Poorer students are less aspirational in their choice of university and more likely to try to stay close to home than their wealthier peers, new research reveals.
Data unveiled for the first time at an Evening Standard forum organised to find ways to widen participation at university, found teenagers from a disadvantaged background are 11 per cent more likely to only consider universities within 50 miles of their home.
It means they could miss out on choosing the university that is best for them, experts said.
The research, carried out by Unifrog which jointly hosted the forum, also found that poorer students in London and the South-East are six percentage points less likely to choose a university course where the entry requirements are the same or higher than their predicted grades – suggesting they are less aspirational in their choices.
The data is based on information about more than 200,000 Year 13 students who are due to leave school next year.
The results were revealed to experts from the world of education who gathered at the Evening Standard’s Liverpool Street headquarters to identify how to improve access to university for more students.
The Unifrog data showed poorer college students are even less likely to consider going to university than those at state schools, with an eight percentage point gap between the two.
Experts heard how paying for travel to university open days and offering free summer schools or taster days, can help poorer students take part in those events.
The success of London schools at getting poorer students into university was highlighted. The percentage of pupils on free school meals in inner London who go on to elite universities is 13.6 per cent – which is more than double the national average and more than four times that of the lowest region, which is the East Midlands.
Dr Samina Khan, director for Undergraduate Admissions and Outreach at the University of Oxford said some of London’s state schools are sending students to Oxford “that equal in number and ability and talent” those from many of the top private schools.
She named Harris Westminster sixth form and the London Academy of Excellence as among those doing extremely well.
Alex Crossman, headteacher at London Academy of Excellence Stratford, said some of his most high achieving students are beginning to reject offers from Oxbridge in favour of degree apprenticeships at top law and accountancy firms. He said the number of students opting for this route is likely to grow as they are attracted to top jobs with none of the burden of debt.
Dr Khan added that universities do not have enough information about which applicants are disadvantaged, including those who have been in care.
She said: “There is much that the government could be doing to help us as a sector to really help us to identify those [students].”
The forum heard that 22 per cent of Oxford’s intake is from disadvantaged backgrounds, and a quarter are from BAME backgrounds.
Dr Khan said the university is now working with younger children than ever before. Previously outreach focused on sixth formers, but now the university works with children in Key Stage Two, who could be as young as seven.
She said Oxford is now looking at how to best support disadvantaged children as well as their teachers, parents and communities.
She said: “We are casting the net much earlier, and we’re also casting it much more broadly than what we have done in the past.”
She said it is down to academics at Oxford to decide who to give offers to, but they are given information “to help them to understand some of the educational journeys that some of the students who apply to us have been on. So we use a lot of contextual information.”
She said the university has access to information about free school meals, but would like more reliable data about whether an applicant has been in care.
She said: “We would like other information so that we aren’t just looking at that narrow band of Free School Meals, we also are able to look at children in need and other sorts of verified indicators of deprivation.”
She said the university looks at an applicant’s GCSE results in the context of their school, adding: “If you’ve come from a very good school and just got average GCSE grades or below average for your school, then maybe we might want to look at somebody who’s gone to a poor performing school but performed above average, and that’s the sort of indicators that we do look at.”
One of the ways Oxford University targets disadvantaged students is by running a two week residential course for 200 students, called Opportunity Oxford, to help prepare them for university.
It has also introduced for the first time the Oxford Foundation Year, which is an academic programme for around fifty students who have suffered severe educational disruption. If students are successful they go on to the first year of Oxford university, and if not they are helped to apply to other universities.
The University of Westminster reported a big decline in applications from students at colleges in London - who are more likely to be disadvantaged than their counterparts in schools and sixth forms.
The university is still investigating why, but it could be due to the cost of living, the housing crisis and a hangover from Covid – because fewer students are completing Level three courses which set students on a path to university, the forum heard.
Sarah Whitaker, University of Westminster’s Widening Participation Manager said some prospective students have never left their London postcode before, so going to central London to visit a campus building is an intimidating prospect.
She said: “They usually want to bring somebody with them, we facilitate that, we pay for their travel, we pay for their travel for most of the of the activity that we do.
“It is really important that we’re focusing on really understanding what the barriers and challenges are that students are facing and what their lived experience of it is.”
Experts stressed that the way of measuring disadvantage is not straight forward. As well as being on free school meals, disadvantage could also include refugee status, being a young carer, having been in the care system, being the first in the family to go to university or attending a school with low participation rates.
Explaining the needs of young people in care, Brigid Robinson, Managing Director for Coram Voice and Coram Group Young People Programmes, said she hears from young people in care “who have nowhere to stay during the holiday, who are unable to go to university open days, have no one to go with them, no way to pay the train fare, no way to stay overnight if it’s more than fifty miles…and not that support from an individual person to actually help them.”
She said around 70 per cent of children will leave care aged 18, which means they will be “out in their own placements, living in their own flats and most of those young people will not have a significant adult to support them.”
Data shows that just nine per cent of children in care stay on at school past their GCSEs compared to the national average of 36 per cent.
In 2021-22, 14 per cent of care leavers progressed to Higher Education, which is three times less than the overall rate of 47 per cent.
Just one per cent of children in care reach elite universities, compared to 14 per cent overall.
Rebecca Montacute, Head of Research and Policy, at the Sutton Trust said: “Throughout the country, we know that people from lower socially-economic backgrounds are less likely to go to university and are less likely to go to the very best universities.
“And that is also true within London, even though the rates of young people going on to Higher Education from London overall are higher than the rest of the country.
She said the way universities are measured on how well they are doing at increasing participation is flawed. The focus is currently on a measure called POLAR, which looks at the historic participation in higher education for an area. But she said this does not take into account a student’s income. She said: “We should be seeing much greater focus on better measures to measure social economic disadvantage like free school meals, like indices of multiple deprivation and doing that would help disadvantaged students in London particularly.”
Dill Anstey, Vice Principal of Harris Academy sixth forms, said the introduction of T-levels has caused problems
Vocational qualifications BTECs and CTECs are being withdrawn, and T-Levels are forcing students to make decisions about their futures at a young age, she said.
Many schools also find it difficult to run the new T-Level courses because they do not have staff to oversee the 45 days of work experience required.
Kurt Hintz, Executive Principal at Capital City College Group, said more qualifications should be available to people who have already started work, such as HNDs and HNCs.
The forum follows the Evening Standard’s two-day Step Up Expo which helped more than 7000 teenagers with careers and education advice.
