Widening Participation/Contextual Admissions

[SometimesRavenSometimesParrot]

Hi all. I’ve seen quite a lot of posts lately where people seem a bit confused about different widening participation initiatives and contextual admissions, either how they work, why they work or why they’re even done... and some people asking questions about them and not getting anything resembling an accurate response.

I’ve worked in a WP team for seven years now (with a couple of short stints in admissions), so since I have often had excellent advice from Mumsnet and my questions answered, I thought I’d offer myself up to answer anything in this area someone might want to know.

I be name changed so I can be a bit more honest and I know there are several other posters who work or research in this area who might want to chip in!

Standard disclaimer of every uni works slightly different, so answers will be broad ranging - feel free to PM me if you’ve got a specific q!

Thinking about my university experience and WP it was distinctly middle class. The idea of formal meals, summer parties, freshers week etc seemed quite remote to the life of a lot of my primary school peers.

I wonder if this feeds through to possibly discourage working class kids to 'aim higher'.

Ultimately people from all backgrounds should mix obviously but it can be something of a culture shock to some people. There is more to university than academia and I am sure prospective students want their social life to be as good as possible.

@mids2019

Thinking about my university experience and WP it was distinctly middle class. The idea of formal meals, summer parties, freshers week etc seemed quite remote to the life of a lot of my primary school peers.

I wonder if this feeds through to possibly discourage working class kids to 'aim higher'.

Ultimately people from all backgrounds should mix obviously but it can be something of a culture shock to some people. There is more to university than academia and I am sure prospective students want their social life to be as good as possible.

It absolutely does. If I had a pound for every time I heard 'people like me don't go to places like that' I'd be very rich!

I've done a lot of work on cultural capital and how that impacts university decisions.

So how do you change that in families? It has been going on for generations.

I showed DN around Oxford with family and poked our noses in a few colleges a couple of years ago. DN did not quite recoil but her university educated parents did. They immediately said DN would not fit in there. What can you do when educated people think this and think DN should go to the city where they support a football team? They have assumed a faux working class persona. Seems quite bizarre to me.

@PresentingPercy

So how do you change that in families? It has been going on for generations.

It's a mixture of things .....

Getting universities and employers to appreciate a wider range of cultural capital is one step.

Projects and work around demystifying university also helps as do projects that help prepare young people for the transition to university..... HE experience days, summer schools etc.

Once young people arrive at university then a decent induction programme can be really beneficial.

@PresentingPercy

I showed DN around Oxford with family and poked our noses in a few colleges a couple of years ago. DN did not quite recoil but her university educated parents did. They immediately said DN would not fit in there. What can you do when educated people think this and think DN should go to the city where they support a football team? They have assumed a faux working class persona. Seems quite bizarre to me.

That is a tough one. Parental influence is huge and we know that.

There are people at universities and schools who are tasked with working with parents but I think we could do much more.

@PresentingPercy

Schools are desperate to ensure parents do claim fsm due to PP funding. In fact that is often used to promote university entrance to the brighter dc with PP funding - eg paying for visits etc. Few people these days see it as a stigma. Most schools have promoted the need to claim. It is one of the main criteria for PP funding plus forces DC.

Grammar schools lucked up most bright DC years ago but definitely not all. It is known parents would not send DC in some areas - above their station. Could not afford the uniform. Not wanting the jibes at work etc. I have relatives who didn’t go because a sibling didn’t go. Decades ago but people thought differently then.

Loads of grammar dc left school at 16. Yes, you would work up to be an accountant! Only the university stream stayed on and they were a handful. Even from some (now) very sought after grammars.

We have the school magazine from DHs very good grammar in the early 70s. Around 1/3 of boys only did 2 A levels. I was amazed but there were the results in front of me. However there were polys, there were professional training schemes. You could enter local government, teach, be a nurse, go into a management training scheme (M&S) and there was a wide world of opportunity underpinned by employers.

I sometimes think it was better then!

I can confidently tell you that it is absolutely still a stigma for some people. There are parents who won’t even let their kids engage with WP programmes because they’re scared of a stigma which might come with that...

@PresentingPercy it’s a huge issue and one we’re working hard at. We need to work with students from younger age groups all the way up, provide comprehensive support with lots of visits to universities and lots of exposure to undergraduate. We need specific targeted work with defined cohorts that meets their additional needs, whatever they are. We need to make sure students are prepared and confident for university, which the country school system doesn’t do right now imo. We need to make sure students get the right advice, and that the support carries on for them through transition and we need to make sure students confidence is at a place to allow them to succeed - cultural capital fits here. We need to work with parents and communities.

