More GCS students heading to Russell Group universities

Students from Gower College Swansea are bucking the trend of two recent national reports.

The first, the figures released by the admissions body UCAS, showed that a quarter of Welsh constituencies have less than 25% of 18 year olds going to university – with Swansea West and Swansea East named as being under 25%, Gower only slightly above, and with Cardiff the highest at 47%.

However at Gower College Swansea, where similar large numbers of students come from across Swansea West, Swansea East and Gower, over 1,000 students, out of a cohort size of less than 2,000 (i.e. over 50%) will be going on to university this year.

A second recent BBC report stated that the number of Welsh students progressing onto Russell Group Universities – these being 24 of the leading universities in the UK - has dropped by 10% in the past three years.

Yet once again the figures from students at Gower College Swansea progressing onto these universities show the opposite to be true – with the number of these students increasing from 136 in 2014 to 175 in 2017. This summer’s students are moving on to no less than 19 of these 24 universities, including four going to Cambridge and two to Oxford.

“We are very pleased to be swimming against the tide in these particular cases with an excellent number of our students going on to study at university and, of these students, almost one in five is heading to one of these leading universities,” says Principal Mark Jones. “This has been achieved due to the talent and hard work of our students and the commitment and dedication of lecturers and support staff from across the College.”

This year’s figures by university acceptance are as follows: