I write as a former chair of Liberal Youth, currently studying at York University who was educated at an independent school. Yet with A-Level results out today, I am backing calls for universities to consider students from state schools who have achieved lower grades than their counterparts from private institutions.
‘This is discrimination’ the wealthy middle classes cry. ‘They both sat the same exams’, it is pointed out to me. Yet this faux fairness is exaggerated, a continued belief that seems to run through education that wishes children and young adults to develop in a different system to that which us ‘adults’ live. Today’s world operates on potential and ability, not pure academic achievement.
Whilst the need for job candidates to have a degree is becoming ever more important, graduate employers are putting less and less emphasis on the grading of that degree. Having a degree stops your application getting immediately rejected, but from then on it’s about what else you have, what’s your potential, how do you grade against a competency framework?
I know, having personally sat on various jobs panels, that when perusing CVs, I would check whether the applicant has a degree. Once that had been ascertained, I wanted their CV to show me the skills that the job needed rather than how well they did in said degree. That university experience makes a good employee; the degree is almost a by-product. I know I’m not alone in this – it’s what you hear time and time again from graduate recruiters.
As universities get judged more and more on employability following graduation, it is time they selected in a similar fashion. When judging an applicant, it is time they asked what can they bring to this university, would I employ this individual? When deciding upon the grades they will require the applicant to achieve they should look at an individual’s potential. Individuals who have shown the skills required to succeed at university outside of the classroom will do just as well, if not better than individuals who have been spoon-feed an A at A-Level through teaching to the test and small class sizes that private institutions offer.
Employers are realising very quickly that more often than not, true skill and true potential are not shown in the classroom, but outside it. Particularly in students from schools where they aren’t given the benefits that a private school offers.
Of course, this will outrage middle class parents who have spent a lot of money on sending their children to private schools in order to buy better grades. The consistent performance most private schools have over state schools in examinations is no accident and you get what you pay for. But that’s exactly the reason that universities should not be basing judgements and entry criteria solely on grades. There are far better methods of measuring potential than academic achievement, methods where success cannot be bought.
So I suppose the crux of my argument perhaps differs from those, particularly on the left of the Labour Party, who want simple positive discrimination for state school pupils. This is not a patronising way of releasing guilt for attending a private school. It’s about ensuring the best students are going to the best universities. This benefits the whole of society – the best students can make the most out of the best universities and go on to be the best employees.
That is of course if they recognise that they are not just at University to get a degree, but to improve their employability – and that goes back to the start of my argument.
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18 Comments
I do think it is unfair to use ‘middle class parents’ effectively as a catch all insult, When the vast majority of them can’t afford independent schools and would struggle to afford the money for tutoring to get into a selective school.
Nathan, the idea was not to insult., but recognise the facts. Most parents who send their kids to independent schools will be quite open about the reasons for this – to buy a better education. And whilst I agree with you that not all middle class parents send, or can afford to send their kids to independent schools, my own experience has taught me that almost all kids at independent schools have middle class parents.
“‘This is discrimination’ the wealthy middle classes cry.”
Can we leave the class war to the Labour Party please?
Has it occurred to this person that there is some importance to achievement as well as ‘ability’? It doesn’t necessarily matter how naturally brilliant you are, if you turn up to university without any knowledge or skills (which is what high grades represent) you will crash and burn regardless of whether you have a slightly higher ‘ability’.
On a further point, why should society move heaven and earth to discriminate in favour of people on the basis of birth, which is what we’re talking about here whether on grounds of where parents send their children or innate ‘ability’, when those people could not be bothered to put the work in to get decent grades. I know plenty of people from poor backgrounds who went to state schools who worked hard and got good grades, just as I know plenty of people from middle class backgrounds who went to private schools who worked equally hard and got equally good grades. I also know plenty of kids with rich parents who went to state schools and plenty of children from more modest backgrounds who went to private schools. Has it occurred to this man that not all ‘middle class’ children go to private school, and that not all ‘private schools’ are better than all state schools? Or that it is insulting nonsense to suggest that every single person who went to a state school was somehow disadvantaged against every single person who went to a private school?
