Our education system continues to favour privilege
THE Sutton Trust’s optimistic slogan on its masthead proclaims that it has been “Improving social mobility for 20 years”. Sadly, its own site includes a disturbing study, commissioned from the LSE, revealing “that social mobility in Britain — the way in which someone’s adult outcomes are related to their circumstances as a child — is lower than in Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland”. Moreover, unlike in America, social mobility is actually declining here rather than improving, mainly because graduation rates for the richest fifth have risen so much.
A report from the Trust, “Admissions in Context”, out today, suggests one solution — making greater use of “contextualised” admissions, taking into account the socio-economic background of potential candidates when considering their applications to our most selective universities. These universities should make lower A–level grade offers to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, they urge. For there is little evidence, the report says, that “leading universities that practice greater contextualisation see significantly higher dropout rates or lower degree class results”.
Most universities already practice such contextualisation — but not with enough transparency or determination. The report is admirably specific about what it is recommending. Currently, students applying to these universities are required to achieve ABB grades for admission. “If this were to be lowered by two whole grades, to BBC, then, each year, about 750 students previously eligible for free school meals with grades of BBB or BBC could potentially go, an increase of 50 per cent on current numbers.”
As one of those who was the first person in my extended family ever to have gone to university, I have much sympathy with this approach. When I got to my swell college at Cambridge, I was stunned to realise just how dim but highly coached many of my public school contemporaries were, compared with those who I had left behind, including members of my own family. There was one nice guy from Ampleforth who regularly fell asleep in supervisions and once, when asked a question, memorably replied: “Oh gosh, if Brother Dom was here, he could tell you.”
Yet such “contextualisation” is a counsel of despair; a remedy offered far too late down the line; a plaster over a deep wound. To lower standards at this stage is simply to admit that our education system has already failed. As Michael Gove said, when he was Secretary of State for Education announcing his ambitious reforms, we have inherited an education system that is one “one of the most stratified and segregated in the developed world”. And such wellmeaning plans as this from the Sutton Trust only go to confirm it is precisely inheritance that it is all still about.