Recently the Sutton Trust published an analysis of the relative successes different schools had in getting students into different universities: Oxbridge, the broader cohort of ‘top’ universities referred to as the Sutton 30, and universities overall. One of the schools identified in the group that sent the largest numbers of students to Oxbridge – indeed the only state school named in the headline story – was one of my local Cambridge schools, Hills Road 6th Form College. This school is huge, with an intake of around 1000 pupils a year, and certainly will have a large number of Cambridge academics amongst its parents. Over the years it has had a formidable reputation (such as topping the national A level league table for state schools for several years in succession) so it must be doing something right, even its intake may not be entirely typical of the country as a whole. Undoubtedly some of that lies in its ability and willingness to do mock interviews for Oxbridge and provide wise advice as students start to think about filling in their UCAS forms. Other issues also come into play including the fact that as local children choose which of the 6th form colleges to apply for, they know full well that Hills Road has high expectations and is – in the words of some – a sausage machine for turning out high A level grades. Some children are clued up enough about themselves to know that that is not for them, so there is a degree of self-selection going on, as well as any selection the Hills Road school itself may impose in its admissions policy.
The Guardian followed the Sutton Trust’s report up with an article discussing how schools with comparable exam results can differ very substantially in their success rates in getting students into the Sutton 30 universities, proving ability pure and simple is not the whole story. In large part this comes down to what the schools are able to do in getting requisite information out to the students from an early age. IAG – that is Information, Advice and Guidance – is about to go through an overhaul. We can only hope that this improves the information getting out there, because very clearly a large number of kids are getting woefully inadequate information. Students apply for courses for which their qualifications aren’t appropriate; The Royal Society’s education report State of the Nation 4 highlighted the relatively low numbers of students in England doing more than a single science A level – thereby disqualifying them from many if not the majority of traditional science courses. Furthermore students in surprisingly high numbers accept a university insurance offer requiring equal (or even more astonishingly, higher) grades than their first choice. One has to wonder how schools neglect to put across successfully the basic fact of how an insurance choice works. IAG is also about careers’ advice, but with only a tiny proportion of those providing the advice having a science background themselves it is not surprising the information they are able to provide may not always be optimum when it comes to either careers or university courses in science. Appropriate advice needs to start filtering through well before kids start making decisions about GCSE choices, let alone A levels, or they may well find themselves disbarred from what they want to do by accident. Simon Hughes recognizes this in his recent report to Government, recommending careers’ advice should start before children leave primary school, encouraging children to have aspirations which should (where appropriate and regardless of parental background) include thinking about the possibility of university.
In this same report, rather bizarrely and with very little justification or explanation, Hughes suggests the Oxbridge interview, at least in its current form, should be scrapped. But the need to learn how to put yourself across well at interview extends well beyond Oxbridge admissions. Getting a grip on this is something schools can usefully pass on through mock interviews, as Hills Road does, but it is of importance at every stage of life. We all get thrust into situations – for job (or fellowship) interviews but also when simply making a presentation to a committee or taking part in a discussion – when having clear ideas about how to assemble and marshall arguments coupled with the ability to think quickly on your feet in response to questions and defend yourself against unexpected attacks are vital, as is having the right body language. Some skills can be taught in this direction. At the most basic level this might amount to no more than making eye contact and speaking clearly – as proposed by the Fairy Jobmother in one of the ubiquitous reality TV shows, this time about working with the long term unemployed. But for many just having these basic skills drawn to their attention can be an eye-opener.
Not painting yourself into a corner is another skill about which students should be advised. For instance, in many situations an interviewer will try to start things off by throwing out an easy, open-ended question to get the conversation going. As an example, I have asked students (in college admission interviews) to tell me what they think the most important discovery in physics in the last 50 years has been, the idea being to allow them to start them talking comfortably about something that interests them. I really don’t care what answer they give me, there is no ‘right’ answer. I merely want to determine their interests, their ability to string a coherent story together and see how they weave science into their lives beyond the curriculum. One year a student answered ‘electron microscopy’ which, as an electron microscopist myself, pleased and intrigued me. ‘OK, tell me some more’ I said, ‘tell me what’s so important and how it works’. ‘Err, I dunno’ came back the answer. Black mark. That student had taken a very friendly piece of rope and hung themselves with it. Although no school could be expected to prepare students for specific questions of this type, they could be expected to say that there will be general questions posed, when the important thing is to be able to talk fluently about a topic they will be given some choice in, and never to answer an open question with something that they can’t follow up on.
In order to increase social mobility, as this government purports to want, in terms of who gets to go to (which) university, some serious thought should be given to how information, advice and guidance operates in schools and it is good to see Hughes identifying this as vital. This means not just the provision of bumf highlighting the availability of modern apprentices (and given recent reports about work experience placements, I would guess those recommendations will be along the lines of hairdressing for girls and building trades for boys), or weighty tomes about narrowly defined career options lacking a map of the trajectory required to get there. I’d like to think that the Hughes’ report will quickly stimulate some serious thought about what information is most usefully provided and when. But training in practical skills as well as voluminous paperwork are needed: concrete advice, serious one-on-one discussion about requisite qualifications at an early stage and mock interviews and role plays to confer basic skills and confidence. Limits on social mobility cannot simply be laid at the door of universities.
