The gender gap among young people in higher education has widened to its largest size for almost 10 years.
New figures from the Department for Education (DfE) estimate that 53.5% of females, aged 17 to 30, were in higher education in 2014/15.
The equivalent number for males was just 43.4%.
The gap between the figures - 10.2 percentage points - is the biggest since comparable records began in 2006.
In 2013/14 the gap was 9.1 points.
The rise is being driven by a faster growth in the participation rate among females than males.
While the rate for males rose by 2.9% year-on-year, the rate for females jumped by 4.5%.
The figures also suggest that a total of 48.3% of young people in England were in higher education in 2014/15.
This number has risen steadily since 2006, apart from a dip between 2011/12 and 2012/13 which coincided with the introduction of higher tuition fees.
The DfE's statistics cover 17 to 30-year-old residents of England who are studying in UK higher education institutions, along with English, Welsh and Scottish further education colleges.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel