Specific learning and attention difficulties are often first identified in childhood, but they can cause lifelong academic and occupational challenges. We explored the prevalence of these difficulties and the representation of sex and ethnicity amongst all first-year students in UK higher education across 12 years—almost 5.7 million students—and compared course preferences and University destinations of those with and without difficulties. Students declaring learning/attention difficulties were more likely to be White or of Mixed ethnicity and least likely to be Asian. They were more likely to attend specialist HE institutions or newer universities, and more likely to study courses in creative arts and design, agriculture and architecture than law, languages, computer science, and mathematical sciences. The number of students declaring difficulties has increased year on year, in actual terms and as a proportion of the student body, suggesting that efforts to increase diversity and inclusion have been successful. However, differences remain between students with and without learning/attention difficulties in terms of ethnicity, subjects studied, and HE institutions attended, so more needs to be done to identify and address reasons for this. While this paper reports data from UK students, it addresses an international question and invites similar explorations of other national datasets.

中文翻译：

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高等教育中特定学习困难的普遍性：英国大学 12 学年的研究


特定的学习和注意力困难通常在童年时期首次被发现，但它们可能会导致终生的学业和职业挑战。我们探讨了这些困难的普遍性以及 12 年中英国高等教育所有一年级学生（近 570 万学生）的性别和种族代表性，并比较了有困难和没有困难的学生的课程偏好和大学目的地。宣布学习/注意力困难的学生更有可能是白人或混血儿，而最不可能是亚洲人。他们更有可能就读专业的高等教育机构或较新的大学，并且更有可能学习创意艺术和设计、农业和建筑课程，而不是法律、语言、计算机科学和数学科学。报告困难的学生人数在实际价值和学生群体中所占的比例逐年增加，这表明提高多样性和包容性的努力已经取得了成功。然而，有和没有学习/注意力困难的学生在种族、学习科目和就读的高等教育机构方面仍然存在差异，因此需要做更多的工作来确定和解决造成这种情况的原因。虽然本文报告了来自英国学生的数据，但它解决了一个国际问题，并邀请对其他国家数据集进行类似的探索。