'Top' universities must recruit more state school students

It's fair that they give priorities to state schools however, at the end of the day, the school does not effect the child's grade too much. If the child wants to work hard and get in a good uni, then they can do that at whatever school.

Interestingly this comes just a few days after an FOI by the Guardian showed that students educated at comprehensive schools out perform their privately educated peers, as cohorts not individually, once they are both at university.

Previous studies of this have had results facing in opposite directions.

I would like to see the exercise repeated. Cardiff and Brookes might both be regarded as special cases.

In Cardiff's case there is a strong Welsh component in the student body. There are few good independent schools in Wales and no surviving grammar schools. Wales was an area where high proportions of working class boys once ended up in grammar schools (the Welsh 11+ comprised being able to put the ball in straight at the line-out and scrum) and these schools are now comprehensives.

Conversely Brookes has always (even in OxPoly days) had more than its fair share of Alice Bands and Hunter Wellingtons.

Milburn's report on access to higher education has come out today and basically recommends universities should make greater use of contextualised data about students when they do their admissions. Report from the Telegraph.

Interestingly this comes just a few days after an FOI by the Guardian showed that students educated at comprehensive schools out perform their privately educated peers, as cohorts not individually, once they are both at university. Does that mean unis should take more state school students in their own interest, given they are apparently usually better students, or would discriminating against private school students based on the research be unacceptable?

Also, just on the general topic, interesting piece of research by Durham that showed state school students have to perform one grade better than those who were independently educated just to get a place, does that maybe explain the, on average, superior performance when they get there too? There's an article on it here from Durham, though anyone with access to JStore can probably look at the original publication.

Any thoughts?

They should take the most intelligent students, regardless of their background. /thread

I'm fairly certain they're trying to do that, the problem being working out which are the most intelligent kids and also that if a kid was one of the most intelligent age 5 but has spent 13 years in sub standard education can they cope with uni?

Also, surely you should take into account work rate too? Sheer intellectual candle power isn't worth much to them if accompanied by exceptional laziness.

Okay, this is why the conduct interviews but you get the general point. Higher education entry should be based on a meritocracy and not merely filling quotas.

Yeah I agree with Milburn. I think its a disgrace that what around 10% of kids go to Private Schools and in some cases up to 40% or even 45% of kids at the top uni are Private schoolers.

The rather narrow minded opinion of 'take the best person for the job' (or in this case university place), doesn't factor in opportunity, background, education etc. Naive to believe that.

Oxbridge is bad although they try a bit. I'd be highly critical of Durham for this.

When are people going to start living in the real world? There will come a stage in everybody's life where their potential employers are going to select people based on how suitable they are for a role, not based on the fact that they went to a state comprehensive, worked hard and did better than expected. University places should be allocated based on how intelligent and suitable a person is, their background shouldn't have any bearing on it.

Imperial thankfully do not have such a skewed ratio despite arguably being ahead of some of these named universities.

Work hard , forget what your class mates aspire to , dream big, know the system and you have a good chance.

Still think employers may take this into account on occasion. When I explained to one City law partner that I had indeed gone to a comp in the North he looked at me like I should have contacted Chidline!

And you could argue that if we're treating it like the real world then you should allow universities to take into account things such as old boys networks, which definitely do operate in the world of work, but that would cause outcry.