Figures show that Scotland’s university access attainment gap has widened, with SNP ministers accused of “betraying” the poorest students.
An end-of-cycle report from Ucas, the admissions service, disclosed that the difference between the most and least deprived pupils being accepted into university had increased by 50 per cent since 2018 — from 6.1 percentage points to 9.2 last year.
While the number of applicants from the most deprived backgrounds in Scotland increased by 0.1 points from 69 per cent in 2018, more students from the most affluent areas were accepted.
About 78.3 per cent of students from the SIMD 5 quintile — the least deprived — were accepted into university last year, up from 75.1 per cent five years ago.
