Concern about the rise in unconditional offers from 3000 in 2013 to 87,500 this year seems to be centred around how "many students could be distracted from the final year of their schooling" and achieve lower A-level grades than expected (Unconditional offers made to third of university applicants, 29/11/18). What the article failed to mention was the additional stress on A-level teachers, themselves set targets by senior management. Shouldn`t Ofsted be taking universities` action nto account when judging schools and their results?
The education secretary`s concern should also be focused on how these offers are often being made to students who are unsuitable for higher education, who drop out before the first year has been completed, but who nevertheless will have increased the greedy university`s revenue by £9000. If Ucas can establish how many students with unconditional offers gained "A-levels two grades lower than predicted", Damian Hinds can ascertain also how many failed to complete a single year of their university course. Whether he would find it "disturbing" is rather a moot point, as many of these pupils were only taking A-levels because of government underfunding of more appropriate courses.
The simple solution is to ban such offers which are simply the lazy way to get "bums on seats", and insist universities make more effort to attract their students, with good teaching, sensible use of resources including the payment for vice-chancellors, and prospectuses which detail all the measures taken to look after students` health and welfare.
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