Poorer students should get easier entry grades to college!

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What a stupid thing to do. Im from a poorer family, getting poorer by the month but im working hard to get into uni with grades that are a little bit of a stretch because when i get accepted, all my hard work will of paid off.
Plus there is no correlation between social classes knowledge and money.
The lower social class you are, the dumber you are is NOT a fact.

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It is not a matter of being dumb. It is a matter of opportunities. Rich families kids are much more likely to be exposed to culture in general: they are more likely to travel, to have the time to go to museums, to learn new languages, to use newer technologies, to actually have the time to study (since their families do not need their support). Also, it is much more likely that rich families are within networks of people that can provide advice and guidance. This is not to say that poorer families are not capable of providing good support for education, it is just a matter of how much that capability is multiplied thanks to higher family resources (and consequently, how much effort is needed to make the situation more balanced and our societies more meritocratic).

Reply 41

polscistudent88

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

According to one of my lecturers people who take a foundation year and pass it often get firsts in the actual degree as well.

This does not surprise me at all. Also because foundation years are taught by faculty members, and they can better measure the course content on the needs of the degree.

Reply 42

Huskaris

Is anything in our society allowed to be based on merit anymore?

Reply 43

Inazuma

Original post by cambio wechsel

Suppose that I am an admissions officer considering the last two candidates for the final place on our course, so it's zero-sum.

Alan has AAA
Beth has ABB

The contextual information available to me indicates that Alan's grades are only normal in his fancypants school which boasts on its website of class size averages of 16 through GCSE and 12 for A-level. By contrast Beth is this year the highest acheiving student from her sink-school at which only 40% progress to A-level.

I want Beth. I'd be mad not to want.

This kind of info tends to already be taken into account though.

I think it's a problem largely unrelated to the issue being discussed here.

Not at all. OP is saying poorer students get better places, that's not fair to those who can't afford the ""better"" schools (which as above people are saying aren't any benefit really, but also can't be considered.

Reply 44

polscistudent88

Original post by Huskaris

Is anything in our society allowed to be based on merit anymore?

As I agree this policy would not be good, the problem is to be able to discriminate between the merit of the individual and the "merit" of the family (also given that financial resources are not always so correlated with merit).

Reply 45

cambio wechsel

Original post by marinaim

OP is saying poorer students get better places, that's not fair to those who can't afford the ""better"" schools...

Ah. I better understand what you mean now: a squeezed middle at St. NotBad's - the school offers no real advantage but as well is seen as conferring no disbenefit to correct for. So FancyPants gives better prepping, Bash Street gets mulligans, and the constituency at NotBad's once again gets the shaft. Right?

Reply 46

Inazuma

Original post by cambio wechsel

Ermmm, yes I suppose :P
I just think things should be merit based mainly.

Reply 47

Motash

To be fair, the article did say there isnt correlation between wealth and IQ. I love the table in the link tho, surprise surprise Oxford and Cambridge are the worst!

Reply 48

username937760

Original post by Fullofsurprises

It isn't about bringing the top down. It's about giving a chance to people born at the bottom to come up.

You have a touching faith in the existing exam and grading systems to accurately distinguish between real ability and the carefully planned gaming and highly resourced practising and coaching that generates year after year of good grades at certain schools. :biggrin:

The problem with the suggestion is the extent to which it's carried out. In principle, there are studies showing that students from poorer backgrounds with, say, AAB, will on average go on to achieve equal grades to someone richer with, say, AAA (Grades are for example, might not be precise but you get the idea). However, it could quite easily become quite unfair.

Personally? I am not in favour of the idea, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, A Levels are not sufficiently difficult in my opinion that this kind of handicap is needed. Secondly, it seems a much more natural solution to, rather than lower the bar for poorer students (of which I am and always have been one), improve the overall quality of said students so they can attain the higher bar; although this could be problematic - as someone mentioned earlier, the problem is not in ability, but more often in aspiration and motivation, and tackling this is not just a case of putting in more money or better teachers etc.

Honest question to anyone from a poorer background: would you not find this, if it were implemented, quite insulting?

