Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether POLAR4 is intended to measure socio-economic background.

The Office for Students (OfS) publishes POLAR4 data and provides information on its website about this metric, available at: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/data-and-analysis/young-participation-by-area/about-polar-and-adult-he/.

The OfS states that POLAR is intended to measure how likely young people are to participate in higher education across different areas of the UK. It does not directly measure socio-economic background. The OfS additionally recommends the use of TUNDRA (Tracking Underrepresentation by Area) rather than POLAR where an area-based measure of young participation is needed, as it provides more precise targeting and improved consistency with other participation measures, although POLAR may still provide additional insights in some circumstances.