Social mobility
Realising Potential
The University of Edinburgh was a trailblazer when it first adopted contextualised admissions. This method uses contextual information (i.e. provided within an application) and contextual data (i.e. matched to applicants, including through outreach) to assess an applicant’s prior attainment and potential to succeed in higher education, taking into account the circumstances in which their qualifications have been obtained. Here, Rebecca Gaukroger, Director of Student Recruitment and Admissions, tells us more about the motivations behind this approach, its impact, and the possible lessons for graduate recruiters…
The problem The University of Edinburgh is an ancient university, ranked among the best in the world. It is one of the most popular universities in the UK – this year, we have received nearly 60,000 applications, with only around 5,500 places on offer. This makes for competitive entry, and even very highly qualified applicants are often unsuccessful.
In common with other highly selective universities in the UK, our student body has not historically been representative of wider society in terms of socio-economic background. There are complex reasons for this, making it a complex problem to solve. Students from low socio-economic backgrounds in the UK are less likely than their more advantaged peers to: • make subject choices suitable for progression to academic degrees
• stay on beyond the compulsory school leaving age
• attain the grades needed to enter selective universities
• aspire towards a university education than their more advantaged peers
• perceive that selective universities are for them – a perception that can be forged by parents and teachers.
At Edinburgh, we are committed to widening participation (WP) because it’s the right and just thing to do, and because identifying and unlocking the
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potential of the brightest students from across society is in the interests of the University, wider society and the local and national economy.
Outreach work, which engages with students, parents and teachers to build aspirations and drive attainment, is hugely important, but cannot fully overcome the disadvantages students from low socio-economic backgrounds often face. Attainment and participation gaps persist between the most and least advantaged in society, despite such interventions.1
The solution For this reason, in 2002 the University explored options to change its admissions policy, to recognise that grades alone were an insufficient indicator of academic potential.
To do this, we took account of the educational and socio-economic context in which grades were achieved. We used national data about school attainment and HE progression and data about participation in WP outreach programmes to contextualise grades. We revised our minimum entry requirements to reflect the grades necessary to succeed on the degree, rather than competition for places. It would have been nonsensical to acknowledge the attainment gap in our
selection process; but then ignore it at the point of offer.
When we launched the use of contextual data in our admissions process in 2004 it was highly controversial. However, with strong buy-in from senior management, we weathered early storms and were vindicated both by the impact on our intake and the subsequent mainstreaming of contextualised university admissions across the UK.
The impact
The policy – which we publicised widely – led to an immediate jump in applications from those who had been historically under-represented in our applicant pool and on campus. It also led to an increase in the number of entrants who had participated in WP programmes, and significant improvements in our performance against national WP performance indicators. Crucially we have seen no decline in either student retention or degree outcomes – in fact, we’ve seen the opposite.
We have revised and refined our policy, as new evidence emerged about the relationship between background, attainment and progression, and as school qualifications and curricula, government policy, and available data have changed. We monitor our own data today, to ensure that the policy
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