6th December 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The Office For Fair Access has released a statement this week advising schools not to focus on pushing a handful of students to get into elite universities, but to focus on all their students. Director Les Ebdon referred to the “dreadful snobbery” inherent in pushing some students and neglecting others, and said that schools should concentrate on providing the best options for all their students.
The statement is at odds with the education strategies being announced by education secretary Michael Gove, who has made it clear that he wishes schools to focus on getting students from poor backgrounds into elite universities. Schools are now ranked in part using data on which universities their students attend.
The office for fair access has said that this approach is potentially damaging, and that schools should be judged instead on whether they were taking the right steps to help students to realised their full potential, which may or may not involve attending top universities.
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