Painful Admissions

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Painful Admissions

Published on: 11/02/2016

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John Stevenson

Our guide said we could call him Eric although his full name was Eirikur and (continuing on from the languages theme of last month) he was fluent in English, Danish, Swedish and his native Icelandic. He is a history graduate and is also claims to be learning a simplified version of Chinese. Eric is a young man sporting an impressive beard (I always knew they would come back into fashion!) who is co-owner of ‘CityWalk’, a company specialising in providing walking tours for tourists in Reykjavik. His tour was great by the way, as was Reykjavik and the bits of Iceland that we saw.

As part of the tour we walked through a local High School (tourists are not encouraged to do that in Northern Ireland) and he talked a bit about the Icelandic education system. Children go to Primary School from age 6 to 12, then High School to age 16 and finally Senior High from 16 to 20. Something like 90% of the population go to university, of which Iceland seems to have four. With a population of some 330,000 this seemed a bit excessive to me and Eric conceded that Icelanders have a tendency to be ‘over-educated’.

Now, I do not know how the admissions procedures for Icelandic universities work but in the UK, as you will probably recall, A level grades feature prominently in the Ucas procedure. Or rather, the teachers’ predictions of A level grades allow university admissions to make offers based on the candidates achieving those specified grades. Notwithstanding the significance of the dreaded personal statement and the school’s confidential reference, we all know that it is the grades that really count. Or maybe I should say the grade predictions.

BBC News education reporter Hannah Richardson on the BBC news website writes that teachers are bumping up students’ predicted A-level grades to help them win places at top universities. In fact the Ucas boss, Mary Curnock Cook, has confirmed that this is indeed happening and points out that universities are now having to accept more candidates who fail to gain their predicted grades as a result. Last year, more than half of students (52%) accepted onto degree courses had missed their results by two or more grades. Some teachers had told Ucas that they were ‘over-predicting’ sixth-formers results in a bid to secure initial offers from universities.

Ucas figures seem to support this and show that between 2010 and 2015 the proportion of students predicted to score at least two A grades and a B at A-level has risen from 54% to 63%. As these inflated predictions are not borne out by the actual results, universities are forced to drop the entry requirements to fill their places. University funding is partly based on student numbers and as there is no cap on degree place numbers at English universities they are in competition with each other for freshers. Therefore, if you have a son or daughter applying to an English university this year or next you may be interested to know that institutions are currently being forced to being ‘more flexible with their entry grades’.

To add a further layer of complexity onto this already convoluted system, we also have to be aware that in England they have moved to linear A-levels and scrapped AS levels as a half-way marker. In other words, schools and universities used to be able to look at AS results as a more robust indicator of eventual A-level performance, to be considered alongside teacher predictions. For Northern Ireland i.e. CCEA A-levels, this is still the case. So Northern Ireland sixth formers applying to English universities with CCEA AS levels already accredited to them are in a different position from their English counterparts whose Ucas applications will contain only the potentially inflated predicted grades of their subject teachers. It is surely harder for a Northern Ireland teacher to consciously or sub-consciously over-inflate A-level predictions when there is the actual AS level grade to compare it to? Does this mean that NI applicants are potentially at a disadvantage in the university entrance stakes?

However, when we come to look at admissions to the very top universities the situation is different again. The Guardian of 2 February this year reported that Cambridge University is set to follow Oxford in setting its own written admission tests for all applicants, beginning for those seeking admission from 2017.This is seen as a response to the ‘de-coupling’ of AS levels from A-level and the removal of a key piece of objective performance data from the admissions process. This adds to the growing collection of additional tests and exams that candidates potentially face before getting to uni. Remember, it is necessary to sit and pass UKCAT (UK Clinical Aptitude Test) before being accepted into the majority of UK schools of medicine and the Biomedical Admission Test (BMAT) is necessary for Veterinary and some other courses. So A-levels, with or without AS, are not the only hurdles prospective undergraduates have to clear to get to university.

Prof Michael Arthur, provost and president of University College London says his institution’s standard offer is one A* grade and two or three A grades but that last year they did drop down one grade for about 9% of the students who were eventually admitted. Maybe I should contact him and point out that I got into UCL to study zoology in 1970 with an offer of three Es?
Is that what we call progress, I wonder?

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Disclaimer The information in this article is provided as part of Legal Island's Employment Law Hub. We regret we are not able to respond to requests for specific legal or HR queries and recommend that professional advice is obtained before relying on information supplied anywhere within this article. This article is correct at 11/02/2016