Reply 49

Mathlover123

Original post by marinaim

Okay those who's family income is too high to get a grant, but they can't actually afford to pay accommodation etc. because of e.g. other children, mortgages, the moneymaker is only a bf.
It's a terribly common problem.

Yeah it all pays off once you are at Uni if you are very poor. I have a scholarship as well as highest rate grants/loan plus an extra bursary. I am richer than most of my friends and some are rich and struggle to pay for accom. It balances out I guess.

Also this would be a bad idea I got A*AA and I am from a poor background but now in uni I could tell you that I am struggling with the difficulty and level of things. Someone with ABB say would find it much harder.

Reply 50

yo radical one

My belief is that schools in the public sector should be improved so this is not necessary

On a side-note, I always wonder why some elements of the left support things like this (artificially leveling the playing field), whilst taking such exception to the American system, which uses IQ-type tests which you can't really study for so in my mind make things much more fair.

Reply 51

Theflyingbarney

Wealth doesn't directly correspond to educational achievement. Sure, there's a bit of a trend of private schools being generally better, but most universities already take the school you went to into account when deciding whether to offer you a place. Basing it on wealth would therefore be both unnecessary (since it's already covered), and would lose sight of the actual point of making adjustments in the first place. There are plenty of less-well-off students that happen to live close to good state schools, and there are similarly some reasonably rich families who send their kids to nearby schools that happen to be crap. Uni entry should be judged on merit and merit alone, and thus should only take account of variables that actually affect your potential to do well, rather than those that are stereotypically perceived to.

Reply 52

PC2852

Higher entry grades doesn't mean the course is harder does it? Say King's College offers Neuroscience for AAA, and London Met offers it for ABC, that doesn't mean King's College is harder, it just means they're more in demand due to higher standards.

So I don't see the problem in being lenient towards poorer students.

Reply 53

Sunny_Smiles

yeah, okay, let's just throw meritocracy out of the window and live in a world where skill is rewarded second to who your parents were via government policy - in practice you're not solving any problem whatsoever with this proposal. if richer people get better grades, they're not "cheating" on their exams, they *are* getting those grades. but there are dirt poor people getting the good grades too. resources don't go very far in terms of exams with all things considered in terms of the value for the money - it's the teachers and one's own personal determination that matter the most.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 54

username937760

Original post by PC2852

It doesn't always mean that it's harder, but generally it does.

Reply 55

ChaoticButterfly

Original post by Mathlover123

Someone with ABB say would find it much harder.

Good thing I didn't bother with this physics degree after getting BCC then :rolleyes:

Reply 56

Kaeseia

I live in a really poor area, went to a poor school where all but very few were working class. Almost everyone from my high school classes (~90 people in my half of the year) who had interest in going to university succeeded in getting a place. The only ones who didn't are the people who thought partying, drink and drugs were more important than attending college. Funnily enough, the richest person in my high school failed to get into university because he was too busy drinking himself into oblivion every night. By all means, provide grants for poor students to buy books and help them afford transport into college but having means tested grades is unacceptable.

I'm proud that I am where I am today despite having a poor education and low income.

Reply 57

Ripper-Roo

Original post by Genocidal

You can look at it as the education system failing, but you could also look at it as part of the education system excelling. If we're just going to lower the ceiling then we might as well just dumb down everything.

We could work on bringing up grades and such, or we could just not bother and the universities will lower the grades for inferior schools instead.

The education system is supposed to cater for everyone. For people from the bottom schools it is difficult to be on the same level as those in better ones. Not fair because education is from a young age (something you cannot control yourself) and it can affect your prospects for the future. They'd have to work twice as hard to get to the same level as someone else, you may say the world's not fair but still, children don't choose which family, area or school they're born into.

Reply 58

Comus

I think that in the admissions process the school that they go to should be taken into account (though I think they already are IIRC), for instance if we were to compare a student from Eton or Cheltenham Ladies' college or whatever to a student from an underfunded comp, if they both had the same grades it would be reasonable to assume that the student from the comp is probably brighter than one from the elite public school because the one from the latter is likely to have had support and resources that were not available to the former.

Reply 59

ForgetMe

No, rules should be the same for both parties. I even believe that equal requirements would encourage students to get better grades instead of just getting an average that is sufficient to get into the educational institution.