Rampant grade inflation led to a quadrupling in the number of new university students with three A*s at A-level in two years.
An annual review by Ucas, which handles the university admissions process, found that almost 20,000 school-leavers started university this year with the three highest grades or equivalent. This was up from 5,655 in 2019, before the pandemic, and 12,735 last year.
Almost 45 per cent of all A-levels given this summer were A* or A grade.
More than 103,000 UK school-leavers were accepted by the most selective universities, the first time the number has reached six figures. This is an increase of 11 per cent from last year, when 92,650 started, and up 28 per cent from 80,380 in 2019.
Of all 18-year-olds in the UK, 38.3 per cent have a confirmed place at university, up from 34.1 per cent in 2019.
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Overall, although applicants to university were 3 per cent higher than last year, at almost 750,000, the number accepted was down by 1 per cent, to 562,000. The acceptance rate decreased across all types of universities and for students from all family backgrounds. The proportion of applicants accepted at “high-tariff” universities, which require the highest grades, fell below 60 per cent for the first time in seven years.
The Department for Education (DfE) has said it is “firmly committed” to GCSE and A-level pupils sitting their exams with adaptations next summer, rather than using teacher grades.
Next year’s grade boundaries will reflect a “midway point” between 2019 and 2021 results.
Mid and low-tariff universities, which have lower entry requirements, are far less in demand. Offers made by low-tariff universities rose by 5 per cent over the last year but the number accepted fell by 1.9 per cent. For mid-tariff universities the offers increased by 2.2 per cent but those accepted fell by 3.7 per cent. For high-tariff universities the number of offers was level with last year and the intake rose by 1.3 per cent.
The number deferring places rose by 15 per cent, from 21,670 to 24,855. Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute think tank, said this meant that sixth-formers applying to start courses in autumn next year could face tougher competition.
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“There are more 18-year-olds, plus some vice-chancellors are keen not to expand their institutions much further,” he said. “The toughest areas will, as always, be things like medicine.”
• The number of Chinese students starting at British universities has overtaken the number of entrants from the EU for the first time, Ucas has said.
European students can no longer benefit from the same £9,250 tuition fees as British undergraduates.
Their numbers have halved compared with last year, down to 16,125. This is fewer than the 16,310 Chinese students who started a degree at a UK university in the autumn, whose numbers have doubled since 2016.
Jo Johnson, the former universities minister, will say today that the government should make a “comprehensive knowledge partnership” with India, one of the main goals of a proposed free-trade agreement between the two countries. He led a study for the Harvard Kennedy School and the Policy Institute at King’s College London. In a report, he says Britain should aim to double the number of Indian students studying at UK universities over the life of this parliament to 100,000 by 2024-25.
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In 2019-20 there were 139,000 Chinese students in UK institutions, the most of any foreign country and 2.5 times the 53,000 from India.
