Media furore as UCAS announces changes to 2008 applications

What UCAS wrote

The controversial question: did either of the applicant’s parents attend university? was optional. The aim: ‘to widen participation’. Data on ethnicity and on parental occupation is already available post admission. The new data would be available before selection as in the GTTR selection process.

Importantly, ‘the practicalities of the changes are currently being investigated and the views of stakeholder bodies are currently being sought’.

The Daily Mail reported that the proposal emerged at a conference of admissions tutors. UCAS chief executive Anthony McClaran said a working group had been convened to consider ‘contextual data’. It was looking at ‘personal circumstances which include illness, interrupted schooling, family problems and home responsibilities, for example applicants who had responsibility for looking after siblings’. Mr McClaran said schools often included details of hardships faced by applicants in their references to universities. The group was considering whether the information could be gathered more systematically.
What the media read

The Herald polled Jonathan Shephard of the Independent Schools Council who believed that ‘Institutions should be looking at the candidates, not at parents and this information should not be disclosed to universities’. Boris Johnson described the questions as ‘an outrageous attempt to politicise the admissions process’. ‘Students should be judged on their academic ability and their potential,’ he said. Professor Drummond Bone for Universities UK said: ‘It is useful for a university to have at its disposal a wide range of information to build up a full and rounded view of an applicant. There is no benefit for a university in taking on students who cannot profit from higher education, or setting them up to fail’.

Illustration: A jigsaw pieceBloomberg quoted Pat Langham of the Girls’ Schools Association: ‘Entry to university should be determined on merit, based on the achievement of the individual candidate and to do otherwise is iniquitous. Why collect this information at all? If they are going to use it to discriminate against those who they feel are privileged then what would be the point in anyone ever trying to improve themselves?’

A Guardian leader mentioned ‘instant anxieties about gifted children from comfortable homes falling prey to social engineering’. It continued: ‘Positive discrimination… …should only be used where there is a robust and specific justification, but in the context of higher education that exists’. While Oxford and some other universities declined to use such information, others might use it in selecting applicants deserving extra help. Help to one group lessens the chances of another. An applicant who has overcome hardship may go further than a similar applicant who has had every advantage. The social justice argument is[i] that there is now less social mobility than before 1970. This is not explained by differences of intelligence between the classes.

Liz Lightfoot in the Telegraph explained: ‘Influential university vice-chancellors say universities, under pressure from government to improve their social mix, need the information to help them identify students with potential who do not appear as good as others on paper because of social disadvantage’.

Boris Johnson foresaw a ‘nightmarish discussion of nature versus nurture’. Oxford, which interviews candidates, said the information was irrelevant and would not be used. Mike Nicholson, director of admissions, was quoted in the Daily Mail ‘it would be far more useful to know if a candidate with good expected grades attended a school where few pupils were expected to do well’. Cambridge wanted more, suggesting that the value of qualifications differed over time and between institutions. Also job titles were a sometimes misleading indicator.

The wonderfully named American Thinker[ii] begins ‘In an experiment in social engineering redolent of Communist China or the old USSR, British Universities will be discriminating against middle class applicants’.

Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail was upset that ‘universities are being told to practise discrimination when deciding to whom they should award a place’. Perhaps universities should apply the noble ideals of the comprehensive school and admit everyone indiscriminately? But no, the difficulty is with the form of discrimination. Ms Phillips implies that given the opportunity to discriminate against the children of the white middle class, admissions tutors would take it. For example the children of parents ‘who play the French horn, who take part in chess tournaments or teach themselves Mandarin in their summer holidays’ might be considered to have an unfair head-start. This was good knockabout stuff worthy of a Ken Livingstone sound-bite.

More seriously, Ms Phillips believes that only academic potential should count. Very few parents, politicians or educators would disagree. Some might quibble about practical abilities for vocational subjects. How should academic potential be measured? Does a mediocrity with comfortable circumstances and expert coaching at A-level have more or less academic potential than a brighter student who overcame hardship to achieve similar results? Ms Phillips and the independent schools imply that the brighter student would do no better at university than the mediocre. This seems an unduly pessimistic view of higher education.

The Sunderland Echo spoke to Sue Reece, head of admissions at Sunderland University. Sunderland, ‘Britain’s leader for its work in attracting students from state schools’ did not need the details because it already achieves sufficiently wide representation. ‘The university runs summer schools, Bright Sparks science clubs and open days, hosts school visits and targets children in care’. The new details could help ensure that students who had been in care received more help. Mike O’Brien, head teacher of Washington School, said that the changes mirrored practise in the city’s schools. The Sunderland Echo and the university run Moving On Up, a campaign to raise local awareness of higher education.

Jon Boone in the Financial Times reported the UCAS statement with background. All universities signed an access agreement with the Office of Fair Access to gain the right to charge variable fees up to £3,070 a year. For example, Bristol agreed to offer 18 percent of its places to schools with poor A-level results. Angela Milln, director of admissions, said that in 2006 such students were only 12.5 per cent of the total.

Mr Boone undermined the case for recruiting solely by A-level, quoting research that state school pupils gained ‘degrees one class better than pupils from independent schools with similar A-level scores’.

Sir David Watson, former vice–chancellor of Brighton University and presently professor of education at the Institute of Education made the point that policymakers had fallen into the ‘trap of believing that when a sufficiently qualified student from a non-traditional background chose not to attend a leading university he or she was making an irrational choice’.

The Times first reported the UCAS press release then ran a story headlined: ‘University squeeze on children of graduates’, extensively quoting Pat Langham of the Girls’ Schools Association on her working class background and fears that her own children would suffer from her status. Will the university admissions tutors admit students with poor backgrounds and poor qualifications, doomed to fail their degrees? Are those pigs flying past?

Doubters might ponder the report (FT, 22 March 2007) from Cambridge that: within an overall decline in applications of 1.7 per cent, applications from state schools fell 4.5 per cent. The share of places awarded to state school applicants fell from 58 to 55.7 per cent. Geoff Parks, the director of admissions at Cambridge, was disappointed after spending £1.5 million a year to widen participation and raise aspirations in addition to very generous financial support packages. Perhaps Sunderland could assist?

Mike Baker’s balanced article on the BBC website concluded: ‘Let’s calm down a bit’.