Given that independent schools maintain a tight grip on the top 30 Universities, should Universities compromise on grades to encourage widening participation?
At its recent conference the HMC (which represents the Heads of 250 leading independent schools) released a report it had commissioned on ‘The strengthening relationship between leading universities and independent schools’
Using data from 2003/4-2006/7, Professor Richardson of Exeter University concluded that “across almost all measures, independent school entrants to the top 30 universities maintained their relative position. Among the top 10 universities independent school entrants have undoubtedly consolidated and enhanced their positions in almost all areas.”
This is potentially an interesting call for the HMC. On the one hand it offers great reassurance to fee-paying parents, who now have no need to switch Johnny or Jemima to the local comprehensive in order to increase their chances of getting in to Oxbridge.
On the other hand, it risks reinforcing the determination of the hard-working university Widening Participation departments to level the playing field.
However, one doesn’t have to read beyond the executive summary to see why the HMC won’t, in fact, be too worried. As Prof Williamson points out, the independent sector’s dominance is explained their excellent exam grades, and their high concentration on ‘strategically important and vulnerable’ subjects, such as the sciences, and modern foreign languages, in which the leading universities dominate.
And here’s the rub. Universities can help, but cannot fix the differential levels of attainment at 16 and 18, and have to be very, very careful before compromising on grades. That’s not to say it can’t, and shouldn’t, be done, and the report itself suggests that successful schemes which do accept state school candidates with lower grades such as those run by St George’s Medical School and Leeds University are ‘valuable and might be expanded’.
It’s an approach that government, too, has been increasingly supportive of , but these are slow-burn, high-intensity, expensive options. So, HMC schools clearly feel they’re taking a fairly safe punt that until and unless the state sector can match them, there will only ever be so much the universities can, will, and should do to try and bridge the gap.
