Unconditional offers ‘can lead to laziness’
Former head fears 2,175pc rise in university places regardless of grades is ‘licence for incompetence’
UNCONDITIONAL offers for university places tell schools that they “do not need to bother” getting the best out of their pupils, a leading former head teacher has warned, as it emerges one in four predicted BBB students are accepted regardless of their final grades.
Dr Martin Stephen, the former high master of St Paul’s School in London, said the rising number of unconditional offers for university places represented a “disaster for UK education”, making schools a breeding ground for a “lack of academic aspiration”.
Since 2013, the number of unconditional places handed to school-leavers has surged from 2,985 to 67,915 – up by 2,175 per cent.
Writing online for The Daily Telegraph, Dr Stephen said: “It is a licence for incompetence, sending a signal out to underachieving schools that they do not need to bother. [They] make it easy for schools to be bad. For students, they are killers of motivation.
“A student given an unconditional offer can hardly be expected to work as hard as they would have for the second part of their A-level course. Even the best school may struggle to motivate that young person, or even get them to come to school.”
Figures from Ucas, the university admissions service, have revealed that 24 per cent of students who were predicted to get three Bs were given at least one unconditional offer in 2017. This figure is far higher than that for top students, which stood at 4.6 per cent for those predicted to get three A*s. In 2010, just 0.9 per cent of students who were predicted to get three Bs were given at least one unconditional offer, but this has soared by 23.1 percentage points in seven years.
Dr Stephen continued: “Unconditional offers can sometimes put a student at a disadvantage: if a young person has not mastered the demands of A-levels, they may not be able to cope with what is expected at university. They can be seriously damaging to a student who is unsuited either to the course or university itself, as the dropout rate suggests.”
This was the fate of Eden Scott, who was predicted AAB but dropped one grade to ABB in her final examinations.
The 20-year-old from London said: “I got an unconditional offer to study American and Canadian studies at Birmingham University but that 100 per cent made me stop trying as hard as I should have. I didn’t even want to study there that much but I just went with the unconditional offer when I really wasn’t that bothered. I think unconditional offers aren’t a good idea.” She added that such offers “encourage laziness” and meant “some students aren’t reaching their full potential”.
Yesterday, the Office for Students confirmed that while it would not be appropriate to ban conditional offers, it will be looking to ensure the admissions process remains “fair and reliable” and would taken action if needed.