Few Scots from deprived areas at university

Students from the poorest parts of Scotland remain under-represented at higher education institutions, particularly the ancient universities, new figures have shown.

Just 8% of Scottishbased entrants at the universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews hailed from the 20% most-deprived areas in 2015-16, Scottish Funding Council (SFC) statistics revealed.

Students from lessaffluent backgrounds were also less likely to enter small specialist institutions such as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow School of Art and SRUC (Scotland’s Rural College), making up just 11% of their intake.

Newer institutions such as the universities of Dundee and Stirling had a rate of 12%, the Open University 14% and post92 institutions such as the University of Abertay Dundee and Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh 15%.

Colleges fared best with the number of entrants from poorer backgrounds, with 23% coming from the most deprived areas.

The overall percentage of Scottish-based entrants to higher education (HE) from the least affluent parts of the country was 16.1%, up just 0.1 percentage points from 2014-15.

The Scottish Government’s Commission on Widening Access wants students from the 20% most deprived backgrounds to represent 20% of entrants to higher education by 2030.

Higher education minister Shirley-Anne Somerville said: “I am encouraged to see more entrants from the 20% most deprived areas in Scotland accessing higher education, although these figures show a variation between institutions still persists.”

She highlighted figures showing a record number of HE students gained qualifications from Scottish institutions during the year, up 17.7% since 2006-07 to 97,565.

Overall, there were 285,450 students in higher education in Scotland, up 1.5% from the previous year.