82. But assessing the possible impact of other factors which may influence the APR is much more difficult.

6. Perceptions of economic benefits and costs almost certainly have some influence on higher education entry decisions at the margin. Among the factors which prospective students might take into account are levels of unemployment among school leavers; the differential between student grants

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