27th July 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The private sector should be paid to get state school students into Oxford and Cambridge; that’s the message from James Orwell writing on the Guardian’s website. Orwell puts forward the suggestion that if the government were to grant contracts to private tuition firms with the aim of helping students, who otherwise wouldn’t, get into university, then it might be a more effective form of social mobility than under our current system.
The plan is for tuition agencies to select students themselves under certain criteria provided by the government. That criteria could be selecting from students entitled to free school meals (an often used indicator of an underprivileged student), selecting students from schools with a poor track record of successful applications to Oxbridge, or some other factor, whatever is determined to be best. The funding for this would be paid for partly by the government, but also, Orwell suggests, by universities, taking a small fraction of funding for their access scheme. He also thinks that awarding bonuses (in the region of £3,000 - £10,000), and cancelling continually failing contracts, would incentivise tutors to perform well.
The justification for this radical proposal is partly that our existing programme isn’t working. Orwell makes the point that 1,300 schools in the UK did not send any students to Oxbridge in a 3 year period, and he thinks that this is because money available for one-to-one tutoring is given to schools to do with as they wish, but by spreading this funding over a number of students we’re diluting the benefit it can bring. Also, so many students at top schools already receive private tuition after school, and Orwell says we’re silly to assume that anyone not with a tutor can succeed.
It’s an interesting proposal, and a strong argument to say that paying the private sector by results is a way to ensure that we achieve a more level playing field across students from different backgrounds. However, it’s not clear exactly how much this would cost, and a consequence could be that companies would just become better at identifying students who are likely to get into Oxbridge anyway, rather than putting time and effort into helping those who can only get there with extra tuition.