Universities 'must recruit poor students' to justify £9k fees

Thousands of middle-class teenagers face missing out on top universities after institutions were ordered to dramatically increase the number of students recruited from deprived backgrounds.

England’s leading research universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics are preparing to admit up to 50 per cent more undergraduates from certain “hard to reach” groups, documents show.

Under new plans, they must set tough targets to recruit students from state schools, under-performing comprehensives, working-class families, neighbourhoods with a poor record of university participation and those in local authority care.

The move is a trade-off for being allowed to charge up to £9,000 a year in student tuition fees.

But the disclosure is set to reignite the row over “social engineering” in higher education amid fears these places could be taken at the expense of students from middle-class backgrounds and independent schools.

Wendy Piatt, the head of the Russell Group, which represents 20 top universities, attacked the imposition of crude targets, saying the poor performance of schools themselves remained the “root cause of the problem”.

And Oxford said selection by school type was “misleading as an indicator of social diversity” because many pupils from “wealthy” homes were admitted to state schools while independents often took in disadvantaged pupils on bursaries.

Under plans, all universities with fees higher than £6,000 a year must draw up “access agreements” setting out how extra cash will be used to boost participation among deprived students.

The Government’s Office for Fair Access said institutions charging the most from 2012 – typically those ranked among the best in the country – must set the most “ambitious” targets.

An analysis of access agreements published on Tuesday shows how all 16 English members of the Russell Group are setting out ambitious outreach targets.

Many institutions also said they would make more use of “contextual admissions” – the system in which pupils from the poorest backgrounds are often admitted with lower A-level grades to recognise the extra effort they make to get good results.

According to the documents, Oxford is to increase the number of undergraduates from the most deprived postcodes by half within five years, from six per cent to nine per cent of the student body.

It will also boost representation from schools and colleges ranked among the bottom two-thirds nationally – ensuring they make up 25 per cent of students compared with the current rate of 21.5 per cent. But it is refusing to make a distinction between independent and state schools.

Cambridge is to increase the proportion of students from “low participation neighbourhoods” from three to four per cent, although it translates to just 103 students compared with 80 at the moment.

The university also wants to ensure state school students take up as many as 63 per cent of places against the current figure of 59 per cent.

It comes despite claims made in Cambridge's access agreement that targets "have severe limitations" because they fail to take account of the university's A-level entrance requirements which are already the toughest in England.

Other access agreements show:

• The London School of Economics intends to increase the proportion of students from low-performing state schools by more than half – from 257 to 400 by 2017;

• UCL wants to increase the proportion of places turned over to candidates from state schools by 10 per cent, on top of the 65 per cent of students already recruited from the state sector;

• Warwick is proposing a 32 per cent increase in students from the lowest socio-economic groups over 10 years – from 400 to 530;

• Bristol wants 40 per cent of students to come from “low performing schools”, compared with just 25 per cent at the moment;

• Leeds is setting a target to increase the proportion of places turned over to students from the poorest backgrounds from 19 to 22 per cent in five years;

• Newcastle wants a 50 per cent increase in students from neighbourhoods with a poor record of university attendance – from 7.9 to 12.2 per cent;

• Liverpool is to ensure 15 per cent of places are turned over to applicants who have been in local authority care, compared with the current figure of 11.5 per cent.

Members of the Russell Group are proposing to spend around a third of additional fee income on outreach programmes.

But David Barrett, assistant director of Offa, suggested universities could be asked to pay more if they “do less well on [their] benchmarks”.

Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader and the Coalition’s fair access tsar, called for universities to be fined for failing to hit their targets.

“All universities must understand that this extra investment has now to lead to results,” he said.

“From now on, all universities will be assessed on their performance in improving access every year. In future universities which do not deliver greater access must face penalties.”

Tim Hands, head of fee-paying Magdalen College School, Oxford, insisted universities should recognise “potential” not just raw exam results, but added: “Anyone sensible also knows that politicians should be kept out of education and that politicians can ruin education just as easily as they have ruined economies.

“Do we want to retain a global reputation for quality education or political interference?”

Source: Graeme Paton, Telegraph.co.uk, Tuesday 12th July 2011