uk resource centre for women in science, engineering and technology

Statistics

Searching our Statistics

 

The UKRC’s statistics service provides detailed data on women’s participation and progression in science, engineering and technology, through education to careers in academia or industry, collated from a number of sources. 

 

At present these statistics are organised under the following headings which you can see in the left hand drop down menu:

  • Primary and secondary education
  • Vocational training
  • Students in higher educations
  • First destinations of SET graduates
  • SET qualified
  • SET occupations
  • HE institutions
  • School and HE career progression
  • Public bodies
  • EU comparisons

 

By using the left hand menu you can open folders and browse collections of statistical data in the area in which you are interested. Definitions of the terms used are given in the glossary.

 

 

If, after you have searched through the statistics in the folders, you have not found what you need,  you can contact us for further help or advice. We maybe able to get the statistics you need, or direct you to a source where you can get them yourself.  Some sources charge for data, and you may need to pay for access to it. We will respond to your request as soon as possible, but at certain times of the year there could be a delay.

 
 
  

 
 
Stats of the month

ARCHIVE


Girls do well in SET A Levels


(A full report is available here)

Girls are consistently performing well in those A level SET subjects that they attempt. The trend in the UK for girls  being slightly more likely than boys (who are also performing well) to obtain a grade A-E in SET A level subjects continues in 2009.  The differences in performance between girls and boys are greatest in information and communication technologies and in computing where the success rate (obtaining a grade A-E) of girls was 2.6 percentage points higher than that of boys; and in physics when it was 2.0 percentage points higher.

Girls are also achieving a higher percentage than boys of A grades in SET A levels, but not consistently across all subjects.  The subjects that show the largest differences in performance are:
  • technology subjects where 21.3% of girls scored an A grade compared to 15.4% of boys : a difference of 5.9 percentage points
  • physics: where 36.4% of girls scored an A grade compared to 30.7 % of boys: a difference of 5.7 percentage points
  • Information and communication technologies (ICT): where13.3% of girls scored an A grade compared to 8.2 % of boys: a difference of 5.1 percentage points.
Only in further maths and computing did boys achieve better than girls with 58.6% of boys achieving an A grade compared to 57.2% of girls in further maths: a difference of 1.4 percentage points. In computing 15.8% ob boys who attempted the subject achieved an A grade compared to 15.0% of girls.

Figure 1 below shows the actual numbers of girls attempting all SET A level subjects, and also charts this number as a percentage of the total entrants. This shows that girls are over 50% of entrants only in biology, although they have nearly reached this proportion in chemistry where they are 48.4%. In maths, technology and ICT girls ‘hover’ around the 40% mark. In further mathematics, and combined sciences they make up nearly one third of entrants. In physics they are just over 20% of entrants, and in computing they are not quite 10% of entrants.