This blog was written by Sarah Carter at Bournemouth University and was first published on the BU Research Blog as part of a series of regular policy updates for internal and external readers. These views are Sarah’s own and not the views of Bournemouth University.
Although this was written nearly a year ago, in August 2019 (when PQA was last in the headlines) we believe it is still relevant as the government look likely to restart the debate again post-pandemic.
The following blog was written for a general HE audience without specialist policy knowledge to raise awareness of factors and impact a change in system may have.
Labour reinvigorated the post-qualification admissions debate on Wednesday when they declared they would reform the HE system and scrap predicted grades to implement a ‘new fairer system of post-qualification admissions’. Talk of post-qualification admissions (PQA) has been around for a long while, (Schwartz review, 2003; UCAS 2011), and quite recently the UCU have been pushing for PQA because they believe it penalises disadvantaged students. The claim is that capable disadvantaged students are penalised because they may receive under-predicted grades than their stronger, higher grade performance in their final exams. Lower predicted grades restrict their ability to apply to and secure a university place at the most competitive institutions. A focus on ensuring access for disadvantaged students to the highest tariff institutions was championed by Sam Gymiah, (HE Minister of 10 months, two Ministers ago) who pressurised Oxbridge to radically improve the number of disadvantaged students they accept and challenged students to think big and trade up to the most competitive institutions (claiming it leads to higher employability returns). So it is interesting to see a Conservative and Labour policy align, even if they have different solutions.
Read the full post … “Post-qualification admissions – a good thing for disadvantaged students or not?”
