University Admissions: Equality

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for initiating this debate, but I have to say I was surprised by the defensive stance she adopted on behalf of Oxford. I got the sense that she protested rather too much. She referred to students fearing what she termed “data release” and the idea that comment on it was responsible for dissuading students from applying to university. I certainly accept, as was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, that schools need to do more for the students in terms of raising aspiration. But is the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, suggesting that information on admissions should somehow be suppressed? Surely not.

Several of the most prestigious Oxford colleges each admitted only two black British students as undergraduates in the last three years; six of Cambridge’s colleges each admitted fewer than 10 BAME students between 2010 and 2016. Surely more transparency is required on admissions, not less. As regards Oxford, Wadham College is an excellent example, admitting 68% state-school students and sitting in the top five college rankings, while making considerable efforts to widen its participation programme with visits to schools. If it can be done at Wadham, I do not see why it cannot be done at other colleges and, indeed, other universities; it points, perhaps, to a question of priorities. On the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I think it was slightly disingenuous to refer to the overall numbers of the student population from black and minority-ethnic backgrounds. The real issue, surely, is where those students are studying and what that means for career opportunities.

Widening participation is, as we know, a key part of the Government’s agenda and the Office for Students states that its aim is to make higher education more representative of wider society; we all sign up for that. Yet in nine of the Russell group’s 24 universities, the proportion of state-school pupils fell over the past year, so it seems that efforts to widen student participation at universities have hit the buffers.

There is no doubting the good intentions of both the OfS and all universities, but good intentions are without merit unless they are acted upon. One clear failing concerned the issue of unconscious bias; perhaps the most egregious example of that was in terms of the admissions process highlighted by UCAS’s own researchers last month, when they reported that more than half of all applications flagged for possible fraud were from black applicants, even though they constitute just 9% of applications. That is, surely, wholly unjustifiable and clearly the result of bias. Whether it is entirely unconscious bias is a moot point.

As I said, greater transparency in the process is necessary. We believe that every university should be obliged to publish all its access and admissions data on an annual basis. Perhaps the Minister will say whether he agrees and if not, why not. The Government cannot escape their share of responsibility. Ministers claim that unprecedented levels of disadvantaged students are going to university, but that is misleading and tells only part of the story. While more free-school-meals students are going to university than 10 years ago, the increase has not been at the same pace as the number of non-free-school-meals students going to university. Since 2010, the gap between students from independent schools going to the most selective universities and students from state schools going to those universities has risen substantially. To put it another way, disadvantaged pupils’ progression to university is as far behind that of their more affluent peers as it was seven years ago.

Of course, it is no coincidence that analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that the ending of maintenance grants found students from low-income families graduating with the highest debt levels, in excess of £57,000. I am fully in agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that the grant must be reinstated as a matter of urgency. No matter how much effort universities put into improving their admissions policies, much more remains to be done to reduce the barriers that prevent those from under- represented groups fulfilling their potential.

I conclude with a quote from the former Leader of your Lordships’ House and now the director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, the noble Baroness, Lady Amos:

“The UK has some of the best universities in the world—but what is the point of that if we are not offering real equality of opportunity?”


I invite the Minister to offer the noble Baroness a response.