Scottish Education Statistics and Govan

On BBC’s Question Time, Jo Swinson MP (Liberal Democrat, East Dunbartonshire) made the following claim:

I represent a very middle class, affluent constituency and, in one of the towns, 80% of young children go on to university. Five or six miles down the road in Glasgow Govan, it’s 4%.

This article examines these claims about Scottish young people and their university attendance.

Scottish Index

This is a pair of claims about the progression to university of Scottish young people. In the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2016 (SIMD16) data-set, there is an estimated proportion of young people (aged 17 to 21) who enrolled in a full-time first degree course. This is labelled ‘HESA’, and is part of the education indices.

The data-set breaks Scotland down into nearly 7,000 data zones, containing about 760 people each. For local data zones in Govan and Linthouse, Govanhill West and Govanhill East and Aikenhead, the average estimated proportion of 17 to 21-year olds enrolled was 4%.