Turn The Page

Great discussion has followed Blair’s 50% in University ideal he laid out back in 2002. The worryingly large amount of students in University is increasing year on year. Last year there was a 7.8% rise in university applications, and in 2009 the number of applications has exceeded a 10% rise on the last academic year. The Times today has revealed the Sutton Trust’s plans to preferentiate those from working class, and “disadvantaged” backgrounds. It is in itself a policy I disagree with; University places should be offered on the basis of academic excellence, and not social classing - gauranteeing places to those who “meet A-Level requirements” of various Universities, is putting the middle classes at risk, who are equally as intelligent, and indeed many pupils may exceed and not simply meet the requirements, and yet under the new scheme will lose out because of their ‘advantaged’ background.

The scheme is as unfair, and  arguably to those ‘disadvantaged’ families its more fair than alternatives, if for example, there were to be preferential treatment to the middle classes, then there’d be uproar. Furthermore this scheme aims to offer and gaurantee these places to students as young as fifteen, while I don’t have statistics on the issue, I know personally a lot changes between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, not only academically, but with all aspects of life that correlate with academia; how could a marker be placed on a student that early, so as to be deemed fit for University?

The most interesting part of the article however lies in the following paragraph:

However, the Government has capped the number of additional available places, restricting them to an extra 10,000 only because of a lack of funding. An estimated 50,000 able applicants could miss out on places this year.

Extra places have been restricted this year to an extra 10,000? This has been everso sneakily unmentioned by the government; most probably because its yet another truly dead New Labour ideal. While some New Labour policies met to my agreement, this is one that certainly didn’t. The chances of 50% of eighteen-year-olds reaching University, is looking less likely, and this can only be a good thing.