The Class of 2023, who took A Level exams and other qualifications this summer, have reached a critical moment of transition: many are making decisions with long-lasting consequences for their future paths after compulsory education. With the release of A Level results and university admissions decisions this month, one of the key areas of interest is their higher education plans. In this analysis, the first to use data from the second wave of the COSMO (COVID Social Mobility & Opportunities) study, we explore some crucial aspects of how the Class of 2023 see their futures planning out and made their university plans based on this.
Among the Class of 2023, the proportion aspiring to go to university has risen compared to earlier cohorts. In our most direct comparison, compared to young people in the Next Steps cohort study, who took their A levels in 2008, when asked at the same age the COSMO cohort are over 10 percentage points more likely to report having applied to, being very or fairly likely to apply to go to university: 57% reported this when aged 17-18 in Next Steps, but 68% in COSMO.
University aspirations also varied by socioeconomic background. Young people with various measures of disadvantage were much less likely to either have applied to or plan to apply to university, compared to their better-off peers. Those from working class families were less likely to either have applied or intend to apply to university compared to those with parents in managerial or professional occupations (57% vs 77%). Those from families who used a food bank in the last year were also 21 percentage points less likely to either have applied to or expect to apply to university (48% vs 69% for those from families that had not used a food bank, see figure 1). Aspirations also differed between students attending different kinds of post-16 institution: those who were privately educated were more likely to either have already applied to or intend to apply to university, compared to those who attended a state school or college (96% compared to 74%).
