| Last term, I emailed a school and asked if they would like me to visit and talk to their pupils about applying to university. They emailed me back and said, “No, all of our pupils want to do dentistry at their local university this year and they’re not interested in hearing about your university.”
I am struggling to believe this is the whole truth.
When I was a student one of the most rewarding things I did with my time was access work. I went to schools on visits organised by other staff and I ran tours of the university at open days. However, now that I’m attempting to organise my own events I’ve discovered a new problem: getting through the door of the school in the first place. It’s not uncommon to email a head of sixth form, or gifted and talented coordinator, and simply be ignored. Sometimes I could be forgiven for thinking that the word university, or specifically my elite Russell Group university, puts schools off from the very first email.
When schools’ doors are opened to access talks, sometimes I meet with minds that are already closed, inadvertently, to applying to certain universities. I’ve seen teachers pull up maps of the country when introducing me and say, “Pupils from our school go to these universities…” while pointing to the powerhouses of the north, like Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield. It’s great that applicants are thinking about those universities – but what about those who want to look elsewhere, to London, Wales or Scotland? Has the school already ruled those universities out in the minds of their pupils before they’ve even opened a prospectus?
Schools can also unwittingly set up barriers by dictating which pupils can attend access events or open days, for example by setting very high GCSE attainment cutoffs. This means the applicants that universities may be most interested in recruiting, who have perhaps hit a bump during their GCSEs, are already hearing the message from their school that certain universities are not for them.
I know the difference that such work can make to the aspirations of teenagers. Long after a visit, I’ve had students contact me, having got into a university they might not have considered, and say what a difference outreach made to them. They tell me that having students and graduates come to chat to them about what university is really like makes going to university seem much more achievable. Teenagers can see that these are people like them, from the same type of school, or background, or with the same accent, who have got to where they want to be. It no longer seems unrealistic to want to study medicine at Cardiff or archaeology at Durham or astrophysics at Cambridge.
So what can universities do if schools won’t let them in – particularly if a school has already decided that a university “isn’t for us”?
Fortunately, there are always switched-on and confident teenagers who do their own research, battle with their schools and apply to the places they’ve really set their hearts on. Many access officers put in long hours on forums such as The Student Room, or Facebook groups, trying to demystify the admissions process. For the rest, open days where current students can talk to applicants and dispel myths are incredibly useful for everyone involved.
“Is everyone posh/rich?” is a question I hear asked hundreds of times on open days. “Is anyone from a ‘normal’ [comprehensive/non-selective] school?” These are worries that should and can be fixed by face-to-face interaction with the university itself – its students, its admissions staff. Using social media or open days to bypass those schools who can’t or won’t engage with university access initiatives may be the best solution to widening and diversifying university intakes.
Nevertheless, that job would be a lot easier if universities could go into schools and talk to those pupils who are a bit less confident or not so aware of their options. They might just be the kind of student that universities most want to recruit.
This week’s anonymous academic is a lecturer at a Russell Group university. |