Our results suggest that, in the UK, as in the US, there is a significant gap in the drop out rate between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils. Much of this gap disappears once we allow for students’ prior achievement, suggesting that some of the apparent difference in first year drop out rates between richer and poorer students is actually attributable to differences in their academic preparation for HE and/or their ability, as measured by earlier measures of educational achievement. In the context, of a
relatively low aggregate rate of first year drop out (6%) from English universities, once we fully control for prior achievement, a pupil from a professional background is 0.6 percentage points less likely to drop out than a student from a managerial/senior official background. Equally a pupil whose parents are in sales and customer service occupations is 1.6 percentage points more likely to drop out than a student from a managerial/senior official background. In the context of a low overall drop out rate in the UK, these differences in drop out rates are arguably size able.
In this paper we were constrained by limitations with our data in terms of the