Oxbridge should consider poor pupils with one B and two Cs at A-Level for a place, universities regulator says

The amply demonstrated truth that the Left just cannot accept is that the poor are on average a lot dumber.  That's why they are poor in most cases

Poor pupils with one B and two Cs at A-Level should be considered for places at Oxbridge to increase diversity in top institutions, the universities regulator has said.

The Office for Students (OfS) claimed so-called contextual offers give bright students from deprived areas a route into university, without risking a fall in academic standards.

It suggested England’s higher education sector needed to be “more ambitious” with how it handles applications from  candidates with deprived backgrounds, similar to US and Scottish institutions.

Under the traditional admissions system, the focus on top A-Level grades risks shutting out students with great potential from disadvantaged backgrounds, the OfS suggested in a report.

Candidates from the most affluent neighbourhoods are nearly six times more likely to reach the top universities than their peers on the opposite end of the social scale, data from 2018 showed.

This comes despite a “significant growth” in the number of contextual offers over recent years, according to the OfS.

Research found students admitted to Oxbridge and Russell Group universities with BCC grades at A-Level had an 80% chance of graduating with a degree and a 46% chance of leaving with a first or upper second, it claimed.

The report concluded: “As it stands, the implementation of contextual admissions does not go far enough.

“Research has shown that lowering advertised grades at high-tariff providers to BCC, for example, would broaden the pool of available applicants without a marked fall in academic standards.”

High-tariff providers are generally universities requiring grades of AAB upwards at A-Level, including Oxbridge and Russell Group universities.

The OfS said information about students - such as whether they qualify for free school meals - should be considered by all universities when assessing a candidate.

League table providers are facing pressure to tweak their criteria so universities which make a greater number of contextual admissions are not penalised.

Several top institutions last year expressed concern that any change to their admissions practice would cause “reputational damage” as they plunged down the rankings.

But the OfS said there remains “no clearly understood approach” to contextual admissions across the sector, with guidance on grades which varies widely.

Sir Michael Barber, chairman of the OfS, said: “A young person from a council estate who gets decent A levels has often had to work a lot harder than the young person from a better off neighbourhood who gets a few grades more.

“That’s why it is right that contextual admissions are now an increasing part of the picture.

“When I visit great American universities, I’m struck by how they look beyond standardised test scores to see potential civic leaders, potential public servants, potential entrepreneurs who can succeed if given the chance to shine.

“When it comes to trying to reach beyond their traditional intakes, these universities have got something to teach us.”

The regulator also identified the need for “more diverse routes” into higher education, such as bridging course, foundation years and degree apprenticeships.

Foundation years can be offered to students who miss their A-Level requirements or lack qualifications as a precursor to their degree course, while apprenticeships integrate study and work.

The OfS hopes to eliminate the gulf between the most and least disadvantaged students at the country’s top universities within the next 20 years.

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Cambridge University inquiry into slave trade connections is 'virtue signalling on steroids', Trevor Phillips says

Cambridge University’s slavery inquiry is “virtue signalling on steroids” which was only initiated to make “white liberal academics” feel better about themselves, one of the country’s leading equality campaigners has said.

Trevor Phillips, the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, criticised the University’s decision to investigate how it benefitted from the slave trade, calling on its vice-chancellor to “change the future rather than attempting to rewrite the past”.

His comments come as details of a similar inquiry launched at University College London (UCL) in November last year have emerged, looking into their “historical and present role in the teaching and study of eugenics”.

The UCL investigation will deliver recommendations on current financial benefits the University receives from “instruments linked to this field”, as well as how to manage the naming buildings after prominent eugenicists.

This includes Victorian scientist Francis Galton, the man responsible for coining the term ‘eugenics’. UCL students are currently campaigning to get his name stripped from a lecture theatre and a laboratory.

Commenting on Cambridge University’s inquiry, Mr Phillips told The Telegraph: “It seems to me that this is virtue signalling on steroids. This is really about making white liberal academics at Cambridge feel a bit better about themselves. It will do very little for any ethnic minority person.

“Rather than having some clever people looking back 200 years for the next 35 months, wouldn’t it just be a good idea to have some people looking a few months into the future and do some work on how we could prevent discrimination affecting people of colour every single day.

“If they actually wanted to do something for young people, there are at least a dozen other exercises they could have chosen over this one.

“I have got no objection to some academics looking into the background of Cambridge. In fact, I made a series about this topic 18 years ago. However, if Cambridge University wanted to do something useful they might want to change the future rather than attempting to rewrite the past, which is what this is all about.”

Prof Martin Millett, who is chairing Cambridge University’s inquiry, suggested that one potential outcome of the investigation could be reviewing the names of campus buildings that are connected to the slave trade.

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday morning, Prof Millet said: “I think it’s quite interesting how Glasgow University have dealt with this. They have thought of symbolic ways of recognising the issue in terms of quite simple things, like how buildings are named and so forth.”

Glasgow University have named a new building due to open next year after James McCune Smith, who was born into slavery in 1813 and later became the first African American to be awarded a medical degree.

Cambridge University’s Colleges are omitted from the inquiry, which will only apply to the main university buildings, including eight museums and numerous libraries.

Academics and students labelled the investigation as nothing more than a “PR exercise” for failing to include the Colleges in the investigation.

“The real wealth in this university, as well as historical benefits, are constitutively collegiate,” Dr Priyamvada Gopal, English lecturer at Churchill College, wrote on Twitter. “If Cambridge REALLY wants to look at how it benefited from slavery, leaving the colleges out is absurd. Totally absurd.

