William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone)University Admission
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Mr Clappison
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which I was coming to. It answers in part the point raised by the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). There is a question of raising standards in some quarters of the state system, and also of raising aspirations among pupils, critically by their teachers. The universities have been playing their part, but there must be a limit at some point to how much we expect universities to do in reaching into schools and raising aspirations. Teachers have day-to-day contact with pupils, and there is a responsibility on them in some quarters to raise aspirations.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) referred to grades. Is it not also the case that there are severe question marks about the grades that pupils are being given in the appropriate examinations before they get into university? If the grades are not up to scratch, that is effectively a back door to the social engineering to which my hon. Friend referred.
Mr Clappison
One of the crosses that the Government may have to bear as a result of that guidance is a great deal of scrutiny of grades, and comparisons between the grades that people from certain schools received, and which universities they successfully applied to. I have a lot of confidence in university admissions tutors and their approach to the job, particularly in the most selective universities.