University admissions: best pupils 'losing out'

Some admissions chiefs like to get a range of abilities and skills on their courses and so make a range of offers.

Academically strong pupils with higher predicted grades may therefore have to get higher grades to secure a place, while those predicted lower grades may get lower offers if they can persuade admissions staff they have other qualities.

The problem is that the admissions systems vary considerably and are complicated, according to the report in the Times Educational Supplement.

A pupil predicted three top grades at A-level may be made an offer of AAA, whereas a candidate expected to achieve As and Bs may be offered AAB or ABB for the same course.

Roberta Georghiou, the head of Bury Grammar School for Girls in Greater Manchester and co-chairman of the Independent Schools’ Universities Committee, said: “The danger is that universities admit candidates who are unable to capitalise on the opportunity they have been offered, while others who meet the criteria are excluded.”

Pia Pollock, the admissions policy adviser at Manchester University, said: “Some of our academic schools use what we call a range of offers to ensure that they recruit and select the best students.” Lower offers were made to candidates unlikely to achieve the highest grades if they could convince staff that they had the potential to succeed, she added.

Details of the variation in admission systems were laid bare in a Freedom of Information Act request.

“Students and their teachers are being put in a difficult position by the complexity of the university admissions system and the lack of predictable patterns, with each university setting its own rules,” said Dr William Richardson, the general secretary of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference.

Tory students to send letter of apology to Barack Obama over effigy burning

Matthew Marshall, president of St Andrews Conservative and Unionist Association, said the incident on Friday evening on the town's East Sands beach was "undoubtedly stupid" and "deeply regretted".

Authorities at the university - where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge studied and first met - investigated but ruled that the action was not "intentionally racist".

Mr Marshall was summoned and made aware of the university's "very serious concerns". He said the society would write to Mr Obama to apologise.

Mr Marshall said: "The US and President Obama are important allies of the United Kingdom and, on behalf of the whole association, I apologise unreservedly.

"This is undoubtedly a stupid act and it is deeply regretted by all of us in the St Andrews Conservative Association. I will make sure this never happens again.

"I apologise further for any damage this has done to the reputation of the University of St Andrews, or the Scottish Conservative Party."

A university spokesman said: "We are satisfied that, while the actions of the St Andrews Conservative Association in burning an effigy of President Obama were naive and crassly insensitive, they were not intentionally racist.

"This incident, however, has caused very understandable offence and concern to many people, and the university deeply regrets this.

"The University of St Andrews holds a firm belief in the value of political debate and free expression but we expect our students to always treat others with respect.

"The burning of any figure in effigy is an act of violence and intolerance and has no place in our modern, international university.

"We have met the president of the Conservative Association to make him aware of the university's very serious concerns and he has been quick to make an unreserved public apology, and it is correct that he has done so.

"We welcome his assurance that this practice will not be repeated."

John Park, Labour MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, whose constituency includes the university said: "This is gravely offensive and way beyond a student prank."

He urged David Cameron and the Conservative Party to take action against the activists responsible.

"Burning an effigy of anyone is offensive, let alone the first black President of the United States. The overtones are deeply unpleasant."

Unions want to wreck economic recovery and bring misery to public, says Michael Gove

He said at least 90 per cent of schools would be closed on Wednesday as part of the biggest day of strike action in more than 30 years, over public sector pensions.

And he made a last-ditch appeal to teachers to ''pause and reflect'' before joining the mass walkouts, insisting they were being offered a ''good deal'' by the Government.

In an outspoken intervention in the bitter dispute, he said it was ''unfair and unrealistic'' to expect taxpayers to foot the increasing bill for pensions.

''On Wednesday, TUC leaders will call on their members to bring Britain to a halt.

''Among those union leaders are people who fight hard for their members and whom I respect. But there are also hardliners - militants itching for a fight.

''They want families to be inconvenienced. They want mothers to give up a day's work, or pay for expensive childcare, because schools will be closed.

''They want teachers and other public sector workers to lose a day's pay in the run-up to Christmas.

''They want scenes of industrial strife on our TV screens, they want to make economic recovery harder, they want to provide a platform for confrontation just when we all need to pull together.''

Mr Gove spoke of his own experience as a journalist involved in a strike called by union leaders to ''prove a point''.

''I lost my job. So did more than 100 others. I was lucky - young, unmarried, without a mortgage. I got another job soon enough.

''Many others didn't. They never worked again in the profession they loved. And the deal we were offered before the strike never improved.

''So today I want to appeal directly to teachers - and other public sector workers - please, even now, think again.''

The Education Secretary said it was a ''myth'' that he wanted to force every teacher to stay in the classroom until they were 68.

Universities to pay cash incentives to attract students

At City University London, scholarships of ￡3,000 will be paid to AAB plus students in each year of a three or four year degree, subject to them passing their university exams. ?Photo: ALAMY

Institutions across the country, including City University London, and Leicester, Surrey and Northumbria universities, are introducing payments to attract candidates with the best exam grades.

The non-means tested academic rewards are in response to new Government rules which allow universities to take unlimited numbers of sixth formers gaining at least two As and a B at A-level - known as AAB+ students.

With the new freedom to recruit more high-achieving students, less prestigious institutions fear that good quality applicants will increasingly be poached by higher ranking universities.

In the first signs of a "scholarship arms race", universities are now vying to give the best deals to 2012 students, the first to face tuition fees of up to ￡9,000 a year.

At City University London, scholarships of ￡3,000 will be paid to AAB plus students in each year of a three or four year degree, subject to them passing their university exams.

Surrey University is offering ￡2,000 to candidates who achieve three A grades who select the university as their firm choice, while Northumbria is offering ￡1,000 a year to AAB+ students.

