Tuesday 8 June 2010

The law of unintended consequences

I am following up on the universities which Alison Sauer suggested might take young people lacking any GCSEs or A levels. All want the enquiry in writing, none, when I spoke to them, seemed actually knew of any such children. I shall report back when they answer the written enquiries. In the meantime, I want to look at the idea of 'widening access' to universities, especially the prestigious ones like the Russell Group and how this actually has the effect of making it harder for home educated children to get a place.

The law of unintended consequences is the idea that intervening in any complex system will invariably produce surprising and often unwanted results. How does this relate to widening access to good universities and the question of home educated children? At one time and not so long ago either, admission to universities like Oxford and Cambridge was not a straightforward and open process. It was, for instance, an advantage if your father had been there and was remembered. There was a bias in favour of the upper classes, in favour of white men, those who spoke well, those whose grandfathers might have made a large donation to a college; that sort of thing. This gradually came to be seen as undesirable, discriminating as it did against women, ethnic minorities and working class candidates. It wasn't bad for home educated children though, because this kind of atmosphere, letting a somebody become a student just because he seemed the right sort of fellow, made it possible to be very flexible about entrance qualifications. In fact a number of home educated kids got to such universities by precisely this nod and a wink process.

How very different is the situation now. Every decision, even which candidates are called for interview in the first place, is covered by a rigorous code and must be transparent and fair to everybody. There must also be a written record of the reasosn for decisions about admissions. This of course means that there is much less leeway for the authorities at the university to be flexible about admissions. For instance, they might be presented with a home educated teenager who is fantastically talented but has no formal qualifications. Perhaps they wish to offer him a place, but hang on a moment! How can we be sure that this is not being done just because he is white and his parents very well spoken? This is the same reasoning which has made it unlawful for secondary schools to rely upon interviews when offering places.

A number of universities now have official policies for widening access, trying to get in students who are not the sort who traditionally go to places like Oxford and Cambridge. This might seem brilliant for home educated children; in fact it literally guarantees that they cannot get in via this route. Oxford for example is fairly typical and we shall look at how their system works. They encourage atypical students by the use of what is known as contextual data. (This is known in the Conservative press as 'social engineering') There are five criteria, and if you fulfil three you are guaranteed an interview and favourable treatment. The criteria are; being a looked after child, attending a school with poor GCSE results, attending a school with poor A level results, having taken part in a Sutton Trust Summer School and having a level four or five ACORN post code. It will be seen at once that it is impossible for home educated children to fulfil three of these conditions. The question relating to the schools concerns the school which they currently attend. In other words, if they are not attending a school, these do not apply. To get onto a Sutton trust Summer School, you must be a state school pupil, otherwise you are not eligible. And very few looked after children are likely to be home educated. So it is quite literally impossible for a home educated child to benefit from this initiative.

This then is the law of unintended consequences in action. An initiative specifically designed to allow the universities to take teenagers who would be unlikely otherwise to attend, is so structured as to prohibit home educated children from benefiting from it! The same process, to make the playing field even, also means that a list of qualifications equivalent to three A levels has been drawn up and is unlikely in the extreme to be deviated from. So the Pre-U is acceptable, as is the IB and a variety of foreign qualifications. The only hope for a home educated child might be having completed the first year of a Bachelor's degree at another university. I don't know what that would amount to in OU points; about 120 I should say offhand.

19 comments:

  1. I'd never heard of ACORN postcode. I just looked mine up and it was Type 26. It seems to go from 1 (rich) down to 50 (poorest). Where did you get your Level 4 or 5 from? Perhaps I have misunderstood the information I read? Or perhaps there are two different ways of grading?

    Mrs Anon

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  2. It is odd how all these social engineering things work. I found a number of bursaries etc one of my daughters could apply for at uni (when she was looking at doing a BEd) for which she was eligible because she had spent some years "in care"- although we had adopted her when she was eight, so she was hardly in the same position to someone who had spent her teenage years in care.

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  3. Ah, Mrs A - I have done mine type 34 - makes you posher than me, I think! Simon's postcode thing refers to the category - (of which there are 5 - we were 3, an inner city Portsmouth postcode comes up as 5) so that makes more sense!

