Those higher education statistics

DK laid into a BBC article, which says, basically "How terrible that rich kids get the best university places!".

Rather chucklesome is that the BBC article is based on this press release from the Independent Schools Council, which says "Send your kids to us! We'll more or less guarantee you a place at a top university!"

Collating the numbers from the BBC article, the Independent Schools Council, page 57 of the DfES report, the number of 18 year-olds per the ONS and total entrants to Higher Education (scroll to end) and everaging out the discrepancies, the facts appear to be:

1. 40,000 pupils leave private school sixth forms each year, over 90% get into university and 65-70% get into a Top 20 university

2. 160,000 pupils leave state-sector sixth forms each year, about 25-30% get into a Top 20 university.

3. There are 380,000 new UK domiciled entrants to Higher Education each year, so even if 90% of all sixth formers (whether from state- or private sector) go to university, that means over half of university entrants - 200,000 each year - don't even have A-levels.

4. In other words, out of the 600,000 kids who turn 18 without having done A-levels*, 33% get into university anyway.

* My bastard socialist parents took me out of a good grammar school at age 15, it took me until age 27 to sort myself out and go to university.