Alexandra Frean, Education Editor
Middle-class pupils face losing out on university places if their parents have degrees and professional jobs, after changes to the admissions system. For the first time, applicants will be asked to reveal whether their parents also went to university, as part of moves to attract more working-class students into higher education.
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) said yesterday that it had also decided that information on the occupation and ethnicity of applicants’ parents should also be made available to admissions officers. Previously this had been held back until after places were offered.
Ucas said that the decision was specifically designed to “support the continuing efforts of universities and colleges to widen participation”. Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, confirmed yesterday that the Government was backing the changes.
Critics said that the move smacked of social engineering and that it could be used to discriminate against middle-class students. The new questions, which will appear on Ucas forms from next year, will also ask students if they have ever been in local authority care.
Pat Langham, president of the Girls’ Schools Association, said that she had grave concerns over the changes. “Why collect this information at all? If they are going to use it to discriminate against those who they feel are privileged — ie, those whose parents went to university — then what would be the point in anyone ever trying to improve themselves?
“I was the first person in my family to go to university. My father was a policeman and my mother a dinner lady. But I’m a headmistress with a degree; were I to have children applying for university under these rules, would they be discriminated against because I have worked hard?”
Research shows that being the first member of a family to go to university is the hardest barrier to break. The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock proudly proclaimed in 1987 that he was “the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to get to university.”
Ms Langham also suggested that the new questions would encourage applicants to bend the truth. “If your parents were property developers, applicants could mark them down as a ‘builders’; if they were managing directors you could describe them as ‘clerks’. Who is going to establish the veracity of these forms?”
Jonathan Shepherd, generalsecretary of the Independent Schools Council, called the changes “nonsense”. He said: “What next? Are they going to go back two or three generations or start collecting people’s DNA?”
Oxford University said that it had no intention of using the information, adding that it would hold it back from college admissions officers until after offers had been made and acted upon. Mike Nicholson, director of admissions at Oxford, said: “We haven’t any evidence to suggest that this type of information has any valid relevance to the decisions we have to make. It would be far more useful to know whether a candidate predicted to get good grades goes to a school where few pupils expect to do well.”
But Drummond Bone, president of the vice-chancellors’ group Universities UK, said it would allow institutions to understand more about how the applicant got to where they are.
The Government has set aspirational targets for universities designed to get more students from state schools and working-class groups. Some funding is contingent on this. But ministers have been frustrated by lack of progress.Between 2002-03 and 2004-05 the proportion of entrants from state schools fell from 87.2 per cent to 86.7 per cent. Over the same period the proportion of students from lower social classes fell from 28.4 per cent to 28.2 per cent.
Although Ucas says that the new questions are optional, opponents believe that those who refused to answer may also be discriminated against. Boris Johnson, the Shadow Higher Education Minister, said that students should have a right to withhold the new information without fear of prejudice.
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Here's an idea... how about admitting student based on THEIR skills and abilities and stop worrying about quotas and statistics? Oh sorry, too simple.
Mark Andrews, Cardiff,
So, the Government wants just as many people from poor backgrounds to gain access to Uni as people from middle-class backgrounds, regardless of academic ability.
Junior doctors are now also not accepted on specialist courses based on ther academic ability, but by their personal statements.
Oversubscribed schools now select students by a lottery instead of by academic ability.
Welcome to Communist Britain.
Pete, Cov,
Lionel,
you say "The money they receive and tuition they pay is already based on their parents income"
why is this the case ?
its the student (graduate) who pays top-up fees not the parents ?
does that mean a highly paid solicitor gets let off paying tuition because his parents were low income whereas a poorly paid graduate pays fullwhack.
and what if the parents lose their jobs in between the student going to university and graduating (when top-up fees become liable) ?
this sounds like a complete dogs breakfast and very unfair
Terry, London,
As the first person in my family to go to university I am pleased to say that I got to where I am through hard work and determination. I was brought up in a single parent household and my mother worked as a care assistant for very little pay. If I had applied for my place next year and been accepted I would never know if I earned my place fairly or if i was only there to make the statistics look good.
University places should be given on the merits of the person applying not their parents jobs.
Claire, Newcastle upon Tyne,
Yet again the middle classes are being discriminated against for simply being in a more fortunate situation than others. My father was the first person in his family to go to university, and gained a third class degree in Chemistry from Liverpool. My mother never went to university, having left school to work in a bank at the age of 18. Both grew up in poor, working class communities in the North of England. Through my parents' sheer hard work we are comfortably off. I attended two grammar schools and achieved AAA at A-level, with a conditional place to study Law at Oxford, with Labour attempting to turn my schools into bog standard comps and critics condeming my a-levels as 'too easy.'
