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Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North) (Lab): I begin by picking up on the point that the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) made quite powerfully towards the end of his speech about the significance of the United Kingdom maintaining its ability to identify and to keep its very brightest and best young people. He is telling us that this is a deadly serious debate, in contrast to the comment of the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel). There may be good reasons to use an Opposition day to debate the policy in Iraq and the redeployment of the Black Watch, but that should not undermine the importance of a debate about widening access to and increasing participation in universities.
Over the years I have made something of a special study by observing the ways in which the Conservative establishment in Britain—I use the word loosely and generously, I hope—has deployed an enormous range of devious practices and procedures to protect its own historic pleasures and privileges. Usually, when they get to the end of the line in deploying rational arguments to protect those pleasures and privileges, they decide that it is all a communist plot anyway. The House owes a debt of gratitude to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins), who resorted to that sort of rhetoric at the end of his speech. He exposed the bankruptcy of the Conservative party's criticism of OFFA and everything it stands for.
I was surprised that in the great flurry of self-indulgent rhetoric with which he completed his speech he did not use the term "social engineering". In every previous debate that I have been involved in on this issue with Opposition Members, they have always resorted, if not to communist plots, then to social engineering. It was up to my hon. Friend the Minister, to his credit, to say that the debate is not about social engineering. The difficulty that I have with the concept is that it implies that the system that we now have, which has developed over many decades and longer, is a value-free, non-socially engineered system.
What we have now in our university admissions system is in fact social engineering of the highest order. It is social engineering that was originally built and designed to create an elite and to limit the privileges and pleasures of university entrance to that elite. That must
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change for precisely the reasons that the hon. Member for Wantage has spelled out. Intellectual capitalism is the essential commodity of every successful economy in the 21st century, and any nation that tries to limit the development of intellectual capital or stunt the opportunities for all our young people to extend their potential or to develop it as far as possible will lose out. Such nations may well lose out to the United States, which may happen at the moment, and in years to come they might lose out to India or China, which is the No. 1 reason why we must take access issues seriously.
Mr. Jackson: The hon. Gentleman is being unfair to the Conservative establishment. Under the last Conservative Government, the proportion of our young people going to universities rose substantially. When we entered government, 6 per cent. of our young people went to university, and when we left the figure was pushing beyond 20 per cent., which does not square with his picture of a designing establishment.
Mr. Chaytor: That is true, but the rise was entirely the consequence of the decision by the Labour Government of the 1960s and early 1970s to reduce selective admissions policies in secondary schools, thereby enabling far more young people to acquire the qualifications to give them admission to university. We should not forget that point.
When we make comparisons, we must remember that unemployment is one of the biggest triggers to increased participation in universities. When unemployment is high, more people—young people as well as mature students, but particularly mature students—apply to university. When unemployment is low, other options exist, which is why it is particularly encouraging to see numbers increase by 1 per cent. year on year, although we have had record employment levels for the past seven years.
Chris Grayling: Will the hon. Gentleman remind the House that the only time in living memory when participation by state school students at Oxford and Cambridge universities met the recent Higher Education Funding Council benchmarks was in the 1960s, before the abolition of grammar schools, which he just described?
Mr. Chaytor: No; that is not the case. The change was not the abolition of the grammar schools but the decision by some grammar schools to move into the independent sector. If one redefines what constitutes a state school, clearly the number of young people coming from state schools also changes. If we compare like with like—the number of young people coming from state schools now with the number who came from what were state schools in the 1960s and 70s—the year-on-year increases are significant, although they are not enough.
Dr. Evan Harris:
I strongly support the hon. Gentleman's point and ask him to comment on whether it is appropriate to support grammar schools without also mentioning secondary moderns. Will he recognise that the assisted places scheme removed role models for state school students and put them in the private sector?
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Now, many such students are returning to the state sector and applying to university, and they will become role models for their peers.
