Christopher Pincher
Main Page: Christopher Pincher (Independent - Tamworth)
Mr Willetts
In a letter that the Secretary of State and I have sent to HEFCE today we make clear our continuing commitment to strategically important and vulnerable subjects. We will of course monitor the effects of the change in the first year, but we wish to take it further, so that gradually more and more A-level grades are included in the system.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend work with the Secretary of State for Education to introduce a system of post-A-level university applications? The current system, whereby many students are offered places based on their predicted grades, is bureaucratic and inefficient, and undermines the opportunity of many of our most disadvantaged students to get places, because their grades are routinely under-predicted. Will my right hon. Friend consider this long overdue reform?
Mr Willetts
I have a lot of sympathy with my hon. Friend’s points, which are important. The current system is exceptionally complicated, with a large amount of interaction between the prospective student and the university. We have asked UCAS to look into the situation, and we will await its proposals. The idea would take some time to implement—I suspect that successive Governments have wrestled with this challenge—but it is also one that we put forward in the White Paper.