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412,170 people have now been accepted on to degree courses - up 3% 232,250 girls and 179,920 boys - difference of 52,330 - it was 46,000 in 2013 ay 'potential of young men being let down through school system' Women are a third more likely to go to university because the school system is failing boys, higher education chiefs have warned.The gender gap on university campuses will be bigger than ever this autumn after girls snapped up 52,330 more places than boys within 24 hours of A-level results being released.University admissions bosses blamed the growing divide on a lack of suitably qualified boys emerging from secondary schools.They said boys were being ‘let down’ at school – and implicated teaching practices, the exam system and a shortage of male teachers.A-level results issued yesterday showed that boys passed 191,431 A-levels with top A*, A and B grades while girls notched up 246,059. But boys have cut into girls’ lead following changes to the exam system which meant a return to end- of-course exams and a shift away from bite-size modules.Mary Curnock Cook, chief executive of UCAS, the university admissions service, warned the ‘potential of young men is somehow being let down’ by the school system. UCAS figures show that 179,920 men have enrolled so far compared with 232,250 women – roughly a third more. This suggests a campus gender gap, with the first-year population comprising 56 per cent women and 44 per cent men. Both men and women are accepting places in greater numbers than last year but acceptances among women are growing faster. Women are taking up 4 per cent more places against men’s 1 per cent rise. ‘What we now see is that women are a third more likely to enter higher education and in fact women are more likely to enter higher education than men are to apply,’ Mrs Curnock Cook told BBC Newsnight. ‘That surely can’t be a good thing in terms of the balance in the potential of young women and men in their future career and life. ‘Young women outperform young men right through the schools system, so through primary school and secondary school, and surely the potential of young men is somehow being let down through that system, and of course we see it in university admissions.’ NEXT

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