Whatever happened to meritocracy? It seems as though the government (and UCAS aiding it along its way) will only be happy when the entirety of the young population are all being failed by the education system.
Laura Higgins, Sevenoaks, Kent,
Contrary to what many assert, this appears to be merely UCAS compliance with the 2006 Equality Act (and all that this now subsumes, i.e. the Race Relations, RRAA, Equal Opportunities, and other diverity legislation)? Perhaps with a little political spin.
Public bodies are required to promote equal *opportunity* and this would seem to be a means whereby the UCAS can at least monitor, if not promote, fair play, ceteris paribus. That last bit is critical.
Adrienne, UK,
This whole idea is another indication of the degrading education system in Britain. As a consequence of using flawed figures to indicate trends, figures are being manipulated to make the government think they look good. Academic institutions are finding it difficult to discern the quality students, the wheat from the chaff as it were, as further education courses are now easier, with more coursework and can be retaken again and again and again after failures. Graduates doing mickey mouse courses that hardly deserve to be classed in the same level of education as a qualification Albert Einstein failed to achieve fail to find the high powered jobs they are promised, as they don't have the vocational skills that employers need. What do applicants have to do to be judged on the basis of their own merits and abilities ? The money they receive and tuition they pay is already based on their parents income. They may as well disown their parents, and get the state to treat them as orphans.
Lionel Tiger, Birmingham,
Young people should be judged by their exam results, certainly not on irrelevant personal family information. This is outrageous social engineering, in fact it is a form or inverted snobbery! Let us have education based on ability, both academic and vocational. Please keep political agendas out of our education system and stop manipulating our children with these crackpot ideas.
Tricia Deadman London UK
Tricia Deadman, London, UK
Despite my parents both having degrees, they have worked so hard in getting them and the ironic thing is they dont get as much money as they deserve and sometimes we struggle to pay taxes, so surley isnt this new scheme unjust? Of course less priviliged people deserve places in university but I think you should judge on how determined and skillfull someone, isnt that social equality?
Mehrad, London,
Socialism as enforced inequitable treatment, otherwise known as discrimination, of the individual - classic, and despicable.
Andy Iddon, London, UK
If people are losing University places because their parents were University graduates, then surely this situation will turn into "every other generation going to University"...?
Understand? So if your parents went to university, you can't get a place. Therefore your children can. So your grandchildren can't, but their children can. Pointless! How can this be justified?
James Nicholls, Chandlers Ford, Hampshire, UK
I am from a Working Class background. It was through the aspirations of my parents (non-graduates) and my own, that I have a degree, the first person to gain such in my entire extended family, then why should my offspring be discriminated against, because I gained success through education? This situation is preposperous - utterly absurd. But I am fortunate, because my son gained a degree in Engineering last summer. If he applied now he would be discriminated against. Isn't discrimination wrong? Has knowledge through education taught us nothing?
Elaine, Lincolnshire, UK
My father was a motor engineer. My mother was a clerk. My headmaster said it wasn't worth my while to go to university, so I left school at 16. Until I retired a few years ago I had spent 30 years as a university lecturer.
Fortunately my children are past looking for university places, but I wonder what cagegory I should be placed in if they were seeking higher education today.
Philip Bowcock, Reading, Berks
My wife grew up in Communist Czechoslovakia. Under the communist system applicants whose parents were not members of the party or who were considered to be members of the "bourgeoisie" (i.e. had a university education) were disadvantaged when applying for a place on a degree course. With a mother who was a teacher and a father who had a degree in Engineering my wife was pretty much guaranteed not to get a university place despite being one of the best linguists in her school. To counter this her family had to go to tremendous lengths to get my wife into university. In 1989 my wife was one of the many Czech students who supported the Velvet Revolution. One of the objectives of the revolution was to ensure that all Czechs had equal access to education. It is interesting to note how much the Labour Party has in common with the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and that it is now seeking to discriminate against our children in the same way as the Communists did against my wife.
Nick Watson, Ampthill, UK
Lunacy.
My grandmother was left a widow with 11 children when her coal miner husband died. She had no source of income other than selling second hand clothes on a market stall. She put three of those children through University and would have found a way for the others if they had wanted to go.
My parents have no degrees but they encouraged their children to love learning. Seven of the ten of us have degrees.
My son has a learning disability. We struggled to find a good school which would help him, a school where he would not continue to face unrelenting bullying. Now he is doing very well and is on target to go to university next year.
