Don’t blame universities for our great class gap

12 April 2012

Those pushy middle-class parents are at it again. Last week David Cameron blamed "the sharp-elbowed middle classes" for hogging Sure Start services. Today, as far too many recipients of A-level results chase far too few university places, the same thing will happen, if Deputy PM Nick Clegg is to be believed.

This week he decried the "educational apartheid", whereby "disproportionate" numbers of middle-class kids take places, thereby choking social mobility, and hinted at changes to funding.

It's not just the fact that I went to a comprehensive school that makes my hackles rise when I hear wealthy public schoolboys such as Clegg and Cameron bleat about class privilege.

Blaming universities for the nation's class inequalities is just silly. Indeed, whenever a politician attacks universities on such grounds, especially Oxbridge, I take it as a signal that the blowhard concerned has little intention of doing much about social mobility. That was true of Labour, bullying the universities via the Office for Fair Access, the quango set up in 2006 as a fig leaf for the party's shame over introducing top-up fees.

It's true that the middle classes — especially those educated at private schools — dominate universities. A recent report from the Sutton Trust, the leading organisation working on education and social mobility, found that in 2007, a third of students entering the 13 most selective universities were from private schools (as against seven per cent of all schoolchildren).

Just 16 per cent of entrants to those universities were from the lower social classes. And while that number and the proportion of entrants from state schools showed an improvement on a decade earlier, the increase was small.

But the report also concluded that "these findings are largely accounted for by differences in attainment at A-level". Universities were not discriminating against the poor: kids from wealthier backgrounds just got better results. The roots of inequality, and of declining social mobility, lie far upstream from the ivory tower.

It's not hard to see why independent schools get better results: selective intakes, smaller classes etc. I was in a private school in south London the other day attending a concert and was awestruck by the lavishness of the facilities compared with my kids' state primary a mile up the road.

We all know about the gaps between the best and worst state schools. If children from poor, often chaotic backgrounds get years of education in rubbish schools, it's little short of a miracle for them to get good A-levels.

It's partly a question of expectations. State schools are never going to transform the numbers of students getting decent A-levels unless they make it clear that academic excellence is the goal, and that success in harder exam subjects (sciences and modern languages) is the thing to aspire to. However we tackle unequal attainment, by 18 it's far too late.

There is more that universities could do, especially if, as seems likely, they get their way in the current review of higher education funding and are allowed to hike fees. The Sutton Trust has suggested, for example, that they offer students from poor backgrounds a "first year for free".

If this Cabinet of millionaires is serious about social mobility, they must take on harder targets — school standards, low pay, child poverty — than a few harassed dons.

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