York is among the BEST in the Russell Group for admitting the most disadvantaged students, newly released stats show. The figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that 8.7% of York undergraduates in the 2015-16 cohort came from the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
York was only beaten by Liverpool and Cardiff, with 9.1% of Liverpool’s undergraduates being from the poorest areas and 9.3% of Cardiff’s undergraduates being from the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The figures, however, don’t include Scottish Russell Group unis, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The numbers also reveal that York is ABOVE average for its intake of state school students in the Russell Group, with 81.2% of the 2015-16 intake coming from state schools, compared to the average of 78%. York’s state school intake ranked higher than Russell Group contenders, Warwick, LSE and Nottingham. Oxford was the worst performer, with barely over half of its intake in 2015-16 coming from State schools. Nationally just 7% of children attend non-state schools.
However, York was still under the national averages for its proportion of state school students and students from the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Nationally, 90% of the 15-16 cohort came from State schools and 11% were from areas least likely to participate in Higher Education.
A University spokesman told York Vision: “This latest data underlines York’s commitment to welcoming students from diverse backgrounds and emphasises our long record in widening participation and fair access.
“Over the last few years, we have intensified our widening participation work and developed exciting, progressive programmes of activities for schools. These include ‘Shine’; which is aimed at the brightest young pupils from Years 6 to 11 from areas where there is low progression to higher education.
“The University also offers extensive financial support for students from disadvantaged backgrounds while they are studying with us, with a bursary fund of over £6M in 2017/18.”