Codes for class

Your leader criticises the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service for not giving admissions staff information about an individual applicant's social class. Like information relating to ethnic origin, this is not passed on until after the selection process is complete. Applicants, who may well be anxious about providing such information, are reassured that it will be used only to monitor equal opportunities.

Ucas makes available its postcode data for each institution. This allows them to identify areas from which there is an under or oversupply of applicants, gauged against the previous year and application patterns across the sector. This information is updated each Monday, and institutions may use it to guide recruitment and liaison activity.

The use of postcodes as a proxy for social class has shortcomings, but using the occupation of the family's principal earner is equally prone to inaccuracies because of problems of self-description and ambiguous definitions of occupations. When Ucas ran the same student data through postcode and occupational background analyses, the picture in terms of social composition was strikingly similar.

Tony Higgins

Chief executive

Universities and Colleges Admissions Service