The distinctive nature of Scottish education includes a slightly altered school year – which has the upshot of results in Scotland being made available earlier in the summer than elsewhere in the UK.

The majority of Scottish domiciled students that enter higher education do so with a Higher or Advanced Higher SQA qualification. The government has been clear that the performance of students in 2023 will have been affected by disruption due to Covid-19, though this would be a reduced impact compared to other years – so sensitivity to this factor in results calculations and grade boundary settings has been reduced compared to 2020, 2021, and 2022.

This year we would expect, therefore, to see similar (but not identical, there have been other changes to courses and examinations in the interim) results to the last pre-pandemic year (2019). And in essence, this is what we get.

Here are the results for SQA Higher qualifications:

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And here are the results for SQA Advanced Higher qualifications:

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Both these charts work in the same way – each dot represents results for a subject, with the size showing the number of entries overall. The vertical position of the dot shows the percentage of entrants achieving the grades you select using the parameter at the top left – you can chose individual grades (A, B, C, D, No award) or groups of grades (A-B, A-C, A-D). You can use the highlighter on the top right to find the subject you are interested in.

There were 191,810 Higher entries and 27,750 Advanced Higher entries for this latest cohort (an “entry” being a student taking an examination in a single subject). Both these figures are up slightly on last year.

University entry

However, the number of 18 year old students in Scotland seeking university places via UCAS has fallen slightly against the 2021 and 2022 cycles, though it sits comfortably above the number of applicants in 2019 and 2020. A greater percentage of these students are currently placed at their firm choice of provider and course than any year other than 2021 – the proportion free to be placed in Clearing is the lowest on record.

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We always need to be slightly careful in using UCAS statistics for university entry in the Scottish system – many students enter articulated courses (which start at a local FE provider before moving to a HE providers) and this information is not always captured via UCAS.

Another notable feature in Scotland is that most Scottish domiciled students choose to study in that country – with implications when we consider the mix of providers using Tariff groups. In this chart we can see a resurgence of interest in medium tariff providers compared to the pandemic years – taking us back to proportions approximately equivalent to those seen in 2019.

Elsewhere in the UK

Of course, today isn’t all about Scotland. Some 86,170 students domiciled in England accepted their firm university place today – this is the lowest number on record for the opening of the peak admissions period (note that in 2021 results for the rest of the UK were also published on SQA results day). A part of this change could be linked to the end of conditional unconditional offer making, but the majority stems from the continued decline in mature students applying via UCAS. This effect is also visible in Wales, where applications from those over 35 are down sharply on previous years. In both cases we should note that mature students often apply direct to their chosen provider rather than via UCAS.