Mr. Chaytor: I agree entirely. It is not appropriate to discuss one half of the system without reference to the other. I am tempted to do so, but if I did, I would get carried away and would use up all the time allotted for this discussion of access and participation.
We all agree that the issue concerns how merit is defined and assessed. Without wishing to revisit the Laura Spence affair, I find it interesting that in justifying the decision not to offer her a place at Oxbridge, many people at the Conservative end of the spectrum say, "Having five As at A-level is not the sole criterion of merit, and leading universities must take many other factors into account." However, those same people now challenge any move away from a rigid dependence on A grades at A-level. Frankly, they cannot have it both ways: either we accept that A-levels, or some other examination grades or marks, are the be-all and end-all of the definition of merit and potential or we accept that they are one part of a wider picture. The debate does not concern whether merit should be the main criterion but how we measure merit and the different factors that must be introduced into the equation.
Mr. Jackson: In relation to the Laura Spence story, the hon. Gentleman should remember that all the applicants had brilliant A-levels. It was an extraordinary farrago, given that of the six people admitted to study medicine at Magdalen in that intake, four came from state schools and only two from independent schools.
Mr. Chaytor: I do not want to revisit that saga, because we could spend a long time discussing it. My point is that we must be consistent in our assumptions about the best way of assessing potential, which, as is increasingly evident, is not to rely purely on A-level grades.
Dr. Harris: I hope that the hon. Gentleman recognises that some of those who thought that the Chancellor's Laura Spence allegations were unfair nonsense agree with him, for exactly the same reasons. He should understand that all applicants to study medicine at Oxford and Cambridge, even the two thirds who cannot get in, are predicted to get straight As at A-level; that is why we need to find ways of identifying, through interviews and further testing, those with the most potential.
Mr. Chaytor: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, although I am not quite as confident that the system of interviewing that he advocates is the best way of identifying the students with the highest potential. It is not simply a matter of further testing, but of different testing. A progressive consensus is emerging on the need for a broader base for assessment. Professor Schwartz makes that clear when he says in his report, which is the background to much of this debate, that the evidence, which he summarises, shows that
"equal examination grades do not necessarily represent equal potential".
The challenge for university admissions tutors is to ensure that they have the tools to provide the finer degree of differentiation that is now needed.
When we consider the differences between students' backgrounds and schools—I would not expect any Minister to express this view, but I hope that they have some sympathy with it—it must be self-evident to any objective observer that a young person who has been to a school where about £20,000 a year per pupil has been invested in the educational process must have an easier task in obtaining three Cs, three Bs, three As, or whatever is required, than someone who has been to a school where £10,000 a year has been invested, and that that student must in turn have an easier task than someone who has been to a school where only £4,000 has been invested. Whether we are considering education from the ages of 11 to 18 or five to 18, we cannot discount the impact of small class sizes, well-motivated and well-paid teachers, and a high level of resources in terms of books, equipment, computers and playing fields. All those factors contribute to a student's A-level grades, in addition to their natural ability and potential. If we are serious about identifying those with the best potential, it is entirely logical, reasonable and fair that the student's background and the school that they attended must be factors in that consideration.
Much is made of the state's having no responsibility for intervening in the admissions process. That is true. No Government or state agency could intervene directly in the admission of about 250,000 students to British universities every year—that is a task beyond their capacities. We therefore need to draw the distinction between intervening in the process of admitting each individual student and intervening in universities' admissions policies in a benevolent way that ensures that their policies reflect best practice. The Schwartz report provides one or two models of good practice, although they are not necessarily the only ones. We must not see this debate as one about how we get more or fewer of our preferred kinds of students into leading research universities, because it affects every university in Britain, including the smallest modern university serving a largely local catchment area.
Campaigning for Mainstream Universities has done sterling work on admissions, although some of its members have a long way to go to improve their records. It has also produced models of good practice. Who could possibly be against OFFA making it a requirement that a British university that wishes to charge the higher fee should adopt an admissions policy that reflects best practice and on which there is broad consensus? It is beyond belief that anyone would challenge that concept.
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