Top universities fail to widen access

RUSSELL Group university outreach programmes appear to be failing, as half admitted fewer state school students than in the previous year.

Durham, Exeter, Edinburgh, Warwick and Birmingham universities were among those where the proportion of state-educated pupils had fallen, according to data published by Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa).

Last year, Russell Group universities spent £254 million on “outreach” activities, aimed at encouraging more students from disadvantaged backgrounds to apply, with a further £270million due to be spent this year. Initiatives include bursaries, extra tu- toring and giving lower conditional offers to those coming from state schools.

Prof John Jerrim, an expert in social statistics at University College London’s Institute of Education, said the figures showed “very little progress is actually being made”.

“Universities are spending a lot of money on outreach,” he said. “But a lot of it isn’t evaluated, so they don’t know if it’s working or not.”

He said some of the top universities could “hide” from the issue by saying: “We are just taking the best people with the strongest qualifications.”

He added: “The key thing is for them to start evaluating – to actually work out the stuff they are running and see if it’s working. At the moment, frankly they don’t have a clue.”

For the second year running, Oxford admitted the lowest proportion of state school students out of all non-specialist universities. Last year, 58.2 per cent of its intake was state-educated, up from 57.7 per cent the year before. Cambridge’s intake was 63.4 per cent.

The Office for Students would put pressure on universities to “enhance” plans on how to admit more students from disadvantaged backgrounds, said Chris Millward, its director for fair access and participation.

The proportion of state school students admitted to all British universities dropped slightly from 90 per cent in 2016-17 to 89.8 per cent in 2017-18. In 1998-99, the first year Hesa collected the data, the figure was 85 per cent.

Sarah Stevens, head of policy at the Russell Group, said that where individual universities had seen dips in the number of state school students “they will of course take it seriously and we all want to see further progress”.

She added: “Overall, the proportion of state school pupils entering Russell Group universities has remained steady, accounting for around four out of every five students.

“We’re doing [more] evaluation, to better understand and prioritise the interventions which work best.”