UK falling behind in university participation

Britain is falling behind other industrial nations in the race to increase the proportion of its young people entering university, an international study reported.

But it has jumped to near top of the league for spending on pre-primary children, with only the United States spending more per child.

The findings, from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), are a mixture of good and bad news for Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government, which has made education a priority and committed itself to increasing university participation.

Even though the level of entry to higher education in Britain rose to 52 per cent of young people in 2004 from 48 per cent in 1998, the average rate across the 30 OECD countries surveyed rose much faster in the same period, to 53 per cent from 40 per cent.

The OECD's annual Education at a Glance survey showed that Britain has been overtaken by several countries where more than 60 per cent of young people entered full-length higher education courses.

These include Australia, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the United States.

OECD analyst Andreas Schleicher said one reason for Britain's relative decline could be that other countries offered a more attractive range of public subsidies for higher education students.

It could also be because British secondary schools were not increasing fast enough the number of pupils achieving acceptable qualifications.

"The fact that baseline qualifications are not growing as fast as in other countries could become a serious bottleneck for raising higher education participation," he added. He said the strong academic bias of Britain's A-level system might be proving a barrier to university entry.

University participation rates were higher in other countries which gave more status to vocational qualifications.

But he noted that Britain had one of the lowest university drop-out rates among the 30 OECD member nations surveyed, with 78 per cent of students completing their courses compared to a 70 per cent average.

Mr Schleicher praised the government's investment in school education, particularly at the pre-primary age.

"The UK is one of the few countries that has delivered on its promise to increase resources in education," he said.

Only five other OECD countries increased spending on educational institutions at higher rate than Britain between 1995 and 2003, he added.

"In many countries, investment on education has at least not grown as fast as GDP, whereas in the UK the opposite is true.

"The investment in education has been quite strategic, in the sense that it has been put into the levels of education where the public returns are the highest - early child education."

The Department for Education and Skills said specialised vocational diplomas to be introduced in 2008 for 14-16-year-olds would help attract more young people into higher education.

Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell said the OECD figures related to data provided in 2004 and earlier. "We anticipate that our position will improve even further as our latest education performance features in future comparisons," he added.