Fraser Nelson:
The priorities of the ‘lost generation’ have been consistently overlooked, at truly enormous cost
Over the past few years I’ve had the great honour of being involved with the Social Mobility Foundation, which helps bright pupils from poor backgrounds get into good universities. I heard from one of them yesterday. She had an offer from Oxford to study medicine, one of the greatest opportunities our country has to give any young person. They wanted an A*AA in A-levels: she was delighted, as she was predicted (and on course for) three A*s and an A. But when the envelope came yesterday, it showed the computer had allocated her ABBB. No reason was given. Oxford has, as a result, withdrawn its offer.
It’s heartbreaking. She had no chance to sit the exam, no chance to prove that someone like her – who arrived as an immigrant from Iran 10 years ago – is bright enough to ace the toughest of England’s exams. Perhaps an official (or a bot) decided that a girl from a Yorkshire comprehensive would never get such good results. Don’t worry, ministers say, such pupils can use their mock exams to appeal. But not every pupil sat mocks: she, for example, didn’t.
She has no idea what to do now. What was so nearly a British dream has turned into another Covid nightmare.
There will be all too many such stories. Kaya Ilska, another brilliant student on the Social Mobility Foundation scheme, was predicted four A*s. She found out yesterday she had been allocated AABB, so her offer to study medicine at UCL has been withdrawn, as has her backup offer from Cardiff. And her mocks? She sat them in January but her focus was on medical school interviews taking place at the same time. The mocks, she thought, would highlight areas where she needed to improve: they ended up determining her fate. She told me about a digital chat group she has with other university hopefuls where they call themselves the “lost generation”. As she puts it: “We have just had our futures stolen from us.”
This is true in many ways. The young are the least likely to be affected by Covid but usually the first to be hit by the reaction to it. Schools were closed before lockdown was implemented and kept closed after pubs reopened. Exams could easily have been carried out under social distancing, had anyone thought it important enough to give students the chance.
A study by the Brookings Institute in America has calculated that, even adjusting for online learning, four months out of the classroom cuts future earning power by 2.5 per cent every year. The World Bank reckons that this “lost generation” will, collectively, earn $10trillion less because of the schooling denied to them.
Students who do move on to university will find classes cancelled, with online tuition taking its place. It’s hard to find strong justification for this, given how the under-30s are at such low risk from Covid. Sweden kept schools open, and studies show that both pupils and teachers were at no extra risk of catching the virus. But universities, now, know they have the upper hand. The evaporation of job and travelling opportunities mean young people don’t have many other options. So there’s a surge in applications for universities and vice-chancellors can lay down any terms they like.
Overall unemployment numbers haven’t budged but the number of under-25s on benefits has doubled. Apprenticeships for the under-18s are running at about a quarter of the level of last year. Perhaps the biggest conspiracy against the young is when senior people in a company decide to keep everyone working from home. It’s perfectly feasible to run a company like this, in a way no one imagined a few months ago. For the senior staff, who are most likely to have bigger houses with gardens, it can be bliss. No 6am alarm, no soul-destroying commute and the same amount of cash. What’s not to like?
But the people who lose most when offices close are the new recruits. They may be given little in the way of formal training but get ahead by watching and learning from others. Overhearing conversations, squirming at the mistakes of others: more can be learnt this way than on any MBA. Being in an office lets newbies see how a company works, who needs help, where the gaps and opportunities are. The never-ending Covid-19 office regulations are big on the duty of employers to provide a safe environment. But no one is speaking up for the duty to train and develop young staff, to offer
Fraser Nelson on Twitter @Frasernelson; read more at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion internships, to extend the ladder of social mobility.
This madness will resolve itself, eventually. But some opportunities seldom repeat themselves, and a university offer is a classic example. Which is why it’s odd, this year, to see university places capped by the Government.
The fear was that the drop in international students would see the best universities compensating by making more offers to British students, poaching them from less popular colleges. But how would this have been such a bad thing? The idea of university reforms, surely, was to let the market decide. If having no cap on places means more places at great universities, it could be a rare upside to an otherwise miserable situation. Yes, having more students might cost the Government a bit more. But so does unemployment, which may well be the alternative.
It’s easy to ignore all these problems. Ministers can say that school closures didn’t really hurt, that standards may even have risen (as the A-level results absurdly suggest). It would be hard to carry out mass pupil testing to find out who has fallen most behind – in all age groups – and who needs the most help catching up now. It would be hard to set up a huge university appeals process, making sure each student’s case is now given the attention it deserves. It may be hard, too, to lift the cap on university places to make space on campus for all those who deserve it.
At every stage in lockdown, the priorities of the young have tended to be the least important factor in any given consideration: their education, their prospects, their future. It’s time for that to change. Sorting the university mess would be a good place to start.