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Labour Owns Up to Social Engineering in Universities

Posted on: Wednesday, 5 October 2005, 18:00 CDT

By SARAH HARRIS

LABOUR admitted for the first time yesterday that it plans 'social engineering' in universities to hand more places to state school pupils.

Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell sparked a furious response from private school headmasters who say their pupils will be left at a disadvantage.

Mr Rammell's admission came as he defended a proposed shake-up of the university admissions system that would favour students from poorer backgrounds.

He said: 'If social engineering means putting right existing unfairness within the system, then I plead guilty.' It was the first time that a member of the Government has admitted there are plans to deliberately manipulate student intake.

Ministers have previously tried to allay independent schools' fears by claiming that they would never interfere in university admissions.

The turnaround comes as Labour has been embarrassed by a slump in the number of state school pupils attending university.

Independent school leaders yesterday accused ministers of caring more about 'social engineering than academic excellence' and attempting to paper over the failings of the state sector.

Dr Anthony Seldon, headmaster of Brighton College and Tony Blair's unofficial biographer said: 'We're being denigrated, we're being marginalised, we're being socially engineered against, not because we aren't successful because we are successful.' He added: 'The way to address the issue is not to tamper and engineer but to actually ensure that children from state schools are able to compete fairly with people from independent schools by fulfilling their potential.'

Mr Rammell's remarks came as he promoted a television campaign highlighting new support arrangements for students once Pounds 3,000a-year tuition fees come into force next year.

He revealed more about plans under consultation for teenagers to apply to university after they receive their A-level results.

At present, students make applications based on the A-level grades their teachers predict they will achieve.

Half of all predicted A-level grades turn out to be incorrect and students from poor backgrounds are more likely than their wealthier peers to have their results underpredicted by teachers, said Mr Rammell.

A second option would see universities making some offers before A-levels and holding back a proportion of their places until after results for candidates who did better than predicted. This option has attracted the most concern from independent schools because headteachers fear that their pupils will be discriminated against as places are reserved for state school students.

Mr Rammell said: 'You have a problem with the existing system in that only 45 per cent of predicted grades are accurate and the students for whom they are most inaccurate are students from the poorest backgrounds.

'That is the unfairness that this is trying to rectify.' Pressure from the Government has already led to many universities using a range of methods to 'socially engineer' their intakes.

These include making lower A-level offers to students from schools with a poor history of results. Two years ago, public schools declared a boycott of Bristol University, claiming it was discriminating against their pupils through crude social engineering.

David Vanstone, chairman of the Independent Schools Association, labelled Mr Rammell's approach as 'uncooperative' and ' worrying'.

He said: 'When he says he pleads guilty to social engineering, I think that proves the point that our concerns are well founded.

'It is worrying that it focuses on dogma rather than fairness to individuals.' Independent Schools Council General Secretary Jonathan Shephard added: 'If you have some people applying on one basis and some on another basis, with the best intentions, it is going to bring in different inequalities into the system.' s.harris@dailymail.co.uk

The pupils 'held back by praise'

BRIGHT children in primary schools are being let down by teachers who keep telling them how clever they are, Ofsted warned yesterday.

English in particular is suffering as youngsters are showered with ' indiscriminate praise' instead of being told how to improve.

A report by the education watchdog goes on to say that teaching is either poor or only just up to scratch in a third of primary school lessons.

As many as one in three 11-year-olds are leaving thousands of primaries still unable to read properly due to poor teaching, and Ofsted inspectors have called for urgent action.

In a major study of English teaching in primary and secondary schools in England, Ofsted warns that the rate of improvement has slowed compared to other subjects.

It is still 'no better than satisfactory' in three out of ten lessons in primary school. The amount of 'unsatisfactory' teaching remains low but has not changed significantly since 2000.

The report says: 'This is unlikely to raise pupils' standards significantly, particularly for those who enter school with low levels of literacy.'

Inspectors criticise teachers' use of marking, saying that too few primary and secondary schools have a clear policy on correcting errors in work.

Some teachers 'identify all mistakes, some almost none, and it is rarely clear to pupils how they should respond.

'In these circumstances, pupils do not follow up the corrections in their subsequent work.' This lack of consistency, particularly at primary school, means that 'marking sometimes fails to tell pupils how they can get better and tends towards in discriminate praise,' says Ofsted.

Source: Daily Mail; London (UK)

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