million+ comments on Sutton Trust Report on applications to 13 Universities
The university-think tank million+ has issued a response to research from the Sutton Trust which seeks to compare applications from pupils from state and independent schools to 13 research-intensive universities. The report concludes that pupils from independent schools make more applications to these universities and proposes that more research should be done as to the reasons for student choice and that teachers should attend residential courses to provide them with more information about these universities.
Responding to the Sutton Trust research which was commissioned by John Denham when he was Secretary of State at the former Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (now the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills), Pam Tatlow, the Chief Executive of the university think-tank million+ said ‘It is disappointing that the Sutton Trust clings to the notion that significant inroads can be made into challenging inequality by the recruitment of a few hundred young students from disadvantaged backgrounds to 13 universities selected from newspaper league tables that largely assess institutional research funding. The risk of this narrow approach is that the social mobility being achieved by the rest of the UK’s universities is ignored, the recruitment practices of employers who continue to over-rely on graduates from a few universities goes unchallenged and the battle to ensure that Governments’ fund the increase in student numbers that is required to widen access for the many, is lost.’
ENDS
Notes to editors
- million+ is a leading university think-tank, working to solve the complex problems in higher education. www.millionplus.ac.uk
- The summary and full report, Applications, Offers and Admissions to Research Led Universities is available on the Sutton Trust’s website at: www.suttontrust.com
- Research which compared the backgrounds of students entering 28 modern universities to the occupations of these students three and a half years after graduation demonstrated that modern universities were making the most significant contribution to social mobility and is available on the million+ website at: http://www.millionplus.ac.uk/file_download/10/MOBILITY_190309.pdf
- For more information please contact Pam Tatlow Chief Executive on pamtatlow@millionplus.ac.uk or 07795 645241