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Foundation Degrees

Question for Department for Education

UIN HL8638, tabled on 19 June 2023

To ask His Majesty's Government, for each academic year since 2018–19, how many of the foundation year students who enrolled for degrees in price group D, were enrolled for degrees in (1) business subjects, and (2) social studies.

Answered on

3 July 2023

The data for all three tables below cover English-domiciled foundation year students studying at approved fee cap English higher education (HE) institutions and further education (FE) colleges.

The data is currently unpublished and is based on internal department analysis of Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data. As such, figures are rounded to the nearest five in line with the following HESA guidance: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/about/regulation/data-protection/rounding-and-suppression-anonymise-statistics.

The price group data for the 2018/19 academic year is not directly comparable to price group data for the following academic years because of a change in the system for classifying subjects from the 2019/20 academic year onwards.

The number of students enrolled onto one-year foundation courses is shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Full-person equivalent of foundation year entrants studying one-year courses at HE institutions and FE colleges in England since the 2018/19 academic year.

Academic Year

Number of students undertaking a one-year foundation year course

2018/19

35,995

2019/20

43,395

2020/21

53,590

2021/22

69,325

The number of foundation year students studying in each of the different price groups since the 2018/19 academic year is shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Full-person equivalent of foundation year entrants at HE institutions and FE colleges in England since the 2018/19 academic year shown by price group.

Academic Year

Price Group

2018/19

2019/20

2020/21

2021/22

A

0

0

0

0

B

9,315

10,585

9,510

11,260

C1.1

2,220

2,450

2,700

2,900

C1.2

2,475

2,470

2,860

3,160

C2

4,870

7,105

9,440

10,905

D

15,065

20,785

29,070

41,090

The number of students studying a foundation year in a business and management or social sciences degree for each academic year since 2018/19 is shown in Table 3.

Table 3: Full-person equivalent of foundation year entrants studying business and management and social science degrees at HE institutions and FE colleges in England since the 2018/19 academic year.

Academic Year

Subject

2018/19

2019/20

2020/21

2021/22

Business and management studies

8,900

13,600

23,420

35,585

Social sciences

3,855

6,265

6,345

6,915