Society
As arbitrary as ever
Published 20 September 2007
Why public schools still feed Oxbridge
As everyone knows, students from fee-charging schools take a disproportionate number of places at Oxford and Cambridge. Yet the details can still startle. Take those unearthed by the admirable Sutton Trust in its latest report, published on 20 September. During the past five years, the trust reveals, a third of all admissions to Oxbridge went to just 100 schools, only two of them comprehensive (and those two in name only). The 100 include Westminster, which sent 258 pupils to Oxford and 152 to Cambridge; Eton, which sent 273 and 121; St Paul's Girls, which sent 133 and 92; Winchester, which sent 131 and 99 (see www.suttontrust.com).
Think of this for a moment. In their first year at university - a testing time for most - Etonians and Wykehamists will already know many fellow students, and perhaps their parents, too. They will share school slang, songs, social contacts and in-jokes. Older students from the same school will be there to explain customs and guide them through cliques. They will have a common academic background, derived from teachers who probably themselves attended the ancient universities. Is it surprising that an 18-year-old from a northern city comprehensive, which may send a pupil to Oxbridge only occasionally, believes he or she would be out of place?
As the Sutton Trust research shows, even the most successful state grammars do not compete on equal terms with the elite fee-charging schools. The gap between the average A-level points score in the top 30 fee-charging schools and the top 30 grammars is 1 per cent, suggesting their pupils are of roughly the same calibre. Yet the former are nearly twice as likely to gain Oxbridge admission. Such differences are not entirely attributable to application rates: a third of Oxbridge applicants from the fee-charging sector are successful against a quarter of those from maintained schools.
But let us assume the failed state school applicants were the "wrong" ones, who offered inappropriate A-level subjects or missed their target grades, and the universities are right to believe the answer lies in more summer schools, open days and the like to identify the more promising state school candidates.
Oxford and Cambridge now have such "outreach" programmes, though only, it should be noted, after considerable pump-priming assistance from the Sutton Trust's wealthy chairman, Sir Peter Lampl. Many dons believe that if more 17-year-olds from state schools are encouraged to visit Oxford and Cambridge and meet the undergraduates, more will apply. My fear, given the composition of the undergraduate body, is that the opposite might be the case.
Why does this matter so much? Other Sutton Trust research shows Oxbridge graduates dominate elite positions in the most prestigious and powerful occupations. For example, in 2004 more than 80 per cent of barristers in top commercial chambers were educated at Oxford or Cambridge and two-thirds at fee-charging schools.
Universities are distributors of life chances which parents, in effect, buy for their children when they pay school fees. Moreover, the social and academic exclusivity of the schools damages the state sector, and thus the education of the majority. Pupils who could make teaching and learning in the comprehensives more tolerable - they would "lever up" standards - are being creamed off. If fee-charging schools could no longer deliver Oxbridge entry on the present scale, their market among parents would be undermined.
My favoured solution, first outlined in the New Statesman eight years ago, is to award Oxbridge places to the one, two or three highest-performing pupils in each of the UK's 3,700 school sixth forms and sixth form colleges. I doubt there would be any significant lowering of standards; the Higher Education Funding Council has reported that, on average, pupils from fee-charging schools perform less well in degrees than their state school counterparts with the same A-level grades.
Besides, Oxbridge managed for centuries without a strictly meritocratic entry and the concern for high A-level grades is relatively recent. My scheme would have the wondrous effect of encouraging the middle classes to spread their children through the school system, instead of continuing to shovel them into social ghettos.
The many practical difficulties - matching the successful students to the available subject places, for example - would be a suitable challenge for the mighty brains of Oxbridge dons. For now, I would set them a simpler task. Each year, some 27,000 students achieve three A-level A grades. Roughly a third come from fee-charging schools, two-thirds from state schools. I see no reason why these proportions should not be reflected in admissions, if necessary by using quotas.
Do not tell me it would all be terribly arbitrary and unfair. I know that. But nothing can be more unfair than the present system.
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