Thousands more students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have been accepted onto university courses this year compared to the last time students sat A-level exams before the pandemic.
Around 46,800 of this group got the grades needed for their first or second choice university - a rise from 3,770 in 2019, according to Ucas.
“We’re encouraged to see early indications of a continued increase in the rate of disadvantaged students gaining places,” John Blake from the Office for Students said.
It came as hundreds of thousands of pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland found out their marks on A-level results day.
The overall pass rate and proportion of top marks awarded dropped compared to the year before, but is still higher than the last time students took exams.
This was expected under a crackdown on grade inflation that still took into account disruption suffered by this year’s cohort in the Covid pandemic.
