The total number of Scottish students who have applied for places at the country’s universities is up slightly from 47,110 last year to 47,250 this year, new figures show.
When broken down by socioeconomic background, data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas), which processes millions of applications each year for colleges and universities across the UK, shows the number of Scottish-domiciled applicants from more deprived areas has decreased by 10 from 7,760 to 7,750, while applications from more affluent areas dropped by 2 per cent from 12,510 to 12,230.
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Scotland’s widening access commissioner warned in June that widening access progress would be harmed by Covid-19.
In his annual report, Professor Sir Peter Scott said the closure of schools and cancellation of exams would exacerbate “existing inequalities between school pupils” - including potential higher education applicants.
However, Alastair Sim, director of Universities Scotland, said today’s figures showed no negative impact “so far” - but he added that next month would be the “key data point” when final exam results for Scottish pupils were due to be announced. They would dictate how many places at colleges and universities were actually be taken up, he said.
He continued: “Since the pandemic hit, universities have consistently said that they will not let it deter them from efforts to widen access and that they will offer more flexibility to applicants because of the major disruption to schools, to exams and to people’s lives in general.
“Today’s data suggests that there’s been no negative impact, so far, on applicants from the most deprived 20 per cent of Scotland’s areas wanting to go to university - applicant numbers have held steady.”
Overall, the Ucas figures showed a 3 per cent rise in the total number of applications to Scottish institutions, with the number of applications from outside the EU going up by 16 per cent, as the number of applications from those within the EU dropped by 2 per cent - continuing a trend seen in recent years.
Between January and 30 June, a period that included an extensive lockdown owing to the spread of Covid-19, 4,730 applications were made compared with 3,380 during the same period last year - an increase of 40 per cent.