The idea that poor state school attending people need discrimination on mass to succeed and ‘middle class’ private school attending people need a good kicking to stop them succeeding unfairly is crude class war politicking that bears no relation to reality. There is perhaps an argument for discrimination in favour of children from truly disadvantaged backgrounds who went to demonstrably crap schools, but it is much more subtle than this crude rubbish. And that is before we even get into the assumption that the only purpose of university education is to help employers select people for jobs.
My observation has always been that the almost every company’s recruitment process is severely messed up and operates on inaccurate assumptions and guesswork. The performance of the recruitment process is never measured objectively (employers don’t see whether or not they’re hiring the best people, because they never look closely at the ones they don’t hire; instead they engage in self-affirmation exercises, convincing themselves that the people they did hire must have been the best), and employers use cargo-cult behaviour as a substitute.
Universities, on the other hand, do objectively measure everything. They have detailed information on the performance of every other university, so they can and do compare their own students to the ones that went elsewhere, and this gives them a reasonably good understanding of how to recruit for good performance at university.
I don’t see how it could possibly be a good idea to introduce the employment insanity to universities. If anything, we need to introduce some objectivity to employers.
The big flaw in the entire article (aside from the casually offensive remarks) is that you assume university professors or admissions folk don’t take into account the bigger picture. They do.
You also assume that a ‘private school’ education is only about academic results, it helps in all kinds of other ways, and so your sentence that ‘true skill and true potential’ is ‘particularly in students from schools where they aren’t given the benefits that a private school offers’ is not true, it is found in all students outside academis results. A-Levels aren’t that bad either, and you risk diminishing achievement today by writing this article.
(And if you want a discussion about employability, then this is actually a different article to do with innovation, risk, creativity, and the unemployability of unidentifiable potential.)
If the grade you got at university really didn’t matter then why do almost all top/medium (and even mediocre) law firms, city jobs, consultancy positions and grad schemes for a wide range of industries from retail to engineering, HR to to energy, almost invariably require a 2i, a breakdown of individual marks, and normally a minimum UCAS point requirement?
The spoon fed argument is one that I hear a lot and is patently ridiculous. All schools teach to the test because unfortunately that has become what the system requires to do well these days. This slightly bizaare notion that private schoolers were ‘spoon fed’ whilst state schoolers were, presumably, left out in the wild to fend for themselves is pretty poor. In fact one can argue that private schoolers, with the benefits of their education, have had a much less spoon fed education through the attributes that the schools tend to push.
Finally a note on the state school/private school dichotomy. It is a false one; there are huge range of private schools from the elite boarding schools through to those offering very specialist education for those with needs. To talk about private schools as one homogenous group is a bit silly really. As it is with state schools; as someone who was Cambridge educated it was clear that any attempts to take more state school children didn’t actually end up with more underprivileged individuals getting in: you simply swapped a private school middle class child with a grammar school middle class child. Apart from one or two hooray henrys you cannot tell whether someone is from a private or state school at most Russell League universities. The in built advantages come partly from private school but also having a middle class upbringing; you are more likely to have or do extra-curriculars, books in the house, a stable home, parents who understand the inherent value of education, attend a school with less disruption.
The problem isn’t that private schoolers take up too many places, it is the fact that the middle classes do a thoroughly good job of educating their children. If you start discriminating against private schools (or at least appear to in the views of these parents) they will act in the best interests of their children and move them to excellent state grammars, thus reducing the number of places available to poorer students.