There’s ALOT that needs to happen, and we’re working on it all but it takes time, and even more time for the groups that most need the help.

@DelBocaVista

White working class boys as lawyers? How many? Or are these schemes for menial jobs?

What makes you think they are for menial jobs?
I have worked on a number of projects which were devised on the basis of data showing us that there was a specific group that were underrepresented in specific subject areas or just in HE in general. I just used white working class boys as an example - there are numerous different projects which are reviewed regularly.

He’s getting on a bit now but my brother is a working class boy turned lawyer. Son of a docker, product of an inner-city Liverpool comprehensive. Won a scholarship to Oxford and he’s now one of the world’s few space lawyers. Why would you think that white working class boys should only be relegated to ‘menial’ jobs.

I actually think that society division caused by different types of housing
contribute s to this. We live in a society where essentially as in previous generations the rich seperate then selves from the poor. The investment bankers, lawyers, doctors etc love in different areas to your gig economy workers, cleaners etc.

I think this means pupil parents do not mix on a social level readily and
and create a certain alieness between the two groups and I think there is an element of suspicion when the working class are offered opportunities at older universities or indeed middle class jobs. I don't think this is a trivial problem.

The idea of class (and class transition) has pervaded our society for generations and I don't think this is a concept that is going to disappear overnight. Accepting a place at an RG university may to some be a class transition or the beginnings of one and there are emotional and social consequences to this (Billy Elliot with books instead of tights)

At uni there was one guy from a deprived background from South London (son of single bereaved parent) who was a great guy but part of his banter (and it was good natured) was to mock the lifestyles of his peers, one of whose parents owned a shipping company and the other a tyre company (basically millionaires). In this situation social groups worked but in an an other hall there was fair amount of antagonism between different social groups and I think the working class kids were constantly looking for their tribe (they sentenced much in the minority then).

Love not love but I guess that is true also

I agree with a lot of what you're saying especially

I think there is an element of suspicion when the working class are offered opportunities at older universities or indeed middle class jobs. I don't think this is a trivial problem

You see this attitude a lot on threads like these. People dress it up as a concern over lowering standards ( which if you have any understanding of WP you would know that's not the case) but it's outright snobbery.

Being brave and popping on here.
This is why comprehensive education, when done well, works. My kids school had premiership footballers children as well as council estate ones. All mixed and grew up together from a v young age (most went to local primaries). My own DD came back from a year 7 party chatting about the 3 staircases the house she'd been in had, and another time loved the 123 acre 'back garden' of her friend. Who has horses and let's my DD ride them in competition. But they also had friends who lived in 2 bedroom flats with a family of 4. And also some lived in caravans. My 2 grew up knowing they were not rich but also not poor. More importantly they know that money does not make a person nice, kind,intelligent or funny. It's just money.
Everyone had the same opportunities at school, although not everyone took them. But one of my eldest DDs travelling family friends got to Oxford 4 years ago - her dad was the proudest I've ever seen anyone. 6ft 4 solid bloke cried on my shoulder when she got her results.
Still lots of barriers in kids way - family expectation, peer pressure. But no one at their school was worried about not fitting in, as they knew they could mix with everyone from school.
We are v lucky I know.

@mumsneedwine

Being brave and popping on here. This is why comprehensive education, when done well, works. My kids school had premiership footballers children as well as council estate ones. All mixed and grew up together from a v young age (most went to local primaries). My own DD came back from a year 7 party chatting about the 3 staircases the house she'd been in had, and another time loved the 123 acre 'back garden' of her friend. Who has horses and let's my DD ride them in competition. But they also had friends who lived in 2 bedroom flats with a family of 4. And also some lived in caravans. My 2 grew up knowing they were not rich but also not poor. More importantly they know that money does not make a person nice, kind,intelligent or funny. It's just money. Everyone had the same opportunities at school, although not everyone took them. But one of my eldest DDs travelling family friends got to Oxford 4 years ago - her dad was the proudest I've ever seen anyone. 6ft 4 solid bloke cried on my shoulder when she got her results. Still lots of barriers in kids way - family expectation, peer pressure. But no one at their school was worried about not fitting in, as they knew they could mix with everyone from school. We are v lucky I know.

Well said! Properly comprehensive education would be a bit help - get rid of grammars, good standards and opportunities in ALL schools and some work done to make sure it’s not all students from a particular area in each.

I wonder ifteh Sutton Trust has done any longer term graphs of these things. I suspect but may be wrong that after WWII when my grammar school parents went away to university (or in my mother's case residential treacher training college) there were more working class people doing better. I saw in the working class original law firm older partners I knew. Did comprehensive education then make the route out of poverty harder for them or easier? Do fewer now get through than in the 1940s and 50s when my doctor uncle got a council house because the plan then was you all worked very hard and paid in and you also all took out, rich or poor?

