Young participation by area

TUNDRA (tracking underrepresentation by area) is an area-based measure that uses tracking of state-funded mainstream school pupils in England to calculate young participation. It is an official statistic.

TUNDRA classifies local areas across England into five equal groups – or quintiles - based on the proportion of 16 year old state-funded mainstream school pupils who participate in higher education aged 18 or 19 years.

Quintile one shows the lowest rate of participation. Quintile five shows the highest rate of participation.

TUNDRA MSOA uses Middle Super Output Area (MSOA) as the definition of local area, and TUNDRA LSOA uses Lower Super Output Area (LSOA) as the definition of local area.

The measure focuses on state-funded mainstream students who are typically included in geographically based outreach. Its main objective is to help outreach programmes identify and target areas of low participation more effectively.

If you have any queries or suggestions for improvements to TUNDRA please contact William Rimington at [email protected].

TUNDRA classifies local areas across England according to the young participation rate in higher education.

TUNDRA uses data-linking to track cohorts of 16 year old state-funded mainstream school pupils in local areas in England who completed their GCSEs (Key Stage 4) in the summer of 2012 to 2016. It matches them to higher education records for academic years 2014-15 to 2019-20 when they would have been 18 or 19.

The young participation rate for each local area is calculated based on cohorts of state-funded mainstream school pupils completing Key Stage 4 at aged 16.

If individuals in the cohort are found to be in higher education two or three years later at age 18 or 19 they are considered to be young participants.

To calculate the young participation rate for each local area, the number of young participants is divided by the original number of Key Stage 4 pupils in the area.

TUNDRA MSOA uses Middle Super Output Area (MSOA) as the definition of local area, and TUNDRA LSOA uses Lower Super Output Area (LSOA) as the definition of local area.

Each local area is ranked according to its young participation rate and assigned approximately equally across five groups (quintiles), where quintile one areas have the lowest participation rates and quintile five areas have the highest participation rates. The quintiles used in the classification apply to the local area and not to each individual.

Note that the generic TUNDRA methodology was developed based on MSOAs, so that all documentation which does not explicitly refer to MSOAs or LSOAs implicitly relates to MSOAs.

See full details of the TUNDRA methodology.

TUNDRA is a different measure to POLAR4 because it focuses on the participation rate of state-funded mainstream school pupils and only applies to England.

The methodology differs from POLAR4 in three key ways:

1. TUNDRA uses data-linking to track students from the GCSE (Key Stage 4) cohort at age 16 to participation in higher education at age 18-19. POLAR4 does not use data-linking.
2. TUNDRA focuses on pupils in state-funded mainstream schools, excluding those pupils at independent schools, special schools and pupil referral units. POLAR4 includes all school types.
3. TUNDRA focuses on areas within England, whereas POLAR4 is a UK-wide measure.
   
   The original experimental TUNDRA classification, based on Middle layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs), is compared with POLAR4 in the differences between TUNDRA and POLAR4.

In September 2020 the OfS released TUNDRA LSOA. This experimental measure extends the TUNDRA methodology to be based on Lower-layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) and hides the quintile of an area if there are less than 30 people in it. There is not a version of POLAR which uses LSOAs.  

The experimental TUNDRA version based on MSOAs has been renamed to TUNDRA MSOA in September 2020. This continues to hide the quintile of an area if there are less than 50 people in it. POLAR4 also hides the quintile of an area if there are less than 50 people in it.

We have released new versions of the experimental TUNDRA classifications, called TUNDRA LSOA (based on LSOAs) and TUNDRA MSOA (based on MSOAs).

To support the release of these versions, we have published some guidance documents:

• Overview of the new classifications
• Analysis of the accuracy of the LSOA classification
• Analysis of the stability of the LSOA classification

In 2020, we have made small updates to the TUNDRA methodology to address the way in which duplicate records are handled.

We have released an update to the TUNDRA MSOA and TUNDRA LSOA classifications using the latest data available. The most recent update uses the newest available data based on Key Stage 4 pupils from the 2012 to 2016 cohorts.

For more information on the differences in quintiles assigned between the previous published version (based on 2010 to 2014 cohorts) and the latest version (based on 2012 to 2016 cohorts), please see the comparison document.

The TUNDRA LSOA and TUNDRA MSOA classifications are available on the postcode lookup tool. Interactive maps support this release which show the TUNDRA MSOA and TUNDRA LSOA classifications for the whole of England. We have also produced a map showing the difference between the TUNDRA MSOA quintile and the TUNDRA LSOA quintile for each LSOA.

See the interactive maps.

If you have any queries or suggestions for improvements to TUNDRA LSOA or TUNDRA MSOA, please contact William Rimington at [email protected].

• Get the TUNDRA data published in September 2020 as an Excel file
• Get the TUNDRA data published in September 2020 as a CSV file
• Get the TUNDRA data published in September 2019 as an Excel file
• Get the TUNDRA data published in September 2019 as a CSV file