London is leading in access stakes

Institutions in the capital are best at attracting students from under-represented groups, according to a funding council study published yesterday.

About 37 per cent of young undergraduates at London colleges and universities are from poorer backgrounds, as defined by the postcode of their home address. This is above the average English participation rate of 33 per cent.

The Northwest and the West Midlands also do well at managing to enrol under-represented groups, with participation rates of about 36 per cent.

Meanwhile institutions in the Southwest are particularly bad at enrolling under-represented groups, with less than 25 per cent of students from poorer backgrounds. The Southeast, Eastern and East Midlands areas all performed below average.

The figures come from regional profiles of higher education published by the Higher Education Funding Council for England at its annual conference in Loughborough yesterday.

The data show that nearly half of England's ethnic minority population lives in London, which is reflected in the high proportion of students from ethnic minorities studying in some of the capital's higher education institutions.

Mature students are also concentrated in the capital. About 26 per cent of undergraduates studying in London are aged over 25. Mature students in the Eastern, West Midlands and Northwest regions also form more than 20 per cent of the undergraduate population.

London, with many universities, does best in the research stakes, attracting almost twice as much total research income from grants and contracts as its next nearest competitor, the Southeast region. London, the Southeast (includes Oxford) and Eastern (includes Cambridge) regions together collected 60 per cent of research funding for English institutions.

Institutions in the Eastern, West Midlands, Northwest and Yorkshire and Humberside regions have the greatest proportion of students studying for Higher National Certificates and Higher National Diplomas.

The Eastern region also has the greatest proportion of postgraduate research students, forming about 9 per cent of the total student population.

Part-time students form more than 35 per cent of the student population in the Eastern and West Midlands regions, and a lower proportion elsewhere. Just .5 per cent of the student population in the East Midlands studies part-time, compared with the national average of 31.8 per cent.

The data also show that the Eastern, Southeast and Southwest areas suffer a net loss of young undergraduates. For every 100 students from the Eastern region, just 55 study in the area.

By contrast, Yorkshire and Humberside does particularly well at attracting students to the areas, with 160 young undergraduates for every 100 from the area.

The region boasts nine universities, five higher education colleges and 30 further education colleges offering directly funded higher education courses.