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Schools to link with universities
News Article Published:
Wednesday, 10 October 2007 Category:
Government policies
The government is set to announce a scheme to partner every secondary school in the UK with a university, the BBC has reported.
The plans aim to increase the number of pupils from low-income families who enter higher education, and ultimately move onto the graduate recruitment market.
While the scheme initially aims to encourage children from poorer families to stay on and take their A-levels, this will result in a change to the social make-up of those both attending and graduating from university.
Speaking last month, universities secretary John Denham said: "No-one could seriously argue that the current social bias across higher education and in individual institutions - including some of the most sought after - reflects a system that reaches all of our most talented young people."
Government statistics, reported by the BBC, have indicated that Oxford University admitted 53.7 per cent of its students from state schools in 2005-2006, while the proportion at Cambridge University was 57.9 per cent.
However, plans announced by the University and Colleges Admissions Service to provide a more in-depth analysis of the social background of the graduates of tomorrow as part of the university application process have previously been met with controversy.