Leicester, which is ranked in the top 20 of UK institutions, is offering ￡2,000 awards each year over three years for students gaining three A grades.

Departmental scholarships of ￡1,250, paid towards tuition fees, will also be given to students who meet specific course requirements.

Universities with the highest proportion of students with at least AAB at A-level include Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, London School of Economics, Durham, Bristol, University College London, Warwick, Exeter and Bath.

Many in the list also have the lowest proportions of pupils from state schools and deprived backgrounds.

But institutions in the "squeezed middle" of the league tables are most likely to feel forced to compete financially for students, according to the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi).

"They are vulnerable to losing some of their AAB+ students to more selective, more prestigious, institutions," said Bahram Bekhradnia, Hepi director.

"At the same time they are competing with their peers to hold onto their existing and to recruit additional AAB+ students.

"This is likely to give rise to an arms race of 'merit-based' scholarships – if one university offers them others will be obliged to do so."

Critics of the AAB policy said universities were "fighting over" applicants by offering cash incentives to students who already tended to be from more advantaged backgrounds.

Claire Callender, professor of higher education policy at Birkbeck College, London, said: "All the research from the US which has a long history of scholarships which are purely merit-based shows that they are to the advantage of middle and upper class white students who are the ones who predominantly achieve the necessary test scores."

A spokesman for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, said: "Our reforms free up places at the institutions where students wish to study.

"We have made sure that under new access rules, more support is going to people from disadvantaged backgrounds and they are treated fairly.

"Beyond this, universities are free to use their own resources in any way they choose in order to attract new students."

Universities with the most playing field space

Leeds University tops the list for the university with the most amount of playing field space thanks to its 51 hectares, which roughly amounts to the size of 50 international size rugby pitches.

The information shown is from the academic year 2009/10 and comes courtesy of the Estates Management Statistics, published by HESA.

Pupils 'woefully undernourished' in history, Gove says

Teacher training courses will be reformed to put more focus on behaviour management and reading?Photo: ALAMY

In a speech today, he says he is "startled" by the narrowness of the topics pupils end up studying in history.

English exam boards only offer pupils the chance to study the "modern world" or the "schools history project", he claims.

"I'm an unashamed and unapologetic advocate for the central role of history in our curriculum," Mr Gove says.

"Which is why I'm genuinely worried that - despite the best efforts of brilliant history teachers, gifted academics and the television and publishing executives who've helped to popularise history - our curriculum and examinations system mean that children thirsting to know more about our past leave school woefully undernourished."

He cites a recent survey which found around half of English 18-to-24-year-olds are unaware that Nelson led the British to victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, and a similar proportion of young people did not know that the Romans built Hadrian's Wall.

Mr Gove said: "The number of pupils taking history GCSE has fallen by 8% since 1995. There's a stark class divide, with fewer than a third of 16-year-olds taking the subject in maintained schools, compared with half in independent schools.

"But more startling than the numbers of pupils opting - or failing to opt for - history GCSE is the narrowness of the topics pupils actually end up studying. The Government doesn't specify which periods of history GCSE should cover, but the English exam boards only offer two choices: either the 'Modern World,' or the 'Schools History Project'."

Academic condemns 'tortuous' university admissions

The university admissions process is "needlessly torturous", said Professor Mary Beard.?Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Mary Beard, the Cambridge University classics professor, said the admissions system employed in Britain was “more difficult and stressful than it should be”.

She also condemned the “shameless self-marketing” candidates committed on their application forms, suggesting many personal statements were copied from the internet.

In further comments, the academic rejected criticism of the notoriously tough Oxbridge admissions process, saying that common attacks on the system by politicians of all parties were misguided.

The comments were made after the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service proposed a sweeping overhaul of the current system.

They are planning to allow students to apply for places after receiving their results for the first time in a move that would lead to A-levels being brought forward and candidates choosing courses over the summer.

Writing for the BBC News website on Sunday, Prof Beard said that the changes would involve “more upheavals than you can imagine” but insisted it could take the “unnecessary heat out of the whole process”.

“The whole business of university applications in this country, for any university, is needlessly tortuous,” she said.

“The end result might be OK - happily many kids get where they want to go.

“But the route they have to take is more difficult and stressful than it should be.

“It relies on ridiculously minute distinctions between exam grades, it demands shameless self-marketing from the students on their application forms, and it operates according to a timetable that any outside observer would say was plain bonkers.”

Prof Beard, classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement and presenter of the recent documentary series Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town, said many universities now relied on students’ A-level grades and their personal statement – instead of an interview – to select candidates.

But she insisted: “Today's statements are much less concerned with good works, and are often uncomfortably corporate in style - weaving together clever quotations from Shakespeare and Aristotle with carefully constructed personal anecdotes, to create an implausibly perfect impression.

“They're so professional that they have to be put through "plagiarism detection" software - which apparently many fail.”

Currently, students are supposed to apply to Oxbridge by October – around a year before courses start – and to other universities in January. Candidates are then given provisional offers based on the proviso that they gain predicted exam grades the following summer.

Those who fail to score high enough in A-levels and other qualifications are eligible for “clearing” – the system that matches students to spare places.

But writing on BBC online, Prof Beard said: “More than anything, it is the bizarre timetable that makes the application process so preoccupying.

“When we say in January or February that someone ‘got in’ to their chosen university, we don't actually mean that. We mean that they will have got in if they achieve the grades demanded by the university in their summer exam, which even if all goes well, drags out the nail biting for a good six months.”

She added: “If it doesn't go well and they don't get the grades, they enter a whole new round of applications in August.

“This is a frenetic process, with applicants tracking down the remaining unfilled places by email and phone - then being given maybe a few hours to accept a place for a course they haven't really explored at a university they know little about.”