17 januari 2008 -
Many British teachers at publicly funded schools think erroneously that their pupils do not qualify for the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. As a result, youngsters from poorer families miss the boat.
This is borne out by a survey conducted by Sutton Trust, an organization aiming to increase the participation of less well-off youngsters in British higher education. Nearly half of the teachers of schools funded by the government say that they seldom advise their pupils to apply for a place at Oxford or Cambridge.
Yet in actual fact more than half of the new ‘Oxbridge’ students come from their schools. The costs involved are also far less than they suspected, because tuition fees in the United Kingdom are capped.
In Great Britain participation by pupils from the lower and middle classes is a sensitive subject. Therefore the government is putting strong pressure on the top universities to recruit more students from groups that did not use to qualify for this or hardly so. For that matter, expensive private schools still provide faster access to top universities. The burning issue is always whether this is caused by differences in level or by class differences./
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