Durham makes pitiful progress in intake of disadvantaged students

New research from the Social Market Foundation has revealed that Durham University is one of the worst performing institutions for the admission of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The report found Durham made an improvement of less than 0.5% in its intake of disadvantaged students between the 2009/10 and 2014/15 admission.

University of Cambridge, LSE, Imperial College London and University of Bristol also fell into the same category as Durham, while University of Lancaster and City University reduced the proportion of disadvantaged students within their overall intake.

These universities are on track to miss the target set by the government to double the participation of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The government also proposed a target of increasing the number of students from BME backgrounds by 20 per-cent by the year 2020 but based on the current trends, the widening participation will not be achieved.

This hardly comes as a surprise for Durham, with students from private schools, making up nearly 50 per-cent of Hatfield’s population and 39 per-cent of Collingwood and Hild Bede.

University Alliance Chief Executive Maddalaine Ansell said: “More needs to be done right across the sector to identify potential and talent wherever it exists, so that intakes reflect the whole community. A helpful first step would be for institutions to collaborate in shifting the focus away from just recruitment to genuine outreach.”

When asked to comment of the figures the university told The Tab:

“In our view the ACORN classification of postcode  is a more precise indicator of disadvantage and we’ve agreed with the Office for Fair Access to use this as a second standard of postcode measurement along with POLAR3.

“In the ACORN indicator our performance with regard to the proportion of young university entrants from ACORN postcodes 4 and 5 improved by 1.8 percentage points between 2009/10 and 2014/15.

The university were also asked what they do to increase participation from disadvantaged backgrounds, they told The Tab:

“Durham University recruits the most able and most motivated students irrespective of their background.

“Durham University has announced a total financial package of £10.1 million for 2016-17 to help students meet upfront costs and to deliver access,student success and progression activities. The package forms part of Durham University’s latest Access Agreement approved by the Office for Fair Access (OFFA).

“We consider nine aspects of an application in making a qualitative judgement, including information about a candidate’s broad educational context.

“We monitor closely the diversity of our student body and the fairness of our admissions process to ensure that barriers do not exist for applicants of any type regardless of social, ethnic, educational or economic background. We are committed to ensuring that our admissions process is robust, fair and transparent.

“Durham University seeks to recruit a diverse and highly qualified student body by providing:

• the Supported Progression scheme for talented students studying in the North-East, Cumbria and West Yorkshire who have the potential to study at a university like Durham and who will benefit from additional help and support to reach their full potential
• dissemination of financial information (e.g. loans, grants and bursaries) to applicants and prospective applicants,
• residential summer schools, including three delivered in conjunction with the Sutton Trust,
• school and college visits,
• the expanded Foundation Centre programme, offering a direct progression route into Durham degrees for LPN (Low Participation Neighbourhoods), mature, and non-traditionally qualified students,
• information, conferences and events for teachers and advisers who support higher education progression,
• a variety of opportunities to visit the University including open days and campus tours,
• the use of contextual information to inform admissions decision-making (contextual information includes the average GCSE performance of an applicant’s school or college where they took their GCSEs and the socio-economic classification of their home neighbourhood – for more information, see here).”