Lower University Admission Grades for Disadvantaged Students is a Positive
Lowering university admission grades for students from disadvantaged backgrounds is a practical reaction to the complete lack of socio-economic diversity present on the campuses of U.K. universities.
UK Politics
Sophie Savage
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In May 2017 a survey of almost 1000 students from Russell Group universities was published, with the results finding that most undergraduates do not think universities should lower admission grades for students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. Rather the results found that undergraduates thought it would be a better use of the universities’ money to help improve the GCSE and A Level grades of these students.
The survey was made up of over 80 per cent undergraduates who had come from state schools — additionally these students were found just as likely to be against lowering admission grades as their privately-educated classmates.
From this, the conclusion that most undergraduates do not want lower admission grades for disadvantaged pupils can be rightly drawn. It may also be possible to say that this is a belief that is equally held by those that would have benefited from lower admission grades, what with such a high proportion of the sample being undergraduates from state school. This would surely call into the question the need the continued existence of these access schemes. However, the latter conclusion is simply not a valid one.
The survey cites that 80 per cent of the sample was made up of students from state schools — but never does it state the background of these students. With the existence of grammar schools and selective states schools it gives no indication that those judging what would be best for disadvantaged students actually have any experience of being a disadvantaged student.
This point is further exacerbated by the fact that university programmes which lower admission grades tend to, at least in part, focus on schools which have performed below national targets in either A Level or GCSE results. An example of this is the Access to Leeds Scheme at the University of Leeds, which I myself took part in. Their website states that one criteria that could be met to participate in the scheme is to ‘ attend a school achieving below the national average at GCSE’. Therefore, access schemes which lower admission grades for disadvantaged students are not focused on all state schools and state school pupils, but rather those below average. So to assume attending a state school qualifies an undergraduate to be able to speak knowledgeably or emphatically about these access schemes is untenable. A point which is most clear is that simply involving students that attended state schools in a survey about disadvantaged students does not equate to creating a survey that asks for answers from those who the question is about. Evidently, this survey is not a good starting point for writing off access schemes which lower admission grades.
With an increase in tuition fees in 2012, the ongoing rises due to inflation and falling numbers of students from poorer backgrounds attending university it is a salient point that the world of higher education can be a place of alienation for students that come from backgrounds classified as disadvantaged. These programmes that lower grades can be viewed as beneficial not simply because lower grades means easier access to courses, but because it demonstrates to students that universities want people from their backgrounds. It starts to crack open a door that poorly-funded state education and rising tuition fees has been hammering shut for years.
Whilst universities are moving in the right direction by using lower admission grades to include students from poorer backgrounds, the comparatively high dropout rates of students from poorer backgrounds cannot be dismissed. Some might equate this to the fact that once accepted onto courses these students lacked the capability of their more advantaged counterparts who had the grades usually required for the course, rather than the adjusted ones. Perhaps, in this view, is where lower-grade access schemes fail. However, this belief puts the onus onto the students personally, rather than the universities. It is admirable of universities to attempt to widen participation with these access schemes, but with this comes the responsibility of creating a university ethos that aids and supports these students — rather than simply leaving them to it once government admission targets for widening participation have been met. This means improving pastoral care in universities and ensuring that the feeling of alienation that often wedges itself between disadvantaged students and higher education is not allowed to grow on UK campuses — a good starting point for this may be the targeting of ‘Chav’ parties hosted by University societies nationwide.
Whilst these lowering-grade schemes are not the be all and end all when it comes to improving social mobility within education, they have a valuable part to play. If combined with specialised pastoral support for when these students come to the university they could create an entire portion of undergraduates who may have otherwise never have had the chance to succeed at university — creating an entirely new generation of leaders, teachers and other professionals with diverse backgrounds and experiences. These access schemes, although not perfect, are a starting point and at least a small part of the puzzle that is widening participation in higher education.
