A Closer Look at Higher Education Minority Ethnic Students and ...

par with White students (similar percentages achieving 21 pluspoints). Indians are just behind the White group in this respect,but considerably ahead of most other minority groups (furtherdetails are given in the Interim report, Table C7, for 2001 entrants).Since 2002, UCAS has introduced a new Tariff system to enableequivalencies to be made between the various qualifications,especially the new ‘AS’ qualifications. In the published statistics,the vast majority of accepted applicants have a Tariff ‘score’, butthere is more missing data among some ethnic groups than others(eg only half of Black Africans and around 60 per cent of otherBlack students have Tariff scores). Care, therefore, is needed usingthese data for comparative purposes, and also it is the first yearthat they have been published, so they are still at a trial stage. Butthey support points, made above, that minority groups overalltend to have lower entry qualifications than White students, butthat some groups have much higher entry qualifications thanothers. For example, over half of all minority ethnic groups, exceptChinese and the Asian/White mixed ethnic group (at 46 and 41per cent respectively) fall into the lower Tariff groups (less than300 points), while the comparative White figure is 49 per cent.Among Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Black African and BlackCaribbean groups this applies to over 70 per cent of UCASacceptances (where a score is given). At the top end of the Tariff(480 points plus), the Chinese outstrip all other groups (16 percent of them are in this category), which compares with ten percent of White acceptances, and seven per cent of Indians.2.7 School or college previously attendedThe UCAS admissions data provide evidence on differences inschool backgrounds also by ethnic group. More minority ethnic,and especially Black, acceptances to full-time degree courses comevia the further education sector, which is what we would expectfrom the discussion above on post-16 routes (see section 2.3); also,slightly more come from a sixth form college, compared withWhite entrants. While there are fewer minority ethnic entrantsoverall from independent schools, certain groups, notablyChinese, and to a lesser extent Indians, Asian Other and mixedethnic groups, are more likely than White students to follow thisroute. As shown above, these tend to be groups more likely totake the traditional ‘A’ level route. Minority ethnic entrants arealso less likely to have come from a grammar school than Whitestudents on average, with the exception of Chinese and AsianOther groups. Pakistani and Bangladeshi students are the mostlikely groups to have progressed to HE from a sixth form college.(further details in Table A6).In general, it has been established, from the recent YCS analysiscited above, that a much higher percentage of young people whoattend independent rather than state schools (at year 11) go on toenter higher education (by age 19), and also a higher proportionWhy the Difference? 21