A Taxanomy of A-Level Subjects According to the Expressed Preferences of Russell Group Universities: Who Does What?

While the proportions of young people in England progressing to university have increased considerably over the last fifty years, those from the least privileged backgrounds remain under-represented at highly selective universities. The biggest barrier to participation remains low attainment, but other factors may also be important. One postulated factor is the role of A-level subject choice, with the Russell Group of large, research intensive, highly selective universities seeking to address a lack of information held by students at age 16+ by publishing a list of subjects which it describes as facilitating of university entry. Their list covers a minority of the A-level subjects available to English students in 2014/15, and the extent to which the remaining subjects are facilitating or not of entry is unclear. In this work I develop a taxonomy of all 96 A-level subjects available in 2014/15, based on the published preferences of Russell Group universities, and go on to describe the differences in take-up of these subjects by gender and school type. Using recently linked National Pupil Database and Higher Education Statistics Agency data I then apply the taxonomy to three recent cohorts of university entrants, giving prima facie evidence of variations in proportions of subjects from different categories held by Russell Group and non-Russell Group entrants, and map these categories onto previous work on subject difficulty. The taxonomy provides a useful starting point for the analysis of the role of subject choice in university application, is informative in the context of current A-level reforms and draws attention to subjects taken by significant numbers of Russell Group students that are not available at many state schools and colleges.