Top universities should drop entry requirements by two grades for poorer students, says new study

Britain’s top universities should lower their entry requirements by two grades when making offers to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, a new report has said.

The study, published by the Sutton Trust, concluded that 50 per cent more poor students could gain a place at the country’s most selective universities if admissions criteria are reformed.

It found that use of “contextual admissions”, in which information on an applicant’s economic background is taken into account when an offer is made, would drastically increase access to universities that have been accused of not doing enough to open their doors to poorer students.

It comes after data obtained by Labour MP David Lammy revealed that 82 per cent and 81 per cent of offers made by Oxford and Cambridge respectively go to applicants from the two highest social classes.

More offers are made to pupils from Eton than to students on free school meals across the country.

The Sutton Trust study, led by academics at the universities of Durham and Warwick, looked at 30 of the UK’s most selective universities. It found that use of contextual admissions would result in a “substantial hike” in the number of students who are eligible for free school meals going to top universities.

Currently only 1,500 young people eligible for free school meals are admitted to the 30 most selective universities each year – a tiny fraction of the total intake. That could rise to 2,250 if entry requirements are lowered.

Across the 30 universities, 85 per cent of students had to obtain at least an A and two B grades at A-Level in order to be meet their offer. If this was reduced to a BBC offer then an additional 750 poor students would be allowed entry, the report found.

While 16 per cent of young people in England qualify for free school meals (FSM), just 2.5 per cent of them attend the most selective universities – four times less than the proportion of non-FSM pupils.

The authors said the A-Level grades of poor students at the UK’s top universities are currently only a quarter of a grade lower on average than their more privileged peers – suggesting institutions are failing to significantly lower boundaries for people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

They said: “While concerns have been expressed that it risks ‘setting students up to fail’ by admitting them with lower grades, our analysis finds little evidence that leading universities that appear to practise greater contextualisation see significantly higher dropout rates, lower degree completion rates, or lower degree class results than universities where the use of contextualisation appears to be lower.

“Of course, the data does not reveal what additional support may have been provided to students admitted under contextual schemes, but it does suggest that there is no reason why students from contextual backgrounds admitted with lower grades cannot succeed at top universities with the right support.”

Mr Lammy told The Independent: “For too long our top universities have been closed clubs. If we’re going to get serious about access we need systemic change and that will require radical solutions.”

More than one in five students from more advantaged backgrounds are admitted to Britain’s most selective universities with grades at or below BBC.

While the majority of universities take a candidate’s family and educational background into account when giving out offers, just four of them said people from disadvantaged backgrounds would be guaranteed a reduced-grade offer.

There is also no standardised system and many institutions leave decisions up to individual departments, creating a large degree of variation between and within universities.

The report authors said institutions often fail to give applicants information about how their background will influence the offer they are given, meaning many eligible students do not apply because they are unaware of how they could benefit.

In addition to taking contextual information into account during the admissions process, the report said universities should also expand the use of foundation years, in which disadvantaged students are given an extra year of study at the beginning of the course to help them catch up with more privileged peers. Such a system has already been introduced by Lady Margaret Hall college at Oxford.

Robert Halfon, Chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee, told The Independent: “Too few students from disadvantaged backgrounds are enrolling on courses at the most selective universities. This is not good enough and the Sutton Trust is right to call for contextual data to be used in the admissions process.

"The Education Committee will be looking at these issues and how to ensure students are equipped to secure graduate jobs in its inquiry into value for money in higher education. We will want to examine the role which universities play in advancing social justice and how far they help all students, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds, climb the educational ladder of opportunity."

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: “Getting a degree from a top university is one of the surest routes to a good job. However young people from low and moderate income homes are substantially under-represented at these universities.

“We need a radical change to shift this. A central element when applying to leading universities must be to use contextual admissions. By contextual admissions we mean that the social background of a university applicant is taken into account in the admissions process.

“At top American universities like Harvard and Yale giving low and moderate income students a break is the norm. There is no reason why our leading universities should not do the same.”