Whilst trumpeting this increase, it seems the government are desperately trying to cover the fall in the number of students going on to study science at A-Level, which has been observed over the last 10 years. On top of this worrying information, it also appears that the number of university students studying towards core science degrees is also being cleverly disguised. The government have included the number of undergraduates studying science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM subjects) as expected, however they have also included data for subjects such as psychology, geography and sport within their report.

A few figures that are causing concern on this topic include over 60% of firms from all sectors are having real difficulty finding graduates with STEM degrees and by 2014 there will be 2 million jobs that cannot be filled due to the lack of STEM graduates.

That said, this can be seen as good news for students at university already studying towards science degrees as these figures indicate an increased demand for STEM-degree graduates. Evidence for this demand can be shown by a survey commissioned by The Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics from PriceWaterhouse Coopers that demonstrated chemistry and physics degrees offer the biggest financial return on the ‘university investment’ after only medicine-related careers.

If rates of students studying such subjects continue to decline, there is likely to be either a negative impact on the UK’s economy, or a heavy uptake of international students and graduates to fill this growing void.