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  4. Mrs Anon, there are five categories, seventeen groups and fifty six types in the ACORN system. The five groups end with group four, those of moderate means and group five, who are hard pressed and struggling. You need to be in group four or five to benefit from a lot of social engineering initiatives. These are done purely on postcode, not social standing. If you go to a site called, I think, down your street or up your street, it will tell you your ACORN classification based just on your postcode.

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  5. 'I think, down your street or up your street, it will tell you your ACORN classification based just on your postcode.

    That's exactly what I did and it came up with the number 26.

    Apparently, our neighbourhood is full of lower middle class young people with satelite TVs. Mmmm Trying to think of ONE family in our street in that demographic....

    Mrs Anon

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  6. we type 25 is that good?

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  7. I'm afraid not, Mr Williams. Type 25 consists of unemployed painters of artificial limbs with a tenuous grasp on reality. According to the ACORN classification, such individuals are typically in danger of going off their heads completely and would be better off sending their kids to school and enrolling in remedial English classes themselves. Unpalatable, I know, but that is the generally recognised demographic for people in your category.

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  8. its a pity your daughter does not still play chess cos if Peter played her he torture her over the chess really take his time to crush her.Peter be winning from say move 5 but then just very slowly like a snake crush all the life out of her! its a real picture to watch we do love to meet out special chess treatment to those that do not like us! you should see they parents faces when it dawns on them they kid is going to lose real bad to Peter who does not go to school it hurts real bad for those parents! some give up chess after playing Peter to take up something a little less hard!

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  9. 'its a pity your daughter does not still play chess cos if Peter played her he torture her over the chess really take his time to crush her.Peter be winning from say move 5 but then just very slowly like a snake crush all the life out of her!'

    You are sick.

    Mrs Anon

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  10. Mrs Anon says-You are sick.

    Not as sick as Simon is Mrs Anon! or am i supposed to be scared by you calling me sick? i think you dont like winning are you one of those types that belives only taking part matters or we must not have a 1st place in any event in case it upsets those that come last? some teachers in state school are like that. you win if you come last!

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  11. Sure, I like winning. I'm very competitive. I've won many things in my life. I've encouraged my son to compete in his chosen sport. I love it when he brings home medals for coming first.

    But I don't need to imagine I am torturing teenaged girls in order to do so. That, I'm afraid, seems to me to be the product of a very sick mind.

    And with that, I am out of here.
    I can't take the risk of commenting here any more.

    Mrs Anon

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  12. Oh Peter - be quiet! I cannot imagine that Simon made his daughter do anything! Just because you haven't chosen to do exams doesn't mean that any of us who do make that choice need to force our children down the path - they are all bright and motivated enough to see the advantages for themselves.

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  13. No exams today - and I am supervising them, not sitting them!

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  14. I don't always agree with Simon's views and opinions but continue to read this blog as I enjoy having my own views challenged and find many of the comments on what Simon has written very interesting.

    As I like reading others' comments it saddens me that this is becoming increasingly difficult as the comments section has been completely taken over by the ridiculous ramblings of one poster. Why this person continues to post this incoherent nonsense is beyond me and is, frankly, boring and childish.

    Like Mrs Anon, but for different reasons, I think I too am out of here.

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  15. Er... Peter - I am invigilating (with other home educators) exams of home educated children (GCSEs/IGCSEs)... it is unpaid; it reduces the costs of the exams to the families concerned.

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  16. Julie said...

    Er... Peter - I am invigilating (with other home educators) exams of home educated children (GCSEs/IGCSEs)... it is unpaid; it reduces the costs of the exams to the families concerned.

    Well done Julie you dont hear of many people doing unpaid work these days! that is very rare! maybe your ok after all!

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  17. Not rare at all, actually. Home edders round here do lots of exchanging of skills and co-operative working. I think they do in many areas of the country.

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  18. Not rare at all, actually. Home edders round here do lots of exchanging of skills and co-operative working. I think they do in many areas of the country.


    not here! apart from one women i know who did do a fair bit but she stoped now her children are over 16! geting a teacher to do unpaid work like Julie is rare! I have no idea if they are any other home educators in this town! they nust be some cos you often see children in the park over the age of 5 but who knows?

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  19. We could pass the "poor GCSE results" one - there hasn't been a single child at this homeschool that has achieved 5 good GCSEs to date. They want rules, I'll bend them to fit and insist they comply.

    Home educators can be very creative when needs must.

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