UK government fiddles with entry criteria

PROFESSOR Alison Richards, the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, said this week that universities must focus on academic standards, not social engineering.

The British government for years has been trying to persuade universities to take more students from poor backgrounds, but, not unnaturally, the universities want to select on academic merit.

Professor Richards, who is an American from Harvard and chosen by media-shy dons for her "bruiser" qualities, is not pulling her punches.

She argues that British universities face losing their "competitive advantage" if they do not select the best minds. Admissions tutors, she says, should be blind to social background. US Ivy Leagues would certainly have no truck with this latest form of political correctness.

She argues that British universities are effectively being asked to compensate for the failures of state education.

Secondary schools have allowed themselves to be dictated to by the teaching unions and are saddled with employment law that protects the incompetent and the mediocre. Is it surprising that British state schools languish at the bottom of international league tables?

This week Professor Richards went for the jugular. It takes an American to do that in the pusillanimous world of British education.

"Why," she said, "after 13 years (of state education) are these young people needing the books to be fiddled to get them into university?"

Standards in state schools can be low, because the sector is underfunded, because the best graduates are not attracted by the salaries and conditions and because some schools are beset by social problems that are beyond their control.

It is not the universities' job to sort that out.

The independent sector generally succeeds, because parents are supportive, because schools attract good teachers with packages that encourage them to stay and because disruptive pupils can be expelled.

The number of private school pupils at Cambridge this year fell to a 27-year low. Admission tutors have adapted their entrance criteria to take account of lower standards and expectations in state schools. The private schools are worried, not surprisingly.

If you are a good candidate from a state comprehensive, you probably stand a better chance of getting in than an equivalent candidate from a private school.

Inevitably, UK parents are asking whether it is worth paying the fees for private education. (The universities are strapped for cash, so controversially, international students, who pay higher fees, may find it easier to get a place.)

This 27-year low statistic is very interesting. It implies that, back in the 1970s, the percentage of private school pupils at Cambridge was lower still. State school pupils, often from the grammar schools, were holding their own perfectly well, at a time when there was no government meddling.

All the egalitarian reforms of Labour and Conservative governments, in particular the introduction of comprehensive schools, have ensured that able state school pupils are less successful at getting into the top institutions.

Good education at secondary and university levels is not cheap, but the UK government has never been willing to pay for it. The solution is perhaps to privatise all schools as far as possible and to support pupils through school and university by a system of means-tested bursaries.

Give the heads and the vice-chancellors complete control over their budgets and get government off their backs. Inspect them by all means, but let them run themselves and be answerable to their own boards of governors.

Instead of this, we have the politics of envy. Entry to school and university has to be "fiddled" to bolster the government's "inclusion" statistics.

Middle class parents are required to pay twice for secondary education, if they are unwilling to see their children founder in the local state school. What's more, parents are being asked to subsidise children from poorer backgrounds under the new Charity Commission initiatives.

In the UK, private schools are classed as charities for tax purposes and are having to demonstrate "public benefit".

If these schools wish to maintain their charitable status, they must provide bursaries or discounted fees, so that poorer children can attend. Inevitably, that means higher fees for most parents.

The government does not think of financing these bursaries, as they once did under the Assisted Places Scheme. And yet it seems to encourage the private sector to take the most academic pupils, whatever their means.

Why not go the whole hog and pay for them, rather than drive good schools to the wall? Privatising education would, arguably, abolish class envy in a generation. Brunei supports able pupils through school and university education by a system of scholarships.

The Ministry approves higher education institutions for scholarship purposes and encourages pupils to do as well as they can to be awarded a scholarship.

There is economy and efficiency in this system. Students try to get into the best university possible regardless of tuition fees. Institutions are encouraged to improve their standards so that they will be considered by the best pupils. British students, by contrast, have to take into consideration the cost of living in London and Leeds and proximity to their parents, so that they are not saddled with loan payments into their mid-30s.

Some will not go to university at all, but settle rather for a mundane job, rather than face the burden of debt.

It is the job of governments to ensure that all children receive an education appropriate to their abilities and needs. Bright children from poorer backgrounds must be given access to a high quality academic education, regardless of their ability to pay.

Bright children from richer backgrounds should not be disadvantaged because their parents are better off. Entry to university should of course be on the basis of academic merit, regardless of background.

It is not the fault of a middle class child that his parents made him read at home and he should not be penalised because he was born in the leafy suburbs.

As Professor Richards has stressed, a government's responsibility is to improve the quality of schools, not meddle in admissions criteria.

If they undermine the quality of our universities by excluding able pupils, they are frittering away the intellectual capital of the country. That is a travesty of the first order.

The writer is the principal of Jerudong International School.

The Brunei Times