19th August 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Two years ago an article was published on our website about a student who unsuccessfully applied to Cambridge University. She asked that we remove the article because, apparently, if one googles her name, the article on our site is top of the list. I found it a slightly weird situation because our article doesn’t really criticise her at all. It discusses whether Cambridge should focus on the breadth and cultural awareness in a student’s reading, or whether the focus should be a student’s ability and potential given the educational system they have been in. We then discuss how private tuition can widen a student’s awareness of his/her subject. I should point out that the student in question was the person who originally published the article on which we reported. However, she was very polite in her email, and I got the impression that the frustration two years ago of not getting into her chosen university was what drove her to publish an article criticising Cambridge University’s selection policy, and now she simply doesn’t want to be reminded of that experience every time someone searches for her.
I emailed my Local Education Authority last week to see if they would be interested in us setting up a pilot scheme whereby we could provide tutors to struggling students who really need them; students identified by schools who would be unable to afford tuition otherwise, and would benefit from it. The reason I’ve thought about this is because we’ve had a number of charities contact us about a similar sort of thing, and I’d much rather cut out the middle-man and do all ourselves. We’ll see what the response is like, but I can’t see why it wouldn’t work.