CEER detects damaging HEFCE blunder

3 November 2015

The Higher Education Funding Council for England has made a crucial error in its latest report on degree outcomes (2015/21). It said that 82 per cent of graduates getting firsts or upper-seconds in 2013-14 came from state schools compared with 73 per cent from independent schools.

An analysis of HEFCE’s data published on 3 November 2015 by Professor Alan Smithers (read the report) has found that these figures are the wrong way round. In fact, it was 82 per cent of graduates from independent schools that had been awarded good degrees.

The wrong figures were widely quoted in the media in September 2015 when the HEFCE report was released, under headlines such as; ‘Top degree? You probably went to a state school’.

The report was quietly altered after CEER privately drew the error to HEFCE’s attention, but it still has not issued a public correction.

Professor Smithers said: “It is extraordinary that an influential body like HEFCE should have got its figures wrong and failed to publicly rectify them after being alerted to the error.”

Although HEFCE has changed the figures in the report, it repeats the claim that state school pupils were four percentage points ahead rather than nine points behind.

It seems to have confused itself by nullifying entry qualifications, which are linearly related to degree result.

Professor Smithers said: “While statistical alchemy may be able to turn a nine-point deficit into a four-point advantage, ultimately university admissions tutors have to deal with real people not statistical constructs.”