Stephen W, your coments would be valid if I were arguing for an extreme version of this, where canidates with Us are taken over candidates with As smply because they can display better natural ability – but that’s not what I’m arguing at all. What I am saying is that A-Levels aren’t the be all and end all as some would like them to be. There are many more factors that need to be taken into account and some of those factors are more important than good A-Levels, which are a crude measure in themselves. I am taking about downgrading grade expectations for those who have clearly shown skills outsde of the classroom that meet a competancy framework. I affirm this in the title – “It’s about more than A-Levels”, not that we should ignore A-Levels.
Nor am I stating in the extreme that each independent school is better than each state school. But look at the results today – 30% of A*s came from private schools, despite them making up only 14% of applicants. As a whole, you get what you pay for, and that includes better grades – it’s a trend we’ve seen for years.
I also don’t state that the sole reason for universities exisiting is for employers to select people for jobs. In fact, I start my argument by saying that the grade of your degree is becoming less and less important to employers. What universities do provide is an opportunity for young people to expand their skillset, something I don’t believe can only be done in the classroom. Improving comunication, teamwork and judgement can all be done in the relatively safe confines of the clubs and societies that Universities offer. All key skills for getting a job post University.
Whilst the need for job candidates to have a degree is becoming ever more important, graduate employers are putting less and less emphasis on the grading of that degree.
I’m afraid this is not true, the evidence is that employers of new graduates are placing more and not less emphasis on the class of the degree. It is part of a general qualification inflation where jobs which once would have asked for A-levels now ask for a degree, jobs which once would have required just a degree now make a 2i a necessity.
This can be unfair, because it is often just a filter to cut down the number of applications seriously considered. It is quite true that once one has gained the initial employment experience, it’s that rather than the degree class which counts. Also, once an applicant has passed the requirements hurdle, other factors rather than the exact degree result come into play in employers choosing who to recruit. I see this as a university lecturer who is Chair of the Exam Board for my subject’s undergraduate degrees at my university – making decisions on the 2i/2ii boundary is now perhaps the most gruelling part of the job which we really agonise on, because we know and have experienced from our students how crucial that is.
Before becoming Chair of its Exam Board, I was for a period of over ten years, the admissions tutor for my department. A lot of nonsense is written in the press about university admission. From my own experience I can say for sure that 50% of what you read in the newspapers about university admission is complete rubbish, and 40% is dubious. Here’s an example – you will read today as it’s A-level results day the advice “if you don’t get the A-level grades in your conditional offer, ring the university to ask if they will still give you a place”. In fact the admissions tutors get the results a few days before the students get them. So by the time the A-level results are public, we will already have made our decisions on who to accept from those who have marginally missed the conditional offer. The very LAST thing I want when the A-level results become public is students we have already given an offer to phoning me up trying to pull my heart-strings. Their decisions will already be in the post, I will have made them by careful decisions on the data not on emotional phone-calls. If there’s any “my cat died on my exam day” stuff, make sure you do that well BEFORE the A-level results come out, not only after when you haven’t got the grades. What I actually want on A-level results day is my phone lines clear so that I can take enquiries from those who did not originally apply to us but are in Clearing.
You will continually find discussion about admissions which says “University X wants P” and “University Y wants Q”. What this does not acknowledge is that department admissions tutors have considerable autonomy, so just because department A at university X wants P, it does not mean every department at University X wants P. The admissions tutor is a member of academic staff, we know best what we need from our students as we have to teach them, so we don’t want some clueless bureaucrat telling us what we should or should not take into account when making admissions decisions. It may well be the case that what works for one subject does not work for another, so it should not be supposed there’s necessarily some university-wide policy on details of qualifications accepted or not accepted for admissions.
