Reform of university admissions

The government`s plan to reform England`s university admissions system is yet another example, typical of Tory administrations, of providing window-dressing rather than changes which will have effective outcomes (Radical plan to overhaul university admissions, 27/06/20). If the aim really is to "improve social mobility and help disadvantaged school-levers", why is there no insistence that all state-funded UK universities take contextual information into consideration, so that pupils with real potential are given the opportunity to excel? In many instances, pupils either from underprivileged backgrounds, or underfunded state schools suffering staffing recruitment problems, or possibly from both, who achieve A-level grades Cs and Bs, display far more intellectual ability than their more privileged peers gaining As.

      If this plan had serious intentions, it would also insist that the only academic qualifications acceptable as UK university entrance qualifications were A-levels, the examinations described by Ofqual as "national qualifications based on content set by the government". What was the point of reforming A-levels and ensuring for them a high level of regulation if private schools are able to avoid them, and get their already highly-advantaged pupils into university via different means? More lightly-regulated examinations such as Cambridge Assessment`s Pre-U exams have a much higher proportion of A*/A grades than A-levels, and are mostly set and marked by teachers in the private sector.

      In the 1870s Disraeli`s government passed numerous reforms with the appearance of being transformational, but in reality doing no such thing, all with the purpose of winning electoral support . Sadly, little appears to have changed!

As your "manifesto for change" says,  it is unfair to expect the forthcoming academic year`s university students to pay £9000 in tuition fees when "likely to be missing in-person lectures" as well as the usual social activities (A generation of Britain`s children faces crisis. Here`s our manifesto for change, 21.06.20). What is also unfair, however, and with no reference to it in your "measures", is the current admissions procedure adopted by our government funded universities, which accepts as valid academic qualifications results from examinations other than A-levels, even though the latter are described by Ofqual as "national qualifications based on content set by the government". Pre-U examinations, although being phased out, are still preferred by most private schools as the entry-route into universities, thereby by-passing the recently reformed and more highly regulated A-levels. A Freedom of Information request revealed that even as early as the academic year 2017-8, there were 125 Oxbridge undergraduates with three or more Pre-U qualifications, but no A-levels, a figure likely to be far greater today!

    With the virus, as Naomi Kellman of Target Oxbridge says, "reinforcing existing inequalities" at Oxbridge and Cambridge, and universities still not paying sufficient attention to "contextual information", far too many talented pupils are being denied places at our top universities (Covid will reinforce race inequalities at Oxbridge for years, campaigners warn, 21.06.20).Until the government forces universities to change admission procedures, what David Lammy calls their "systemic bias" will remain, to the detriment of all of our young people, and indeed, the country in general.