I worked at a Russell Group university for 10 years in widening participation / recruitment / admissions.

[AngerIsAnEnergy]

Have a decent insight into this, working with academics and administrators in many subjects, student support services etc.

AMA.

My Y12 DS is currently failing all his A levels due to Long Covid. We're not sure if he'll be able to catch up in the next year but if he does decide he wants to go to university is his only option to do a Foundation year?

Good morning Anger. I have a 17 yo Ds with offers he will be accepting from 2 RG unis (Warwick and York). He has a good chance of getting in to Warwick but my main concern is how he will be supported wherever he goes. He is autistic and although he is a high achiever he needs reasonable adjustments, which the school has sometimes struggled with as they have never had to arrange them for Further Maths exams before (🙄). He has a scribe, extra time and a separate room.

He will continue to need that kind of support as his handwriting is unreadable and is not going to improve. Typing is fine for essay based exams and he uses a word processor for his Physics and Classics exams but Maths is different hence the scribe. Do we need to start the conversation now about this? I am wary of being over involved but Ds needs some steering. He is unwilling to engage with a process when he is not sure about the outcome/ utility. So I need to be able to explain what to expect iyswim!? Any tips would be appreciated. He is going to find the whole uni experience a sensory overload so we want to prepare him!

My view is universities are not doing enough around class and can be pretty patronising towards the widening participation target groups. Do you think my view is unfair?

Do you think Labour’s 50% of young people to go to university was a good idea?

What do the academic staff you’ve worked with really think about ‘widening participation’?

Do you think that university is the right time to fix the problem of diversity especially around ability of poorer children to get good places ?

Academics are incredibly opinionated people and individual views vary massively. I met lots who were incredibly passionate advocates for WP (often to the extend of thinking they knew more about it / were more radical / how to do it best than the WP team).
There are definitely some academics who are: old school snobs, just want private school kids with the strings of A*s as they think they are 'the best' and easier to teach / think WP is nonsense / are very focused on meritocracy and just wanting the "best".

Some courses have 40+ applicants per place. If you want to do meaningful WP work it is about quite complex, evidence based, considered admissions process design, in order to give WP students a fair shot (or could even say 'a hope in hell').

Hi Op,
My DS attends a project run by IntoUniversity. Its a sort of after school club aimed at familiarising working class kids with the idea of university and introducing them to some of the subjects taught there.
I was wondering what you think about this kind of project. Do they produce results in the long term?

So do RG actually lower entry requirements for First in Family and/or postcodes?

I think there's never a 'right time' to contribute to social justice and diversity. I would like to see all organisations not just unis contributing more.

Employers will say 'this starts at university, what can we do, shrug' - Universities say 'this starts at secondary school, what can we do, shrug' - Secondary schools say 'this starts at primary school and in childhood what can we do, shrug'. And all of them say 'these are wider societal issues that we can't fix, shrug.'

It is a given that fair access to university it is a 'wicked problem' - highly complex, hard to address and constantly evolving. I am most interested in the organisations that do not let themselves off the hook, dont shrug and revert to doing the same old same old but who try to have influence where they can.

Good for him and for you supporting him. I didn't work at those unis so can't speak to their quality of disability support but I would suggest he contacts their disability support teams now / does online research and gets a sense of what support they would give him. It could be a factor in which institution would be the best fit for him.
There is a lot more awareness about neurodiversity and autism at the moment. there may be student union disability reps and societies he can join.

He has a right to reasonable adjustments under the equality act. Generally universities are slightly better at supporting their disabled students than supporting their disabled staff (sad but true).

When he knows for sure which he is going to, he should get in touch w student disability team early for an appointment to explore the support and get adjustments put in place.
My colleagues in student support said the sooner they had contact and case information the better job they can do of supporting. He shouldn't wait.

Also he may well need to speak to people himself, it may be that you cannot do it as his parent. Good luck to him!

Yes, some will. This is called contextual admissions. Most of the Russell groups have some form of it in place, but the criteria and the admissions details will vary by institution, they arent all the same.

I think the most common form it would look is: if you went to a target list state schools + have a low participation postcode + possibly other criteria you might get something like a BBB offer instead of AAA.

But as i say it varies btn institutions and courses and may be updated periodically. You'd need to check the specifics.

I like Into University, they have a good rep and expanded massively in the past ten years. I like that they seem very integrated into the communities they serve.

I do not know their impact evidence but you would be able to find it on their website (search for impact / evaluation reports). They must have decent impact evidence for their work otherwise they would not have been so successful in fundraising and expanding.

Interesting, I do agree with the patronising.

It can be a bit cringey at times for example having a bunch of white, earnest middle class student ambassadors and WP staff (which also described me to be honest) going into a school serving mostly black / asian and working class communities and giving talks about uni life. I tried to be very thoughtful about how I came across in my practice, and to be very rigorous in how I picked and trained my student reps. Some of them were phemenonal in engaging young people and I did see them becoming more diverse in my time at the uni.

