UK University Private School "Discrimination"

The debate over whether state or private school students suffer discrimination and unfairness over access to British universities raised its head again this week, with a Telegraph report that more than three-quarters of applications made by pupils from Britain’s best independent schools last year resulted in the offer a place.

The debate in the United Kingdom is not a new one. Private schools, which are often academically selective, have access to significantly greater funding and therefore resources, a psychographic (that is children tuned into learning), plus ambitious and interested parents, churn out academically successful students.

Students of the same raw intellect in state schools, with arguably greater distractions, and who do not enjoy the same resources, tend not to perform as well.

The 'imbalance in opportunity' has led to the introduction of targets designed to level the playing field and to force top universities to take in more pupils from “under-represented” groups.

In other words, entry into universities in the United Kingdom is not meritocratic in a pure academic sense, but has to be balanced with an awareness of how that success, or lesser success, was achieved.

Private schools - and their students - naturally see this as a form of discrimination: Speaking to the Telegraph Anthony Seldon, the Master of Wellington College, Berkshire, warned that privately-educated pupils were being "discriminated against at the final hurdle" when they make university applications.

However the latest figures suggest that more pupils from Britain’s leading independent schools are actually winning more higher education places despite controls. Perhaps most tellingly almost four-in-10 applications to Cambridge and three-in-10 to Oxford - for many the ultimate university destination - resulted in an offer, figures show. 

Figures show that 95 per cent of private school applications to Exeter resulted in an offer, while numbers were between 80 and 90 per cent at other Russell Group universities such as Leeds, Nottingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham and Southampton.

In all, 97.3 per cent of pupils gained at least one offer – up from 96.9 per cent a year earlier.

More here.

It's not clear how these control affect applications from UAE based students. The belief that foreign based students who pay higher fees are more likely to be awarded a place at a UK university, is often dismissed by university admission boards - although politically, that would just be good PR. The British public would not like the idea of places being given to foreign students at the expense of UK students...