How do I explain to him that all his extraordinary efforts, all the pain he went through and we, his parents with him, could be for nothing because I have a degree and he went to a private school?
Mr.Blair, you have just turned me into an anti-Labour activist.
Maria, Hamilton, Scotland
If I was to ask questions like these while interviewing someone for a job I could very quickly find myself facing an employment tribunal, and rightly so.
Just who do these busybodies think they are?
Vincent Coles, Scotland,
Surely any initiative that broadens access to higher education has to be welcomed, even by the middle class who appear to regard the Universities as their private fiefdom
Frank Greaney, Formby Liverpool, United Kingdom
This proposal is utterly ridiculous. I myself am applying for university this year, and am in the position that neither of my parents went to university. However, many of my friends' parents did go, and it is unfair that they should be discriminated against when many of them are attaining higher grades than I am, particularly when they are entering competitive courses such as medicine or dentistry. I would feel guilty if my circumstances had meant I got into university whereas friends of mine did not.
Positive discrimination is the bane of modern society. Everyone should be equal, with information such as race, gender, parental background, etc withheld during the application process.
NB, Leeds,
My grandmother, from a rural background, was illiterate until my mother taught her to read. My mother herself left school at 14 to go into an unskilled job. Her brothers were agricultural labourers. My mother was determined we should do better and I was the first person in my family ever to go to university.
I was academic but many are not. My nephew is not and would rather be a chef. Others want to be musicians, graphic designers, djs, sportsmens, chefs, fashion designers. Or if they are technical, then to be plumbers, or electricians or joiners or IT engineers. What is wrong with that?
Why must they be forced to go to university - when it is not needed or appropriate as a training for these occupations.
Surely education should be suited to your skills and aspirations not New Labour social engineering.
hazel Paul, london, england
I think this is completely absurd!! Why not base all entrance to UNIVERSITIES on plain merit!! What has my parents degrees and ethnicity got to do with me?? Should i because of them be prevented from excelling like they do? Why not reward hard work? be it academic or practical work. If a particular group is excelling in academics then why prevent them? This is the new form of Discrimination against hardworking and qualified people of the UK. We all know who this will target!!
aahu, norwich,
You have got to be kidding me! Both my parents and relatives went to university. My father has a master in Maths and my mother has a Phd in pharmacology. Both have jobs and come from poor middle class barkground and they have both black, when they first stepped in this country, they did not have a penny to their name and knew not an ounce of English and their parents had never been to university either, however, this did not stop them from going to school and applying for university overseas which was more expensive than university in their home country of Congo. Yet they still applied and graduated both with First Class Honours, my point is if working class students want to go to uni, they can go; nobody is going to stop them. and if the government really wnated working class children to go them, they should scrap tuition fees which are stopping most people from going to uni. This is coming from a black working class student who has applied for Law and has been given five offers.
Jessica , Reading , U.K
This is discrimination and must be against children's human rights. No child has control over their background and should not be judged positively or negatively on this basis.
My son has gained a place to study physics. My daughters now faces being turned down a place at university next year because I have a degree.
Students should be judged on their ability and on their potential to achieve. Also as your article says, this will encourage people to lie about their parents - can that ever be right?
R C, inverness,
This sounds like the Bolsheviks in post-revolutionary Russia. If you weren't of proletarian origin, you were shut out in the cold.
And it's plain silly: the fact is that the children of university graduates are the very people most likely to benefit from a university education, for a variety of reasons.
In a few years, we will read about English students going to university in other countries, never to return, followed by loud governmental laments about a brain drain, and in turn followed by more quasi-bolshevist legislation to impede their departure.
RFW, Victoria, BC, Canada
A while ago I was working for a government run organisation. My boss came into me one morning and excitedly told me that they had decided to take a new approach to recruiting. "Oh really?" I said, also quite excited, "and what would that be?"
"We are going to hire on the basis of competancy!" he announced.
I rather feel that the moral of this story applies to this situation with education. Give the University places to the people with the best grades. It's supposed to be for the cream of the crop. i.e. the ones with the best academic brains. That's it, bottom line.
Does anyone else remember the days when shop assistants assisted, journalists contributed to a journal, and the elite learning academies only took the elite pupils? Anyone?
Oh good. Four of us left.
Zarich, London , England
Well, yes I was in care for a while. My parents didn't have a university education and my father was Indian. I worked hard though, and was sponsored by enlightened employers to complete a professional accountancy qualification and an MBA. I didn't face discrimination then - why now should I be the source of discrimination for my children?
Michelle Maden, Reading, Berkshire