High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: November 2011
Age Participation Index (API)
The Scottish Age Participation Index (API) estimates the proportion of 17 year olds who will partake in higher education for the first time before their 21st birthday. The focus of the API is on entrants to full-time higher education in the UK.
The Age Participation Index (API) for Scotland was 44.3% for 2009-10. This is an increase of 1.3% percentage points on the previous year (43.0%).
Participation for females and males have followed the trend for the API, with the participation rate for females in 2009-10 fixed at 49.6% which is above the original API level for same year (44.3%) . In contrast, the participation rates for males was 39.2% which is below the API level for 2009-10.
The 1.3% increase in API levels between 2008-09 and 2009-10 resulted from the increased participation rate for males, which rose by 1.7 % compared to 0.8 % increase for females. The gap between the two genders has decreased, falling from 11.4% in 2008-09 to 10.4 percentage points in 2009-10.
The participation of first time entrants to first degree level courses contribute to 26.9% to the overall API level, Scottish HEIs are the basis of the greatest component of entrants which are included in the API. These contribute to 27.3% to the API with college entrants contributing to 15.4% to the API.
Figure 1
Source: Scottish Funding Council (SFC)
Figure 1 shows participation for those from deprived areas is consistently lower than participation rates for those from non-deprived areas. The API for deprived areas increased and remained stable at around 23.4% between 2003-04 and 2007-08, before rising to 26.2% in 2009-10.
Whilst the API for deprived areas rose by 1.4% from 2008-09 to 2009-10, the rise in the API for the non-deprived areas was lower at 1.2%, reducing the difference between the areas to 22.6%.
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