ONLY 4 OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ‘FORKING CLASS by Julian Atkinson.
The recently published appendix to the Robbins Report on Higher Education contains several points of interest to socialists. It was found that only a quarter of university sttdents came from sworking class homes. This proportion is virtually the same now as it was pre-war and indicates that so far educational reforms have not eradicated the class bias in the system. Only 1% of university students heve an unskilled manual worker as a father, 6% semi skilled and 18% have skilled manual workers as fathers,
In emtrast with this 59% have fathers in professional and managerial gobs. The bias is even more apparent amongst women students, who include only 23% from working class homes in their numberse. Oxford and Cambridge still retain their very exclusive nature. Some 13% of Oxford students and 9% of Cambridge students come from working class homes, It was found that students from the working class, when they got in, did as well as other students academically.
The expansion of university education has had no effect in lowering standards. In the 1950's no decline in the proportion of students who obtained first class honours was recorded, in spite of the vastly increased number of students. It was found that only in day release and evening courses did the proportion of students from working class homes exceed 50%. In teacher trainins colleges 60% and in technical courses 58% of students were from middle class backgrounds.
The need to provide more university places was underlined by the : fact that the proportion of 17-year-old boys at State Schools who gained entrance to University fell from 51% in 1955 to 39% in 1961. The appendix supplies some interesting information on the public schools. "Except for women at London, wastage in all English university groups was considerably higher among students from boarding schools than from other types of school." The figures being: University school % who left
without success. Oxford and Cambridge local grammars Ho
other day schools, i,
boarding schools. 6h London local grammar. 14%
other dsy - schools b
boarding schools.* 29% Civic Universities local grammar. 10%
other day schools. 8%
boarding schools. 25%
Mr. Darich Wigham, chairman of the Headmasters' Conference (the public schools) was reported in the Daily Mail as saying, "We are, of course, concerned about failure - any school is bound to be. But I don't think we have ever had reason to believe that the failure rate was running at any undue level, It may be that because of traditional links between some schools and Oxford and Cambridge Colleges more ‘borderline cases' have been admitted to the universities. But I would not wish to comment firmly."