Alan, you say when judging an applicant as a university admissions tutor, I should ask “what can they bring to this university, would I employ this individual?”. Now, this is really teaching granny to suck eggs stuff. As an admissions tutor, my first job is to fill the quota of places I have to fill (severe penalties for either over-shooting or under-shooting, so there’s quite an art to getting it right), and my second is to make sure that will be with those students who would do best on the degree, who have applied, and who aren’t going to get accepted and take up a place somewhere else. As such OF COURSE I am going to look at all their aspects which show their potential. One of my most basic skills as admissions tutor was to identify factors which meant someone whose grades weren’t the best nevertheless had good potential. The reason for this is obvious – it’s a canny way to beat the competition from other universities, because someone like that is more likely to accept the offer than someone who says “OK yah, but posho university up the road has made me an offer the same as yours, so I’m going there”. If the admissions tutor in my subject at posho university couldn’t see the applicants potential, I could, and my greatest pride was seeing those I took a risk with crossing the stage at the degree awards ceremony three years later to collect a 1st class degree.
Mostly A-level grades are the best predictor of results, though the A-level subject matters a lot, so I would never go just on points, e.g. for my subject (Computer Science) a grade C in A-level Maths was a better predictor of success than a grade A in A-level Information Technology. However, part of being canny certainly was to note what school the applicant went to, and be more impressed by a grade if it was from a school where that was not so often obtained. This was not soft-hearted “positive discrimination”, it was making use of all factors to pick those applicants who from my past experience I knew would do best. Most admissions tutors who take care will do similarly, but please, just let us get on with the job as we know best, don’t (this is a message to government and to central university management) try and force us to do what you think is best.
Matthew Huntbach – Thanks for your post, it is incredibly enlightening. As you say, most of what you say is not in the media, and more importantly is not translated to students. Regardless of th epractices that occur, from my experience most students and parents are of the belief that the key success in getting into University is the exam results, and agree that should be the case. Indeed whilst in 6th form, I was heavily discouraged from applying to certain institutions as I had “only” 4 A*s and 7As at GCSE, regardless of any other skills I could bring to the table. n the other hand, I was heavily advised to apply for a (more competitive) gap year scheme with a big 4 accountancy firm, as I had the skillset they were interested. Notably, however, I didn’t get into the University and did get the gap year scheme. I recognise this is anecdotal, but my personal experience tells me I am not unique in this.
What I read is that a large amount of what I suggest you are already doing, yet once again (and I realise this is anecdotal), during the application process, I found Universities more interested in the individual breakdowns of each individual A-Level module that I had taken before applying, whereas the corporate world was not particularly interested in even my grade predictions. Do you think that the “posher” unversities as you describe them take the same methods as yourself?
As someone currently in university research can I blast the scholarship klaxon a little? Your argument might make sense if the primary function of universities was to produce a workforce with a diverse skillset; and there are many who want this to be the case (or think it already is). The problem is, most academic staff still want universities to be about advancing scholarship and knowledge in their own specialist fields. Thus a maths department will want someone who is amazing at maths but doesn’t necessarily volunteer at their local youth centre even if, subsequently, that extra-curricular experience is useful in the workplace.
The use of the university system as a job-training playground is already harmful to research and a massive gift to companies who can demand that new recruits have skills training without having to pay for it themselves.
We need a diversification of tertiary education that supports pure scholarship for those who are academically minded and makes sure that those who recruit graduates pay into their training (I would prefer by a graduate tax that is paid half by the employee and half by the employer).
If purely academic places were separated more clearly from vocational places (I don’t mean to use “vocational” in a patronising sense: I’m including things like medicine, accountancy and architecture in that umbrella) then the A Levels could be set in a way that distinguishes better between the brightest students, making the jobs of admissions tutors easier for academic subjects and vocational subjects could examine applicants’ skillsets in a wider context.
Alan, overall, I like your argument and I think I agree with you. But please, if you’re going to try and repeat this argument elsewhere, dump the ‘middle class parent’s schtick.
My parents were middle class, there was no way they could’ve afforded to send me or my sister to a private school, not an option, at all. A small minority of kids go to private school, and they’re from the very upper middle classes and from whatever we want to call those on top of that.
There are exceptions (the children of the teachers that work in the schools, for example, and those on scholarships) but those are exceptions.
