Higher education is seen by some as a passport to social mobility, a leveller which can help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds catch up with their more fortunate peers by offering them a springboard from which to enter the world of employment.
But repeated studies have told us that students from poorer families, boys and some ethnic groups are less likely to participate in higher education than other groups – and even less likely to attend the most prestigious institutions.
One way of widening participation in higher education is through the use of contextual admissions policies. This involves taking into account the socioeconomic context of students’ academic achievements when deciding which university applicants to shortlist, interview, make standard or reduced offers to, or accept at confirmation or clearing.
The idea behind the use of contextual data in university admissions is, as the 2004 Schwartz Report on fair admissions put it, that: “it is fair and appropriate to consider contextual factors as well as formal educational achievement, given the variation in learners’ opportunities and circumstances”.
Some have argued that type of school attended should be a factor in university admissions decisions and have called for state school students to be admitted with lower grades than their privately educated peers. But how appropriate is the type of school a student attended as a contextual factor?
State School Students Do Better at University
Research on degree outcomes published recently by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) found that state school students do better, on average, at degree level than their privately educated peers.
In 2013-14, 82% of state school graduates achieved a first or upper second-class degree compared to 73% of graduates from private schools. This nine percentage point gap was found to decline to four percentage points after differences in grades on entry to university were taken into account. The gap was narrower for those with very high grades on entry, at about one percentage point for those who enter with AAAA at A-level.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) reported very similar findings last year and some 12 years ago. Studies carried out at the universities of Bristol, St Andrew’s and Oxford reported similar results, although a Cambridge study found no link between school type and degree performance.
