Righting a wrong or doing one?

University selection, by the university, is more of an art than a science and it appears that every model has its flaws. The latest approach, from the University of Oxford, involves selecting students based to a large extent on the school they attended. The Universty of Oxford has announced that students from "struggling" schools will still be admitted, even if they do not gain the normally required grades.


Application to Oxford is highly competitve, Firstly, students must gain certain specified results in external and international examinations such as Cambridge International A-Levels or the International Baccalaureate Diploma*. Then for some course there is also an entrance examination and or application essays. Applicants who get through these, must then get through a famously fiendish interview process.

This all occurs around January or February for admission in September, and since the external examinations are not held until May and June, offers of a place are provisional or conditional on specified examination results such as three A-Level A grades or 39 IB Diploma points.

The Universty's concern is that because of disruption to schooling, and problems with the examination processes, possible inconsistencies and unfairness, through no fault of their own, students may not receive the grades needed for the provisional offer and so miss out on their place. Oxford is arguing that non-public schools and public schools* in more affluent areas have more resources to counter these problems. Students at "struggling" schools will therefore be handicapped in a new and inequitable manner and Oxford must address this handicap.

This move prompts a number of important questions, and is of course controversial. The key underlying tension questions the role and purpose of a university education, and then the place of a university like Oxford in those discissions.

Oxford is a Russell Group institution, like the Ivy League in the US, and has long been challenged for discriminatory admissions, The argument is that most students come from a small number of independent schools which of of course favours the upper classes, and those public school students who do make it come from highly-selective "grammar" schools which serve the upper classes who choose not to attend an independent school. Clearly wealth and privilege are being selected rather than ability and promise, and therefore able students with potential without wealth and privilege should be selected instead.

For the last 50 or so years Oxford ahs beomce mreo meritocratic. Examination grades were brought in, interviews were rigorously desigend so as to avoid favouring any gender or specifc background, outreach to targetted public schools began, high profile campaigns were launched featuring minority or formerly disadvantaged students and graduates. Almost 70% of 2020 offers were made to public school students.

However Oxford is concerned that too many of these students come from public schools in affluent areas, schools which are well-resourced and provide students with better oppottunities, and from wealthy parents. Students with ability and promise from public schools at the other end of the spectrum are still not proportionally represented.

Clearly 2020 admissions and selection are nightmarish for any university, especially one like Oxford, and clearly traditional or usual approaches need some adjustment. The questions are of course what, which and how. Art not science.

This particular situation prompts other questions. What is a struggling school? What about the school with an excellent program in an impoverished area? Or the school in a wealthier area with a weak programme or which lost several of its better teachers and the replacments or substitutes are not cut from the same cloth?

What about poorer students who attend a wealthier school through financial assistance or scholarships? What about the teacher's child at an independent school who has the place because of her mother's job, but who has none of the wealth or other advantages such a school would suggest? What about the student at a small parochial or village school who has worked really, really hard and over-achieved relative to what that school usually manages?

I applaud Oxford's desire to compensate for some of the issues connected with student background and the realities of 2020, however I think this inititative might not be the right one. Four years from now, these students' completion rates and academic results will provide evidence in one way or another.

*Other assessments are also accepted such as French or Indian national examinations.

*Public schools in the UK are known as state schools.

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Further reading

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2019-09-10/how-colleges-choose-which-students-to-admit

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/advice/top-7-qualities-universities-look-student-applicants