26th June 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Data has emerged recently which suggests that over half of students from the poorest economic backgrounds in the country want to go to university. This data is particularly poignant when taken with the fact that only 13% from the poorest backgrounds actually do go on to go to university. It is clear that students from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds are struggling to achieve the grades necessary. There is also evidence from recent surveys that many more do not apply to university because of the debt that will await them on graduating.
The Russell group of universities has been warned by the government that they must do more to attract students from the poorest backgrounds, and give them greater opportunities to win places at the country’s top universities. One of the suggestions was that universities should take student’s backgrounds when considering applications, including looking at the area in which they grew up and their school’s results and university application records. This would mean that students may be awarded places without having to achieve the top grades of their peers from wealthier backgrounds. This would indeed help to address disparities between students studying the same subjects but at schools in significantly different socioeconomic catchment areas.
However, pressuring universities into making decisions based on this data isn’t going to solve the broader problem. Many students are disadvantaged from the start of their schooling due to large class sizes and poor teaching and school management. By the time they reach sixth form, many have been put off more academic subjects such as sciences, languages and English, and go for subjects such as media studies which are not as attractive to top universities. Without grounding in academic subjects, students will not be capable of coping with the courses offered by the universities to which they wish to apply. At that point we need to ask not what universities should be doing to address socioeconomic disparities, but what the education system as a whole should be doing.