no the guardian...
"Last week, I had the chance to put this question to the deputy head
of a top private school. “By all means do further maths, but only if you
are guaranteed to get an A,” came the answer, as if it were a
no-brainer. It was advice born out of years of practical knowledge.
Other opinions are available of course – and that’s the problem. This
year, a quarter of a million 16-year-olds will make their A-level
choices relying on hearsay, myth and information that is outdated or
uncheckable. Those choices will shape their options when it comes to
university – and the courses they apply for will then shape their
chances of getting in.
There is, in short, massive asymmetry of information in the post-16
education system and the critical determinant is class. Kids at private
school can rely on schools that have continual informal contact with
elite universities. The result is that – for all the hard work being
done by outreach teams in Russell Group universities,
and by access teams in state schools – there’s an inbuilt advantage
among those going to private schools based on informal knowledge.
Last year’s results for further maths demonstrate the problem. In
English state schools, further education and sixth-form colleges, about
11,100 young people sat the exam; in the private sector, which accounts
for just 7% of the school population, 3,600 sat it. And private school
results were better, with 69% getting A or A* versus 54% in state
schools.
Government tables
show that this achievement gap is even more pronounced for ordinary
maths and the three main science subjects. There are numerous private
websites that offer A-level advice, and anecdotally social media are
abuzz with the wisdom of teenage crowds over course and subject choices.
But why isn’t there a central repository of information that would
turn all this folkore into a level playing field of checkable knowledge?
Why isn’t there a single, open-source database that models all specific
pathways into higher education? Without it, state school students will
always find it hard to win the inside-knowledge game.
At my old university, Sheffield, they told me that you need maths and
physics as part of three A grades to study aerospace engineering.
That’s in line with the Russell Group’s guide, which also tells you to add design/technology, computer science or further maths.
The admissions tutor of an Oxbridge college, however, tells me: “I
think here they’d be worried about no further maths, especially if it
was offered at school but they didn’t take it, though I do worry that we
send out mixed messages about this.”
The knowledge asymmetries deepen once you realise that elite universities require additional, bespoke tests. Cambridge University’s website reveals that if you want to do engineering at Christ’s, Peterhouse or St John’s you might need to take an extra exam called Step.
In a cantankerous, unsigned diatribe,
the Step chief examiner for 2014 complains that only 3.8% of applicants
scored top marks. The majority were not prepared for the kind of
thinking they had to do. “Curve-sketching skills were weak,” the
examiner noted, together with “an unwillingness to be imaginative and
creative, allied with a lack of thoroughness and attention to detail”.
I will wager that the people who scored top marks knew that their
curves had to look like Leonardo da Vinci’s and that they had to
demonstrate imagination and creativity – because their teachers had long
experience of this exam, and the others had not. One Oxbridge
admissions tutor admitted to me that such testing may add a further
barrier to people from state schools.
Suppose Matt wants to go to Oxbridge more than he wants to be an
aerospace engineer? Here the advice is – for those in the know – really
clear. Don’t apply for the most popular courses, where there can be 12
people for every place. Work out the college and subject combinations
that reduce the odds to just three or four to one.
Oxford’s website shows
the success ratio for getting on to its popular engineering and
economic management course is just 10%, while the success rate of
applications for materials science is 42%. A senior administrator at
Oxford told me that they suspected few state school teachers really
understand this game of playing the ratios. State-school students and
people from ethnic minorities crowd each other out by going for the
same, obvious, high-ratio and vocational courses.
Why should this matter to the majority of young people, who do not
aspire to go to an elite university? And to the rest of society? First,
because it is creating needless inequality of opportunity and is just
the most obvious example of how poor access to informal knowledge
penalises state school kids. Second, because in an economy set to be
dominated by information and technology, those 15,000 people who can
attempt further maths each year are the equivalent of Aztec gold for the
conquistadores. Their intelligence will be the raw material of the
third industrial revolution.
There is no reason – other than maintaining privilege – to avoid
presenting subject and course choices clearly, logically and
transparently. When the system fails bright kids from non-privileged
backgrounds, we all lose."
aqui.
