Improving access isn’t discrimination, it’s redressing a balance

Amongst Cambridge’s student body, around 32% percent of students were privately educated, in a national context in which a mere 7% of UK pupils actually attend private school. As recently as 2017, more Etonians gained a place at the University than black male candidates.

If we keep these figures in mind, the executive director of HMC (the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference) Mike Buchanan’s recent claims that university plans to widen access might lead to discrimination against privately educated students ‘on the basis of the class they were born into’ don’t seem to add up. The very choice of words feels ironic and hardly accurate when applied to some of the country’s wealthiest and most privileged young people.

There is no doubt that class inequalities exist in this country, but it hardly seems right that private school pupils are the victims. HMC’s fear that the increasing emergence of initiatives from selective universities such as Cambridge and Oxford to widen access might ‘rob some students of a future to award it to others’, must surely represent a denial of the huge advantage these pupils have over their state-educated contemporaries.

‘Robbing’ privately educated students is never in question in access initiatives – nothing is taken away from these pupils; instead something is made up to those often left behind. Privately educated students are not pushed back towards the start line from the substantial head start they have been given; instead state-educated and disadvantaged students are being nudged forward. In the context of the race as a whole (to pursue a sporting metaphor), the gap between the two groups is reduced, and the outcome will be more representative of the talent of the individual participants, since the opportunities for any participant – regardless of background – to reach the finish line first have increased.

That is what the OfS and the findings of its ‘Transforming Opportunities in Higher Education’ report is really about: redressing a balance, levelling the playing field on a national scale, and acknowledging, as the HMC seems reluctant to do, the vast swathes of students who haven’t attended leading private schools, but who also deserve these same opportunities.

Bringing disadvantaged pupils upwards does not mean bringing private school pupils down – the balance of privilege is still skewed in the latter’s favour. The systemic chasm isn’t something that Mr Buchanan or the HMC are ignorant of. Mr Buchanan cites the impact of bursaries and scholarships offered at independent schools as integral in “getting disadvantaged students into university through offering free and discounted places”. Surely, this is an admission that one of the only vehicles for state-educated students to stand any chance of admission to selective universities is to have secured a rare and valuable spot at one of these private schools. Just as he raises concerns about independent schools being the victims of discrimination, he simultaneously acknowledges that they are one of the only hopes for disadvantaged pupils. Does this not constitute a recognition of how strongly the odds are stacked against these pupils when excluded from the fortunate private school bubble?

He goes on to say that “not all state-educated students are disadvantaged and the majority of students from affluent backgrounds are not educated in HMC schools” – yet the statistics don’t quite match this. The Guardian claims that young people from advantaged areas of England are more than six times as likely to attend selective universities, as those from disadvantaged areas. Professor Kalwant Bhopal agrees: ‘It is clear that those students who attend independent fee-paying schools are more likely to be white and middle-class and are more likely to go on to hold top high-earning jobs. These schools continue to perpetuate privilege.’

There are certainly discrepancies, inconsistencies and flaws in university admissions systems and access initiatives – not least the vast intake of relatively privileged grammar school pupils who account for much of the state school students in admissions statistics and further obscure the reality of disadvantaged access. Despite this, the roles of independent schools are blindingly obvious. There is class-based discrimination in university admission processes and private school pupils are certainly not the victims.

OfS' plans to widen access to selective universities represent a desire to reproduce in universities the real national picture. Improving access opportunities will not deprive independently educated pupils; instead, they will merely have more informed, more involved, and more enfranchised competition to challenge their monopoly on places at selective universities – and it will certainly still be a while before “discrimination based on class” can be words that come close to characterising privately educated students.

Featured image: DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0