This morning I attended a fascinating keynote presentation about economic inequalities in education from Prof Karen Rawlingson, Professor of Social Policy, at the University of Birmingham Higher Education Futures Institute (HEFi) annual conference. As the College of Medical & Dental Sciences lead for Outreach & Widening Participation I am often asked to comment on participation gap statistics in relation to our undergraduate population and our work attempting to widen access, so I am very aware of the mountain we have to climb. However, hearing so many measures of inequality in the space of just a few minutes was a stark reminder that to ensure there is equality of opportunity for all, the participation gap cannot be tackled by the HE sector in isolation and will require different and new ways of accessing and delivering education post-18.
Sadly, there are 4.1 million children living in poverty in the UK, with this number increasing by 0.5 million since 2011 (I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about this). This translates to 9 children in an average classroom of 30 pupils and has a massive impact on attainment – by the end of primary school, pupils in receipt of free school meals are three terms behind their peers and this gap widens to five terms by the age of 14. Young people from low income families are 30% less likely to study for A-levels and this is reflected in the participation gap in higher education; only 18.6% of students from the most disadvantaged post code areas (POLAR 4 Quintile 1) progress to university compared to 64.4% of young people from the most advantaged areas (POLAR 4 Q5). Indeed in the College of Medical & Dental Sciences we have 5.2 times more students from POLAR Q5 compared to Q1 (6.4:1 for the whole University), despite the massive progress we’ve made in WP in the last 5 years.
Given the academic attainment gap and that the NHS has a strong focus on values-based recruitment (skills and aptitudes not recognised in GCSE and A-level grades), it raises the question of whether, if we are really serious about eliminating the participation gap and training a truly representative healthcare progression, should we be using attained academic grades for admission to healthcare degrees at all?
