Miranda Green: Privileged students should face greater scrutiny despite A-grades

Miranda Green cites Sutton Trust research on contextual admissions and Justine Greening’s speech at the Sutton Trust-Carnegie summit in the Financial Times.

In remarks to a conference on social mobility, reported this week, Justine Greening, the former education secretary, told employers to call time on the DODs. Recruiters, she said, should recognise that high A-level grades achieved by hot-housed pupils were “not as impressive” as those of candidates from more modest backgrounds. By singling out students from Eton — the boys’ public school attended by her sometime cabinet colleagues David Cameron and Boris Johnson — her remarks were sure to prompt cries of “class war!”

But Ms Greening, whose own CV boasts a Rotherham comprehensive and a first-class degree, raises an important point. The context in which a sixth former achieves their exam grades tells you as much about them as the actual results — and can be a better predictor of future success. In fact, evidence shows a more circumspect eye should be cast across exam grades lower down the ladder by university admissions departments.

According to a new report from the Sutton Trust, an education charity, fully 20 per cent of the non-disadvantaged students at some of the most selective institutions, where the requirement is usually A grades, only achieved two Bs and a C at A-level. The authors note there is “a wide distribution of achievement among students attending these universities”. In other words, there is no shortage of DODs at some institutions who may (how shall we put it politely?) already have hit their own academic high notes. What the most prestigious universities lack, on the other hand, is a diverse student body. In spite of a steady increase in the number of poorer students going to university, the proportion at the most prestigious institutions, including Oxford and Cambridge, has not been rising. It is a stubborn problem that may see them fall foul of the new super-regulator, the Office for Students.

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