About the data
Information about the methodology and introduction to the main statistical concepts. For more information, see the full technical annex.
This analysis explores how different universities in England support social mobility. It focuses exclusively on the point of university access and enrolment, rather than combining access metrics with graduate salaries.
Understanding the benchmark curves
The core of this benchmarking tool is a set of graphs for 94 higher education providers in England. Each graph plots cumulative percentages on the Y axis against 10 equally-sized socio-economic status (SES) deciles on the X axis. Decile 1 is the most disadvantaged and decile 10 is the most advantaged.
Every university's chart displays 3 fundamental lines:
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Yellow line (equal distribution)
This represents a hypothetical, ideal scenario where the university's student population is perfectly representative of the wider population of young people in England. This means exactly 10% of enrolling students are taken from each of the 10 SES deciles.
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Blue line (students enrolling)
This represents the actual socio-economic profile of full-time, first-year undergraduate students enrolling at the university at age 18 or 19.
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Red line (students meeting entry requirements)
This represents the socio-economic profile of the sub-population of young people nationally who met the university's minimum academic entry requirements.
To make the benchmark as realistic as possible, entry requirements are not based on advertised grades. Instead, they are calculated from the actual qualifications held by enrolling students on each course. The bottom 10% of achievers are excluded to prevent contextual offers or mitigating circumstances from skewing the entry standard.
Socio-economic status (SES) and disadvantage
We use 3 distinct indicators from administrative student records to place young people into 10 granular deciles:
- individual-level income: free school meals (FSM) eligibility during year 11
- school-level wealth: attendance at an independent (private fee-paying) school
- neighbourhood-level deprivation: the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI) score of the student's home postcode
Individual-level indicators – school type and FSM eligibility – were given the highest priority and weight in the model. This choice was made because they are direct, individual measures of household socio-economic status. IDACI is an area-based indicator.
The IDACI score was treated as a secondary metric. Rather than acting as an equal third weight, it was used to:
- refine the sorting of students within the broader categories set by FSM and school type
- distribute the remaining state-school pupils who did not qualify for FSM
Accounting for geography: the location weighting
Socioeconomic recruitment is heavily influenced by geography. Disadvantaged students are statistically much more likely to study close to home due to financial or personal reasons. To account for this, the tool provides a toggle for location weighting:
- Unadjusted model (national): This model assumes the university recruits nationally. The red line represents all qualified students across England.
- Location-adjusted model (local): This model adjusts the expected pool (the red line) by calculating the exact physical distance between each student's home postcode at age 16 and the university, applying an inverse distance weight.
We set a minimum theoretical distance of 1 kilometre, effectively capping the maximum location weight at 1. This is to ensure that minor differences in close proximity do not distort the expected curves – for example, a large independent boarding school being located directly next to a university campus.
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National recruiters
For high-tariff institutions with national appeal, such as Oxford and Cambridge, students are historically willing to travel long distances. For these universities, we recommend focusing on the unadjusted benchmarks.
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Local and regional recruiters
For institutions that mainly attract candidates locally, the location-adjusted figures give a much fairer and more representative benchmark of the qualified talent pool available on their doorstep.
The social mobility coefficient
The social mobility coefficient is a clear, comparative metric that represents the area in our charts between the enrolment line (blue) and the entry requirements line (red).
A positive score means the university is ‘over-performing’. It is enrolling students who are more disadvantaged than the pool of 18 to 19 year olds who meet its entry requirements.
A negative score means the university is ‘under-performing’. It is enrolling students who are significantly more advantaged than the pool of qualified 18 to 19 year olds.
A score of zero represents a perfect match. This is where the university's actual intake perfectly matches the socio-economic profile of qualified candidates.
Limitations and technical caveats
Our analysis tracks students who took GCSEs in the 2015 to 2016 school year and enrolled in higher education in September 2018 or 2019. We did this to establish a stable baseline that would not be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw a trend towards higher grades associated with teacher assessment. Trends in access to higher education may have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Strict data owner interpretations of the Digital Economy Act 2017 mean that schools and universities are treated as "bodies corporate" and their names cannot be disclosed in connection with application datasets. As a result, we were unable to plot an "application curve", and the data cannot definitively show whether under-representation is due to student application choices or institutional admissions practices.
The model focuses strictly on 18 to 19 year olds entering full-time undergraduate courses through traditional A level and Level 3 BTEC routes. It does not include:
- mature students
- part-time learners
- foundation years
- degree apprenticeships
The data is restricted to higher education providers and school leavers in England. This is because school census records (such as FSM eligibility) are devolved, and deprivation indices are calculated differently in England, Scotland and Wales.