Best Schools - Figures show 25 per cent of university applicants received at least one 'conditional unconditional o

New figures from UCAS reveal the number of school-leavers in England, Northern Ireland and Wales who received at least one conditional unconditional offer in 2019 rose to 64,825. By Katherine Sellgren, BBC News.

A record one in four university applicants received a "conditional unconditional" offer this year, figures from admissions service Ucas show.

But despite the rise in these offers, future degree students are now less likely to accept them, Ucas says.

Conditional unconditional offers give students a place - regardless of their A-level grades - on condition they make the university their firm first choice.

Critics say they encourage students not to work hard to get the best A-levels.

The latest Ucas figures show a quarter (25.1%) of 18-year-old university applicants from England, Northern Ireland and Wales - 64,825 students - received a conditional unconditional offer in 2019.

This is up 4.2 percentage points on 2018, from 20.9% (53,355 students).

'We must teach children to know things without Google' (by Ailsa Lawn, Herald)

In the classroom of the 1990s, if you needed to know something, it had to be in your head or written down somewhere. The class might have had access to a lone computer but a ropey dial-up connection wasn’t going to provide you with a bank of knowledge.

Fast forward to today – the world has never changed so fast and educationalists are trying harder than ever to prepare our children for an unknown society. As the brain adapts to our new world, we need to find new ways to teach the skills and knowledge we think will be important.

We know that technology will feature heavily in the future, and it is essential that children have the skills to access this, however, it is becoming more apparent that the soft skills that children develop are crucially important. Technology can do so much, but empathy, creativity, collaboration and a respect for each individual will be key in driving new technologies forward in a positive way.