University entrance getting more difficult for poor pupils
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Your support makes all the difference.A senior government adviser has warned that Tony Blair's attempts to boost the numbers of university students from poor backgrounds are failing as England becomes more divided into a society of haves and have-nots.
Despite the injection of £300m into encouraging universities to widen recruitment, the proportion of students from poor backgrounds dropped this year, the adviser told a meeting in London yesterday, held under Chatham House rules of anonymity.
Young people from middle-class homes are now six times more likely to go to university than students from working-class backgrounds, the gathering of MPs, headteachers, university leaders and education experts heard. Poor students would not have a fair chance to attend university until there was a radical reform of the school system to ensure that poor children got better access to good schools.
"There's plenty of choice in the English school system at the moment - as long as you're not poor," he said. "In the UK, children from a wealthy background get a much better education than children from deprived backgrounds. People who can afford it can pay to go private, or move to the catchment area of a good school or pay for after-school tuition. Poor families have to stick with whatever school is available."
He called for the introduction of a voucher system which would fund a place at any school a parent chose - state or private - to give the poorest families more choice.
Throughout UK universities, the percentage of state school admissions fell from 87.2 per cent to 86.8 per cent last year.
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