University deal to end postcode lottery
EDUCATION: The UK’s top universities should be halving gaps between the numbers of disadvantaged and advantaged young people taking up degree places in the next five years, a watchdog has said.
The most selective institutions have agreed tough targets with the Office for Students for the next five years.
THE UK’S top universities should be halving gaps between the numbers of disadvantaged and advantaged young people taking up degree places in the next five years, a watchdog has said.
The most selective institutions have agreed tough targets with the Office for Students (OfS) for the next five years as part of attempts to improve access for all would-be students.
Access to university has been a “postcode lottery” in the past, with young people from some parts of England much less likely to go into higher education, according to the OfS.
The situation is worse among the universities which ask for the highest entry grades, it says.
Currently, young people from the most advantaged areas of England are more than six times as likely as their less advantaged peers to go to one of the most selective institutions in the country, analysis by the OfS has found. But if these universities meet tough new targets, which are meant to improve access to higher education, then this gulf will shrink over the next five years to less than four times as likely, the regulator has calculated.
OfS chairman Sir Michael Barber said: “The chance to go to university has been something of a postcode lottery, and I welcome the ambitious commitments universities are making to change this state of affairs.
“What is an assumed rite of passage for many young people across the country is often
viewed very differently in rural and coastal communities, the industrial heartlands and military towns.
“The North-South divide crops up in many debates around equal opportunities, and higher education is no exception.”
Individual agreements show the commitments universities have made.
For example, Oxford has pledged to cut the ratio of most-represented to least-represented groups from around 15 to one to eight to one, while Cambridge has committed to cutting the ratio from around 14 to one to around 6.7 to one.