Universities up and down the country have schemes that are aimed at so-called widening access. These schemes are targeted towards disadvantaged children and offering them lower grades to gain admission to top institutions. From Oxford to Cambridge, Edinburgh, Durham and UCL, these schemes are prolific and are practically mandatory.
As a young person attending an ‘under-performing’ school and living in a deprived area, I want to make the case that these schemes aren’t the way that we should be helping children gain access to top universities. I want to argue that they discourage meritocracy and lower standards at some of our best institutions. A properly prepared and informed school curriculum and culture, that encourages children to achieve to their highest ability will enable an overall more rigorous academic culture and one in which children who work hard and try their best will receive the ultimate reward, no matter the school they attended or the postcode they inhabited.
Great Grimsby isn’t the typical home of an aspiring Oxford student like myself. Since the ‘cod wars’ of the 1970s, the town has been proliferated by economic inactivity and underachievement as a result of declining industry. The town holds some of the most deprived boroughs in the United Kingdom and is consistently ranked in tables of the ‘Worst Places to Live’. Despite growing achievement in green and manufacturing industries in recent years, the town remains decimated by poverty and inequality. Despite an obviously grudging childhood growing up on the infamous Nunsthorpe Estate, a prime example of inequality in the town - being bordered by some of the richest wards of Scartho and New Waltham - I have dared to aspire.
In four years’ time, I hope to have gained admission to Merton College, Oxford, to read History and Politics. Ominously, the former home of short-term PM Liz Truss - who read, as many past Prime Ministers have, Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE). Nevertheless, the subjects of history and politics have been great passions of mine for many-a-year. I vividly remember a ‘politics day’ held at my primary school, where I stood as Theresa May. A debatable decision I must admit - I don’t remember receiving many votes. I stand firmlyby the belief that history and politics are subjects that stand in a natural synthesis and are built to be studied together: neither functions well without the other.
You might be under the impression that being from such a background as my own, I’ve set my ambitions to high, and that I’m simply not capable. Surely I’d apply somewhere else? Or at least to a newer, more diverse college such as Mansfield - of which 96% of students are state educated. My response to all of those questions and assumptions is one of ambivalence and mock offence. You musn’t be under the impression that as a result of my upbringing and schooling, that my abilities are limited. I will be the first to tell you - without the slightest sense of shame - that I excel in the subjects I am passionate about. You also musn’t believe that I am resting my Oxford ambitions on the hope of a so-called ‘widening access’ scheme or, as more commonly known, a contextual offer. Herein lies the topic I wish to discuss.
Many students from working class backgrounds up and down the country rest all of their ambition on the dream of a contextual offer. And those that aren’t eligible envy them evermore - ‘Oh to be poor enough as to receive a contextual offer’. They are desired and coveted assets, to possess one being a badge of honour, with all of your classmates being informed that you’re on your way to one of the nation’s top academic institutions, for half the work they’re doing. This in itself should be evidence enough of why these schemes are toxic. They create an illusion that getting a first class education is easy - as long as you’re poor.
A further example of the harm these programmes cause is evident in the lowered academic standards they promote within some of the nation’s top universities. The belief that one can go to Oxbridge with a contextual offer on a whim, scot-free must be discouraged. High standards of academic rigour are paramount to maintaining the world-class status of our great universities. Of course, having reached admission to a university, support should be given to help disadvantaged students ‘get on’. However, the task of ‘getting in’ must be left entirely up to a prospective student’s record of academic steadfastness and their performance in the application process. Anything further risks defaming a work-hard culture that is crucial to our to universities. Applying to these institutions should be much like the process undertaken by many city companies when hiring graduates. Just as they choose not to consider the candidate’s university, universities should be opting to do the same. Judging students on their level of academic achievement and success in other areas is the fairest process of judging their suitability for our best universities.
Instead of relentlessly pursuing these ‘widening access’ schemes, our world class universities should instead spend their resources lobbying and working with the government and Department for Education to create a curriculum that ensures students are ‘Oxbridge ready’, and are rigourosuly prepared to work their way to Oxford, Cambridge or any of our other Russel Group universities - should they choose to. An overhaul of the curriculum to ensure the highest academic achievement of our pupils would see the best outcomes. In addition to this should be the promotion of an entirely new culture. The current attitude of many students to ‘flunk it’ througn school and come out relatively unscathed is detrimental to creating a populous ready to do its best for Britain.
‘Underperforming’ state schools should not be churning out economically inactive citizens as a result of an inappropriate culture that promotes flunking and puts ‘fun factor’ at the heart of student’s priorities. Schools must be quiet, dignified hubs of learning and academic commitment that offer the best to their students. This ultimate purpose must be fulfilled if we are to create the fairest system possible. When it comes to it, it was the teachers that ensured the class remained silent that I have always learnt the most from.
A system in which students place all of their eggs in the basket of ‘widening access’ schemes musn’t be allowed to be at the centre of a new and improved meritocracy in Britain. If we are to truly restore the meritocratic and rigorous country of ambition, not defeat and prosperity, not decline, we must ensure that such plastic meritocratic systems do not prevail. Real meritocracy requires judgement on the basis of rigour and high standards. We must have this be the winner in the fight for a merit-based society.