There is more discussion of classism and accent bias at university. my job was focused on 'getting them in' and less on what happens when they are in. there is a shift to 'success support' which is more about this.
accentbiasbritain.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Accent-Bias-Britain-Report-2020.pdf
There's still massive snobbery racism and classism that students experience. I dont like it. Good book:
www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/14/respectable-by-lynsey-hanley-review-class

There is a real 'deficit mindset' thing that I want to see shift. That a WP student will 'struggle more' and basically needs to be taught how to become middle class, not that the institution needs to change.

I am hesitantly in favour of it.
I think everyone should be able to get some higher education if they want to. I think HE is a social good to the whole country. It can change lives.

however that target was brought in before the massive fees hike and decline in graduate job prospects. I would these days feel less comfortable aggressively pushing a young person from a low income situation to take on massive debt from a uni + course with poorer employment outcomes.
I felt more comfortable representing my uni as I was at least confident that it was a generally decent student experience, the teaching was good and so were the employment prospects.

We have a big problem in UK with employers using Undergraduate plus sometimes also postgrad degrees as a basic filter for jobs recruitment, and also only recruiting from certain universities. we need good apprenticeships, more technical training, more employers running their in house training schemes from school or from graduation, as well as a strong university sector.

I dont like the zero sum / fighting over scarce resources attitude that comes through when people say 'too many people are going to university' or 'they are letting too many people in'. mostly it means middle class people are worried that a WP student will 'steal' their child's 'rightful place'. (I am not assuming that is what you meant by the way but its something ive seen).

there was a colleague in the sector I admired whose response was always 'well, tell me who you think should be going?'

@FlemCandango I forgot to add my uni did autism friendly induction days for first years when campus was quieter. Ask about that!
Ask about access to support staff like note takers, is it through an agency, is it hard to get them in time for lectures?

@AngerIsAnEnergy I think your statement regarding WP and academics being "opinionated" snobs is not a true reflection. I am an academic and work so very had to integrate WP. The problems we find is that WP brings with it immense workloads in terms of meeting student diversity with limited staff availability. What you have stated is completely not an accurate reflection on our side. I do not think it helps portraying us as traditional academic "snobs".

I am hesitant about individual case advice as I left the sector before pandemic and am not up to date.
I would get as much as advice as possible from GP, his school and maybe look for info on UCAS.
He could pause his studies and retake A levels perhaps?
I am not sure I've got more advice for you but there will be lots of students in his position and so much disruption from pandemic.
I hope he gets better and things improve.

There’s been a lot of discussion on Mumsnet arguing about whether children who’ve been sent to private school are actively discriminated against by universities. For example some say that a university will give an offer to a lower performing student who went to State school over a brighter student who did not. What’s your opinion on this?

Thanks that is fair feedback I don't think I represented my view well enough above.
I wanted to get across there is a real variety in academics' opinions, they dont all think the same (which is the point of academia really).

There is massive support from many - like you - which is essential and fantastic. Thank you for you what you do. Being opinionated is a good thing in my view.

Also: academics work incredibly hard and the hours are very long. I worked with many academics who wanted to support WP and I would always try to make it easy and supportive as possible for them to do so. I know the crazy pressures on them. I think they do have more pressure / different kind of pressure on them than admin / professional services roles.

But, sadly yes in my ten years I did also meet some academics I would say were genuine snobs, very hung up on old school meritocratic measures. I think they were becoming a minority over time. Gradually.

A challenge for WP teams can be getting academics to respect our expertise. They are highly educated and specialists in their field, so sometimes it was hard to get them to respect our expertise + knowledge as practitioners in our field. There is a big admin people vs academics cultural problem in some universities.

Will be very grateful if I can get some pointers here. I am not originally from the UK and quite clueless about the admissions process.

1. Is there any bias against privately educated children during the admissions process? I am very concerned as I am not particularly well off but had to move my DC from state to private. Now I feel I may have scuppered his chances :(


2. How important are extracurriculars and sports when it comes to uni admissions?

@AngerIsAnEnergy I completely understand where you are coming from. I think the problem with the old school academics is that it is difficult to change mindsets when you have been told for many years how academia and the classic picture of university education is "meant to be". Mainly linked to the common perception of university = aristocracy. However, I do strongly believe that universities are moving away from that picture this may not be applicable to "higher end" educational institutions yet.

Mainstream HE settings are definitely eager to participate in opening doors but that brings with it it's challenges and people don't realise that we can't change over night.

@AngerIsAnEnergy thank you for your answer.

I agree we need great options for education to suit all school leavers, but at the moment I feel uneasy recommending a young person to go to university and rack up huge amounts of debt unless they are pursuing a career they are likely to be able to pay it off in. I work in education and have a Masters and it’s something I feel conflicted about.

You seem to say that ‘meritocratic’ is bad, but I would have considered that WP is meritocratic - i.e. that WP students are there on merit.

@Twilightstarbright don't forget that a lot of university courses can be done alongside a traditional apprenticeship... so a lot of our students learn, and earn whilst getting a degree.