School standards too low for us, say university vice-chancellors

University vice-chancellors are warning that a dramatic improvement in secondary school standards is needed if the Government is to fulfil its aim of getting 50 per cent of youngsters into higher education by the end of the decade.

University vice-chancellors are warning that a dramatic improvement in secondary school standards is needed if the Government is to fulfil its aim of getting 50 per cent of youngsters into higher education by the end of the decade. Most successful A-level students – nine out of 10 – now go on to university, according to figures from the vice-chancellors' annual conference last week.

Yet many vice-chancellors are still expecting student places to remain empty as the new academic year starts over the next fortnight. With the Government funding 6,000 extra places this year, the number remaining unfilled is likely to run into thousands for the second year running – partly because working-class children are still unlikely to go on to higher education.

And according to the universities, schools need to do better if this is to change. Roderick Floud, the president of Universities UK, the body that represents vice-chancellors, said: "Standards of attainment in schools need to be raised if the pool of qualified candidates from lower socio-economic groups is to be increased.

"Things are improving. A decade ago only 15 per cent of young people from unskilled, manual-worker households achieved five top A to C grade passes [at GCSE]. That has now risen to 30 per cent but it is still too low when almost 70 per cent of young people from professional or managerial backgrounds gain these grades."

Margaret Hodge, the minister for Higher Education, said that – nationally – 44 per cent of young people from less well-off backgrounds were never told of the benefits a university education could bring them.

"All the middle classes who wish to go into higher education now do so," she said. "The chances of a young person from a deprived background going to a Russell Group university [the top research universities] has been calculated as one in 100."

The vice-chancellors, with the aid of government funding, are to step up their links with schools and colleges serving the country's most deprived areas. Many serving deprived urban communities are setting up master-classes at universities for talented 12- and 13-year-olds from poor backgrounds to persuade them to stay on at school and go to university.

Professor Floud said: "We need to raise aspirations and achievement of these young people and work together with schools and colleges to do this."

* The head of the Government's exams watchdog joined critics who claim today's pupils are "massively over-tested and over-examined". David Hargreaves, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, spoke out against schools that put their pupils through too many GCSE exams.

Qualifications such as the GCSE "have become ends in themselves rather than a device to meet specific educational purposes," he told the British Education Research Association conference.