Sean Coughlan quotes Sir Peter Lampl on Cambridge University’s new widening access admissions plans in an article for the BBC.
Cambridge University is to offer “second chance” places after A-level results for the first time this summer, in a deliberate bid to increase the number of disadvantaged students.
There will be about 100 places available but only deprived students from the UK will be allowed to apply.
The university has faced accusations of being socially exclusive.
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Sir Peter Lampl, who chairs the Sutton Trust social mobility charity, said that Cambridge’s plan for “reserving places for disadvantaged young people” was a “step in the right direction”.
But he said there was still a problem with many talented, poorer pupils not even applying to Oxford or Cambridge, or else having their exam grades under-predicted by their school.
He said that the whole university admissions system should be changed so that all students “apply only after they have received their A-level results”.
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