Education (Admission to Higher Education) (Hansard, 18 May 1994)

§ Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to reform the admission procedure to United Kingdom institutions of higher education for all school leavers by holding the relevant public examinations in mid April to mid May; to allow applicants to more than one institution to disclose to each institution the application relevant to that institution alone and to offer to applicants the right to see references given on their behalf to higher education institutions; and for connected purposes. My Bill proposes a modest change in the dates during which the main public examinations leading to admission to higher education take place in the United Kingdom. This year, exams have already commenced in Scotland; they began on 3 May and will end on 8 June. In England and Wales and Northern Ireland, there are eight examining boards, and the first examinations will take place this Friday, 20 May, and finish on 1 July. Hundreds of thousands of pupils are taking those exams, and I know that we all wish them every success.

The benefits of holding the entrance exams between mid-April and mid-May would be as follows. Such a change would remove pupils' anxiety about the subjective nature of the higher education admissions system. It would also widen access to higher education, improve freedom of information for pupils and enable them to make a more informed choice between areas of higher education study, from a more up-to-date list of courses.

Moreover, the change would enable pupils to seek to gain admission on the basis of work done and results achieved, rather than of inaccurate predictions of performance. Higher education selectors could make full use of the completed record of achievement of the young person concerned, and the need for the tactical process—that is, pupils attempting to second guess what the selectors want, fearing that alternative choices may be held against them—would be eliminated. Above all, my Bill would end what has been described as the bear garden of the clearing process each September. Most of those desirable objectives could be achieved by an admissions system operating after A-level results are known.

The current system and the timetable for admission to higher education were designed specifically to admit 18-year-old school leavers to higher education as it was 30 years ago. At that time, the participation rate of 18-year-olds was 7 per cent; now, I am pleased to say, it is more than 30 per cent., and in Scotland it is more than 36 per cent.

The theory is that effectively all decisions about places in higher education are taken before the examinations. At one time, that may have worked in practice. However, it is unfair and creates much anxiety among pupils and their families.

What is wrong with the present system? I shall touch on four or five of the problems. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service—UCAS—operates the admissions system on behalf of nearly 200 institutions of higher education, which run more than 20,000 courses. The application cycle takes about a year to complete. That means that a pupil is required to make a choice about higher education almost a year before he or she starts the 817 course. Why should pupils have to commit themselves so early in their post-16 development? That is much too soon to settle early career patterns.

A pupil may well be undecided a year in advance about the subject area that he or she wants to study, and may have listed completely different subject choices on the application form. Listing different choices can, and does, cause some admissions tutors to take the view that the applicant is uncertain and therefore not committed to that particular application. I do not believe that pupils should have to second guess what admissions tutors want. Research shows that nearly 30 per cent. of final year undergraduates would not choose the same course if they had their time over again.

When choices are made, the course information is out of date. The lead time for the cycle means that the course information material for pupils due to enter higher education in October 1995 had to be at the UCAS printers by January 1994.

The most serious defect of the present admissions system is the use of A-level predictions, made seven or nine months before the examinations, to determine offers of places. Offers are based on teachers' predictions of exam grades, which are made months before the exams take place. Because they are made so far in advance, those predictions are inaccurate. No fewer than 65 per cent. of them are wrong. More than 50 per cent. of teachers' predictions forecast A-level grades too high; a quarter of them predict results two grades or more too high.

How can we continue to run a system with a 65 per cent. failure rate? That is no part of a modern education system. The failure rate applies almost equally to comprehensive schools, independent schools, grammar schools, sixth-form colleges and further education colleges. In FE colleges, A-levels are often completed in one year, which makes the problem far more acute. Lecturers have only a few weeks' experience of their students before they are required to submit A-level grade predictions.

The national closing date for applications is in December, and it is even earlier for Oxbridge. Higher education admissions tutors do not wait until the closing date to begin their assessments, and that can lead to discrimination against pupils who go right up to the closing date before making up their minds.

At present, any changes as a result of Higher Education Funding Council decisions come slap bang in the middle of the applications process, which can cause havoc for pupils forced to make an early choice of courses in advance of examination results. The present timetable also means that full use cannot be made of a pupil's record of achievement when applying to enter higher education.

If we ever move to modular A-levels, the predictions of results so far in advance will become impossible, as the exams to be taken to build up credits for the modular A-level will not be known in time for the present long application cycle. Finding a modern solution is not a simple matter and we need to take account of the fact that we have different school year in England and Scotland, but a United Kingdom-wide admission system to higher education.

I believe that in the short time available to me, I have set out a fair summary of the chief defects of the admissions system. Any objective assessment must conclude that it is 818 old-fashioned, ill-informed and complex—just the factors needed to limit access. The question is how we can run the admissions system on the basis of results rather than inaccurate predictions. One answer must be to run the examination timetable earlier. Instead of running from late May to late June in England, we should bring the process forward by about five weeks to mid-April to mid-May. That would ensure that results were available in early to mid-July.

There could still be a three-month application period, there would still be time to carry out the interviews, and the choices expressed by pupils would be fewer because they would base them on the results achieved. Preparatory work, with a computer programme for applicants, can be done well before exams are taken. Nothing in such a change need affect those who apply to higher education with qualifications other than A-level. In fact, BTEC assessments will be completed assessments because of the extra time available.

Scotland, which does not have A-levels, already has an earlier period for the examinations—as I said, they have already started—so the change would be absolutely minimal. A not unimportant aspect of such a change is that the exam timetable will avoid the peak of the hay fever season which runs from May to July.

Pupils psych themselves up for exams, so any change must be carefully managed. It must not affect anyone on a current programme of study. My Bill proposes privacy for the applicant to higher education, as each institution would not be allowed to see the applications made by the pupil to other institutions. It also proposes that pupils should have access to references given on their behalf.

To have an admissions system based on equity, we owe our young people flexibility and informed choice, and the modest change in the school year would be justified to bring that about. My proposal does not interfere with quality standards, but is something with which only the House can deal effectively. I have not—and I have never been able to say this before—been able to identify any financial costs relating to the Bill.

I have identified support across the House and in the world of education for the principle of the change, which is all that I am proposing today. The changes would enable us, on behalf of hundreds of thousands of young people, to move from a system based upon secrecy and fiction to one based on open facts.