“Short of that, this is in danger of becoming a PR exercise.

“I think this is a terrible dodge on more than one front: many many problems are located at the collegiate level and the University repeatedly washes its hands of the colleges.”

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Australian Christian schools warn over Leftist anti-discrimination bill

A Christian school lobby group has warned that Labor’s plan to overhaul anti-discrimination legislation by removing the religious exemption for schools could hamper their ability to teach according to their values.

Christian Schools Australia, which represents about 140 faith-based schools across the country, has called on Labor to clarify its plans regarding the Sex Discrimination Act, in the wake of revelations that it would scrap exemptions that enable faith-based schools to employ teachers that represent their ethos and teach its traditional values.

Although Labor’s education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek this week signalled a strong willingness to support religious schools to continue to employ staff that “faithfully represent their values”, she declined to provide details of exactly how the rights of schools would be protected under Labor’s pledge to amend the Sex Discrimination Act if it is elected.

CSA national policy director Mark Spencer said the group had previously held constructive conversations with Labor over the issue, which sparked fierce public debate late last year when recommendations from the Ruddock review into religious freedom were released, but it was now unclear what Labor’s intentions were.

Mr Spencer has sought clarification from Labor.

“It sounds as though they expect us to rely on the employment process to deal with staff matters but you can’t put something in the employment contract if it is protected in discrimination legislation,” he said.

“We would be concerned with any plan to simply remove the exemption without replacing it with some other protection for religious schools.”

Charity lawyer Mark Fowler, an adjunct associate professor at the Notre Dame School of Law, agreed that removing the religious exemption without introducing accompanying legislative protection for schools posed a risk to faith-based schools.

“Private parties cannot contract out of federal anti-discrimination law,” Mr Fowler said.

“Where a school requires a form of fidelity from its employees that conflicts with a statutory prohibition on discrimination, the statute will override the contract, unless an exemption applies to balance the law with the requirements of religious freedom.

“Moreover, to authentically model their beliefs to students and the community, many schools seek to prefer teachers and staff who actually share their beliefs.

“On the face of it, Labor’s proposal appears to be to remove this ability.”

Currently, the Sex Discrimination Act prevents discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation, gender identity or relationship status however there are exemptions that permit religious schools to discriminate in their employment decisions, as well as in relation to education and training, if it is in the interests of upholding religious values.

The Australian Law Reform Commission is currently looking into religious exemptions in anti-discrimination legislation, including the Ruddock review and some of its more contentious recommendations.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has previously expressed its desire to retain the existing exemption. In its submission to the amended bill inquiry on behalf of the nation’s 1740 Catholic schools, it strenuously denied that Catholic schools used the exemptions “to expel or otherwise discriminate against students simply on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status”.

“The exemptions allow schools to focus on educating students according to their mission and identity,” the ACBC wrote.

“We are concerned that without adequate recognition of our religious freedom, we will not be able to maintain a school community that operates in accordance with the tenets of its faith and in a spirit of harmony and cohesion.”

In advice to the National Catholic Education Commission, which has been circulated to school communities today, the ALP said it respected the right of people to practise their religion freely and that Ms Plibersek had “made our position on the rights of religious schools very clear in parliament when she stated, ‘schools are also entitled to have rules that ensure staff … don’t deliberately and wilfully behave contrary to the values of the school’.”

It stressed that Labor was “not proposing to amend the indirect discrimination provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act that allow educational institutions to impose reasonable conditions, requirements or practices in accordance with the doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings of a particular religion or creed”.

It is understood that some within Labor believe that those indirect discrimination provisions could be key to religious schools being able to ensure that its teachers outwardly adhere to the institutions values.

In a dissenting report following an inquiry into Senator Penny Wong’s proposed Sex Discrimination Amendment (Removing Discrimination Against Students) Bill 2018, which sought to prevent schools from discriminating against students, Labor Senators noted evidence as to whether schools needed to rely on exemptions to uphold the fidelity of an employee at their school or whether it was a contractual matter.

Their report referred to a hypothetical example of a teacher “who was not supportive of the teachings of the church in relation to a range of matters and who voiced that belief with students or with other staff in a fairly public manner”.

“It was noted in the course of this exchange within the committee that the exemptions can’t be used to uphold this kind of fidelity as a failure to uphold a specific teaching, but rather needs to be pursued through the contract with the employee,” said the Labor Senators’ report.

At a forum in Sydney on Tuesday, Ms Plibersek told an audience of about 250 Catholic school administrators, teachers, parents and students that she did not believe that there was “tension at all” between the rights of schools to require employees uphold their values and protecting people from discrimination.

“The way it was put to me was what we want is employees who can live by or demonstrate the values of our school,” she said.

“And I think that it is possible to find that balance where we don’t discriminate against people because of who they love or how they identify but that those people who are employees of an organisation have to faithfully represent the values of that organisation.

“I really don’t think that’s beyond us.”

Labor has previously advised Equality Australia, an advocacy group borne out of the marriage equality campaign, that LGBTI students and staff at religious schools were “at risk of discrimination “and it would “continue to work to remove all discriminator measures against LGBTI people from Commonwealth law”.

“Labor will not give up,” the response said.

“We do not believe that freedom from discrimination and religious freedom are mutually exclusive. We do not believe that the removal of these exemption will hamper a religious schools’ capacity to continue to teach its religion and operate according to its traditions and beliefs.”

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