I might be wrong. We might more of the less well off into top jobs now than we did in the 40s and 50s and 60s.

I certainly remember my parents talking about the impact of the 11 plus. It changed the child - so they were moved from a family (albeit still living with the family ) into a different world of piano, violin, certificates, different way of talking, different clothes - it was in a sense a kind of Eliza Doolittle transformation. Then people went off to university and were changed further with new richer friends. From memory I think the book Brideshead Revisited by Waugh goes into it a bit - university where the rich met the poor etc.

That you were changed by your 11+ education and perhaps sometimes felt you fit into neither world, like children who win scholarships to boarding school. The issue being if you change the child so it likes things its family does not is that a social or moral good or not? Obviously most of us want to give children that chance of course. It was one reason my mother teaching classes of 40 children after WWII in primary school would help them learn you don't say "you was" or haitch or whatever - not that they had to change how they spoke at home but that some people, however wrong those people are, might assume things about them based on how they spoke and wrote.

@Xenia

It’s well documented that they didn’t all go off to university. Before we had comprehensive schools, 5% went to university. The grammars took more than 5%. The elite academics went to university. The vast majority didn’t. They did train though for professional jobs. Just not at university.

@mumsneedwine - sounds brilliant. As @SometimesRavenSometimesParrot says proper comprehensive education. It should be one good education for all. No state v private. Just one school system for all.

We struggled to find the right school for DT’s. Must haves were co-Ed and local. There is an outstanding primary local to home which we wanted but they couldn’t (quite rightly) do education for trilingual children. Most of the traditional private schools also didn’t do schooling in more than one language and most are single sex. We ended up sending them to one of the London based international schools. They had a brilliant education, co-Ed, tube ride from home but not what we really wanted.

@mumneedswine

What sort of catchment area had your school?

I think setting of catchment is an important factor in this sort of discussion.

It should in theory encompass a range of housing type but I wonder geographically if this can be done? (I also think there may an element of working class kids avoiding perceived middle class schools and vice versa)

Interesting points about grammar schools as back in my father's day entry
could be life determining with those destined to do professional jobs split from those that would do manual jobs. Is there any comparable split point today?

The point about the 'rich' meet 'poor ' at university is interesting because yes it does still happen. A huge amount of literature in this country (from Austen to Dickens) concerns itself with social status and I don't think we have yet entirely left those ideas. The idea of some of the older universities allowing opportunities to mix with 'higher circles ' is I think relevant. No way when Kate Middleton went to uni was she going to date the guy doing engineering whose parents worked in retail.

@mids2019 it's a semi rural catchment so quite a large area. Encompasses some v v expensive real estate. But also some social housing and a large static caravan park. Lots of people grew up here and have never moved away. Lots moved out of London as was too pricey.
I met lots of 'posh' people at Uni. For some of them I was the first person from a state school they had met and I'm not sure I was what they expected. I rode (used to work at a stables), I could speak Latin (thanks dad) and I was quite clever. Many are still friends today I'm glad to say.

Loads of engineers work in finance! People who are solidly middle class marry engineering grads all the time. In fact it’s where lots of the maths type ones but don’t really want engineering end up. Engineering isn’t about getting your hands dirty either.

Yes, many parents go private all the way through but they have cousins and sports friends from state. It’s a very up market kid who arrives at uni with no state school friends.

I was taking about me, in 1985., when the world was v different. Hope things have changed and kids mix much more. But I know many students who have not met a privately educated person and so there is a prejudice around what they are. They can't afford extra curricular stuff or sports clubs.
I love taking my students to Oxford/Cambs for a visit. First time they are all a bit in awe and say it looks like Hogwarts. By visit 4 they feel comfortable and believe they can fit in. The outreach teams are awesome and now we have a history of sending kids there we get our ex pupils to show them around. I may have stolen a lot of this from the school in London who now beat Eton for offers. If it works !

No disparagement about engineering by the way just a comparison with art history!

There are many, many schools with no ex pupils at Oxbridge at all. I tried the "showing round" bit and got nowhere. I do not think some people will ever want to talk to privately educated DC either. They are conditioned to think they are not like them and prefer to stay as they are. In their comfort zone It can work both ways.

Also, Cambridge and Oxford both offer engineering. Plenty of posh girls marry engineers!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Bristol_admissions_controversy

Curious could this happen again? A boycott from private schools?

The royals tend not to do STEM but it may help!

Well some Royals are not bright enough to do much at all.