Social mobility begins at home: a vast subject that you don’t discuss, as it would invite a post as long as a book chapter. Closer to topic is something I call ‘poverty of expectation’ on the part of teachers. They don’t expect their students to aim high, thus denying them opportunities they might take. It’s partly a symptom of league-table-itis – schools won’t want pupils to take risks with exams they might fail – but it’s also a feature of the patronage of middle-class, guardian-reading teachers of working-class pupils. It’s so easy to see here in Cromer, very much a deprived community with many social problems, but of course out of the metropolitan (and definitely the Oxbridge) orbit.
I totally agree with you about poverty of expectation. That is to some extent why starting talking about universities so early is important, since the understanding that this is something worth aiming at, aspiring to needs to be implanted as soon as possible. WIthout that, social mobility is never likely to amount to much. Which is why I get so cross with some of the debate about Oxbridge admissions – we can’t admit children who don’t apply.
Middle class kids going to a high pressure school like Hills Road have an enormous advantage that has nothing to do with inherent ability. But, leaving aside such atypical cases, if schools can’t provide appropriate information – regardless of aspiration- raising in any individual child – then chidlren without well-informed parents who can fill in the blanks are always going to be at a disadvantage; this issue ought to be surmountable. However, my comments about modern apprenticeships were meant to indicate that the information provided is often not appropriate or helpful but is back to the issue about expectations on the part of the teachers.
Hi Athene – sorry if my comment above seemed a bit incoherent. Your post raises so many intertwined issues that it’s hard t know where to start and one rather runs the risks of saying everything all at once. The key here is ‘well-informed parents’. In my experience the division in society is not between middle and working class, but between those who make things happen and those to whom things happen. At least some parents who fall into the latter group have been conditioned by the promise of cradle-to-grave welfare state in which they think that as far as schools are concerned, it is the job of teachers to teach their children everything – from potty training onwards – and that includes any careers advice. I would go further and say that some parents in this group would be actively inimical to their children doing any kind of further or higher education rather than getting a job. The children of these parents are going to be the hardest to reach.
Interesting… I thought some more about the interviewee who just answered “er dunno”. If you look at things from his point of view, he has just come out of an education system that tests whether you know the right answer. Students are so trained to the test that they spend their time second guessing what the answer has to be rather than just working it out. It can take a long time to get them out of that mindset and it is much worse at some schools than others. Some schools seem to be very much more worried about their place in the league tables and see the answer as drumming students with exam technique. What this student really needed in preparation for the interview was some experience of debating (or similar forms of public speaking): putting together an argument, marshalling the facts, speaking persuasively. Is this examined at A level? I don’t think so. My guess is that it’s likely the private schools do this as an extra-curricular activity but how many state schools do? So I guess what I’m saying is that the answer that interviewee gave is probably a better reflection of his education than of him. And then if you follow that argument a step further it makes a good reason for not using the standard oxbridge interview. I think what this also means is that it’s not just about schools providing the information, it’s about getting them to change what they teach and how they teach.
What this student really needed in preparation for the interview was some experience of debating (or similar forms of public speaking): putting together an argument, marshalling the facts, speaking persuasively. Is this examined at A level? I don’t think so. My guess is that it’s likely the private schools do this as an extra-curricular activity but how many state schools do?
There are small signs of hope here. For three years now I’ve helped judge an annual science debating competition between secondary schools in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. The candidates (all about 14 years old) learn formal debating skills, marshaling facts into an argument and public speaking. These aren’t Public Schools – very much Da Inna City where many of the pupils don’t speak English at home. The standard, while of course variable, is often impressive – teachers and pupils all enjoy the experience and I am sure the pupils gain a sense of empowerment that they don’t usually feel in the general climate of impoverished expectation.
I certainly think there has been an enormous change in culture about ‘public speaking’ at school over the last couple of decades. When I went to the US around 1980, one of the key diffrences I noticed in the students was how much more confident they were about speaking up than British ones, because (as Steve Caplan has said on his OT blog) they have a tradition of debating, show and tell in a formal way etc. The UK does seem to be doing better about providing opportunities/requirements for school children to stand up in front of the class and talk these days.
To return to @cromercrox’s earlier comment about the importance of parents – well absolutely. But that is exactly why schools should have such a key role to play in social mobility, to plant seeds of ambition and aspiration in the minds of able kids whose parents aren’t doing it themselves. I don’t think it’s as simple as that they believe they can rely on the state for everything, I think it’s a lack of imagination that their children’s trajectory could – and maybe should – be different from their own.
As you say, it’s a huge topic, containing all kinds of social and political issues and I was not trying to do anything than highlight a tiny part of the landscape about what a new IAG system maybe should expect to cover. I fear it won’t!
Hi there,
I work for the UK job site Adzuna and I’d just like to say how interesting I found this article. Knowing the job market in the UK very well, it does become very clear that too many students have little idea of what they want to do next. I was no exception. This can stem from decisions made early on in academic life, as career doors are often closed without even knowing, due to early subject selections and choices. I think the idea about kids being more exposed to important advice is a very salient point. Whilst no one wants to bombard young children with too much pressure and careers information, appropriate advice does need to start filtering through to school kids so they understand the relationship between their subject selections and future careers.