Higher Education: Standards
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of trends in higher education grade distributions.
Answered by Department for Education
The Office for Students publish analysis of degree classifications over time which is available at:
This report analyses graduate attainment rates and assesses to what extent the increases and decreases in these rates could be statistically accounted for by changes in the prior attainment of, and distribution of subjects studied by, the graduate populations.
The data shows that between the 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 academic years, the percentage of UK-domiciled, full-time first-degree graduates at English providers attaining a first class or upper second class degree fell. In 2023/2024, 77.2 per cent received a first or upper second class degree compared with 77.6 per cent in 2022-2023. This decrease of 0.4 percentage points is the third successive year that rates have fallen, having previously increased considerably between 2010-2011 and 2020-2021.
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