It devalues your argument, especially on a liberal site, if you talk about class and then get the classifications wrong. If you feel you must use the line, use “upper middle class”, which while just as poorly defined doesn’t read half as badly. David Cameron thinks he’s “middle class”, he ain’t, and neither are most of those who send their kids to a fee charging school.
Alan, I work at Queen Mary, University of London, which has a good research reputation but tends to struggle a bit on recruitment because most applicants, rightly or wrongly, tend to regard it as somewhere to consider only if you can’t get into one of the other big University of London colleges. Also, I have not been directly involved in admissions for about five years now, so things may have changed a bit. However, what I’m saying applies broadly to all middle-ranking universities – it’s a competitive market, we really do want to recruit the best we can, and we’ll work hard at whatever gives us the edge.
I found it extraordinary to read then, as I do now, all these media stories about people with multiple grade As who “could not get a place at university”. I had dozens of places to fill, and just kept wondering “Where are all these grade A people? I wish a few of them would apply here”. The big problem seems to be too many applicants all applying to a limited range of universities and to a limited range of subjects. If you think that Oxford, Cambridge and perhaps at a push Imperial, UCL, Bristol, Durham or Exeter are the only universities worth applying to, then it’s going to be more of a push. It will also be a push if you think the only subject worth studying if you have science A-levels is Medicine.
In particular there is a massive shortage of people taking A-level Maths compared to the number of university places where that is either a requirement or strongly desirable. As a consequence I suspect that even today there are places going in subjects like Engineering at highly prestigious universities which you can get into with quite modest A-levels so long as one of them is Maths.
Of course univs look for potential. Why wouldn’t we? But A level grades are a big part of that, particularly in technical subjects.
The figures for independent vs state schools are a bit misleading. Schools which select their pupils would clearly expect to get better results than those which don’t. The really interesting figures would be to look at the results of children from similar backgrounds in both sectors so see how much the value added is.
And Alan you see totally wrong about degree class not being important (I work in Hr)). Because there are so many people with degrees ,looking at degree class is a crude but effective way of sifting applicants. It may not be right, but it is reality.
‘From my experience’ is not evidence to support your argument. That would be something that should be pointed out by a tutor very early on at university. I’ve HR experience in a specialist field (veterinary) and attitude is the top trait I always look for in candidates. There are many other attributes that cannot be assessed looking at a cv but you cannot interview every applicant. Good applicants know how to make their cv stand out and it generally isn’t by degree classification in our line of work. How other fields work, I can’t say but to offer some support to the author I hope it is on more than pure academic achievement. Should universities dumb it down? No way. My degree was a real work out academically and I am grateful that it was. To say that you can buy a better education is rubbish.
I am worried about the pushback from employers.
If you move away from achievement at some universities, employers will recognise this and adapt by relying less on the opinions of those universities.
So the net result is a kind of victory on paper akin to things mentioned in Yes Minister (“yes, I reduced the numbers” – “but you did not fire anyone”)
Cameron
‘From my experience’ is not evidence to support your argument. That would be something that should be pointed out by a tutor very early on at university. I’ve HR experience in a specialist field (veterinary) and attitude is the top trait I always look for in candidates
Sure, but it’s as with A-level grades when I was sorting out ubniversity applicants – yes, there’s alot to it than jsut grades, but when you’ve got a big pile of appliations and limited time to sort it out, a first cut using just the grades helps.
Mostly I find degree classification is about attitude. I’m constantly surprised how, even in these days when getting a job is so difficult, so many students mess up and get 2ii or 3rd degrees because of poor attitudes. The number I see who attended all the lectures and labs, did their coursework on time, read around their subject, asked appropriate questions and still got 2ii or 3rd is approximately 0. The number I see, or rather don’t see because they hardly ever turned up, who were perfectly capable of 2i but who didn’t bother is approximately, well, over the years hundreds.