Hundreds of thousands of students to learn A-level results – live

Results are in and they are not what they’d hoped for. Imy Brighty-Potts talks to experts about dealing with this very sensitive time, writes Imy Brighty-Potts.

Read Imy’s full piece here:

More students should be steered towards apprenticeships than traditional degrees to bring down soaring demand for higher education places, the head of the university admissions service has warned.

Clare Marchant, the chief executive of Ucas, told The Independent the number of university applicants was expected to hit 1 million in the next few years – up from a record 700,000 this year.

My colleagues Zoe Tidman and Kate Devlin report:

Tens of thousands of students could miss out on their first choices for university in what is likely to be the most competitive year ever for courses, it has been suggested.

The proportion of pupils receiving top grades could fall by almost 10 percentage points compared with last year, when students were given grades determined by teachers rather than exams due to the Covid-19 pandemic, an education expert has said.

Stigma and dated views remain around apprenticeships as being second-rate to a university degree, a survey has suggested.

Graduate careers service Prospects said views of apprenticeship content on its website have dropped by per cent compared with last year, while views on advice for getting into university have increased by 38 per cent.

The change saw options at the Russell Group universities – of which Liverpool University is a member – dwindle compared to last week, with 1,785 courses at 15 of the 24 elite institutions as of Wednesday morning, compared with 2,358 courses at 17 of them on Friday.

The University of Birmingham, which is also a member of the Russell Group, had shown on the Ucas website 10 courses as being available last week but has now advised people to check its own website on Thursday for any vacancies.

This is expected to be one of the most competitive years for university places and admissions service Ucas has acknowledged universities have been more cautious in their offer-making.

Commenting on the administrative blip that showed too many course on clearing, a Liverpool University spokesperson said: “The University of Liverpool will be in clearing for a small number of high-quality candidates in a range of subjects, but we are unable to be more specific until results day tomorrow, when we will know exactly which courses might have spaces available.

“The Ucas clearing pages were live for a period of time for pre-qualified applicants, as is the case each year. We removed the pages while we determine which courses are available in advance of results day tomorrow, when we will advertise any vacancies.”

The number of courses for students in clearing has dropped ahead of A-level results day, with one university blaming an “administrative blip” for showing more than 500 as available when they should not have been.

With less than 24 hours to go until the exam results are published, the availability of courses for those who do not get into their first choices was down on last week – most significantly at the University of Liverpool.

As of Wednesday morning, a PA news agency snapshot of the UK’s largest higher education providers showed there were 22,685 courses with vacancies for students living in England, down from 23,280 on Friday.

The University of Liverpool had shown 529 courses as available in clearing on the Ucas website last week but it is understood this should not have been the case and was an “administrative blip”.