State-school students perform better at university

New research has revealed that university students from a state-school background get better degrees than private-school pupils with the same A-levels.

The results support universities in discriminating in favour of state-school applicants. Many run schemes where students from poorer backgrounds will be given a place over a similarly qualified private-school applicant.

The study was run by the government’s university funding body. It looked at 132,000 students over a three-year period.

At the most extreme, students with three As who were from a state school were eight per cent more likely to graduate with a 2:1 or First than their private-school counterparts.

David Willets, the higher education secretary, has said this supports universities in looking at an applicant’s potential rather than purely their achieved grades.

The Office of Fair Access has repeatedly criticised leading universities for admitting too few state school pupils.

88.5 percent of students in English universities studied at state schools yet at Oxford in 2011-2012, only 57.7 per cent came from state school. Cambridge, St. Andrews, Durham and Bristol also had low percentages of state-school entrants.

However Chris Ramsey, spokesman for the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference of leading independent schools and headmaster of The King’s School in Chester, disagreed with the statistical findings.

Mr Ramsey argued: “Efforts to improve access should be concentrated not on trying to find reasons for differentiating schooling, but on raising aspiration and attainment among all students, especially those whose aspirations are currently lower.”

Josh Abey, a first-year PPE student who attended state school before Warwick, said: “I think the main thing is that state school kids are often more used to being confronted with relative barriers to their learning – disruptive classes, less individual attention given.

“When they get to university, they’re used to overcoming things that private school children might never have had to deal with in order to succeed educationally.”