Private schools attack 'crude' university access targets

By Graeme Paton. Top universities are discriminating against private school pupils by engineering admissions in favour of teenagers from the state system, according to the head of Britain’s biggest independent schools group. Institutions are attempting to drive down recruitment from the fee-paying sector to satisfy Government demands for a more socially-balanced student body, it is claimed.
Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said the creation of specific targets that discriminate between state and private school pupils were “wrong” and actually risked favouring affluent children from “middle-class comprehensives”. An analysis by the Telegraph shows that 11 out of 20 members of the elite Russell Group want to increase admissions from state schools over the next five years. This includes Cambridge, Durham, Exeter, King’s College London, the London School of Economics and Warwick. One institution – University College London – has pledged to boost the number of places awarded to state-educated entrants by 10 per cent by 2016. More...