The proportion of UK undergraduate degrees awarded as firsts has hit a decade high.
According to data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), more than a quarter (28%) of classified first degrees were awarded first class honours.
In 2009/10 it was 14.4%.
HESA says the number of students achieving a first has increased two percentage points every year since 2013/14.
In 2017/18 a larger proportion of female students gained a first or upper second class degree than male students – 28% compared to 27%.
The figures from HESA also show that since the Brexit referendum in June 2016, there has been a slight drop in the number of first year students from other European Union countries – down 1% to 62,270 in 2017/18 from 63,035 in 2016/17.
But the number of first year students for 2017/18 are still higher than they were in 2013/14.
The number of first year students from non-EU countries rose by 8% to 185,415, up from 172,275 in 2016/17.
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