Osborne` half-truths and university admissions` problem

Osborne`s comment that a UK chancellor would only "believe schools required more cash", when there was a "very marked and rapid deterioration in standards", needs closer analysis (School finances: read what George Osborne says and weep, 27/03 18). That he was referring only to Tory Chancellors is obvious, but what he also clearly meant was a "deterioration in standards" in Tory areas, most notably in the south. 

   Would the cuts, which he instigated, have been allowed had a Tory stronghold lost all of its A-level teaching, instead of it happening in Knowsley? If there were more than twice the national average number of Neets in, for example, Surrey rather than in Knowsley, Manchester and Middlesborough, I suspect the same "magical money-tree" which funded the Tory alliance with the DUP, would have wondrously appeared (Poverty and funding gap blight children`s futures in the north, 26/03/18).

     The austerity measures, cuts in local authority grants, and lack of investment in northern infrastructure, for which he and Cameron were responsible, all contributed to the increased deprivation, teacher shortages and the underfunding of schools. Yet it was not until 2015 when an election defeat for the Tories was predicted in the polls, that Osborne came up with his "northern powerhouse" wheeze. When state schools` A-level results begin to match those in the private sector, government looks the other way when public schools start using Pre-U examinations instead of the traditional ones. "Deterioration in standards"? Only it it affects the children of Tory voters!

The National Union of Students conference is right to debate how "postgraduate study is becoming the preserve of the well-off" (Morning Star, 28/03/18), but a similar crisis is already occurring in the field of undergraduate study.

  David Lammy, last October, revealed how both Oxford and Cambridge, recipients of over £800m of taxpayers` money each year, enrol consistently around 80% of their intake from the top two social classes, with more offers being made to pupils from Eton than to students on free school meals across the whole country. Totally unsurprisingly, the number of ethnic minority students accepted is so low, Lammy concluded there has to be "systematic bias"!

     The universities claim that the Teaching Excellence Framework, with one of its judgement criteria being drop-out rates, limits taking risks with undergraduate enrolment, but it cannot explain why students with straight As from an economically poor area in the north of England stand far less chance of being accepted by one of the Russell group universities than does someone with similar grades from a public school.

      Where is the "risk", anyway, in offering a place to a student from a school in an economically-deprived area, who achieves grade Bs and Cs in traditional A-level examinations? He or she may lack, unsurprisingly, confidence, and may not perform well in a nerve-racking interview, but research by Cardiff and Oxford Brookes universities has proved students from state schools gain better degrees than independently-educated candidates with the same A-level grades.

       Hopefully the NUS will find time to investigate Pre-U examinations, popular in most public schools, where there is the possibility that the exam papers are either set or marked by their teachers. These examinations, not inspected and regulated by the Joint Council for Qualifications like traditional A-level examinations, must give already privileged pupils an extra advantage.

A two-tiered university system needs investigation!