quotes

“my own view, however, is that the real threat comes from continuing government pressure on the universities to admit students from underperforming comprehensives who gain access to our most competitive universities because of who they are rather than what they know. this must damage standards severely.”

so says chris woodhead
in answer to a question about foreign students taking up british university places. chris woodhead was the chief inspector of schools, he is now the chairman of cognita, a company that owns a number of private independent schools that champions “the values that are important to millions of parents across the country.”

looking at the quote from the sunday times one is struck by its elitism. unless things have changed drastically since i went to university (well in my case it was a polytechnic) you had to get a number of set grades in order to get into the university of your choice. hence the reason i never went to oxford university.
so if everyone is sitting the same a-level exams all that should matter is the result and not where they come from or who they are.
except we know that in some cases the who and where are important, especially when the who you are is the offspring of an old boy or if the where you come from is an independent school.

perhaps what chris woodhead is more worried about is that if working class children are getting into university from a bog standard comprehensive it becomes obvious that the need to go to a cognita school, with their lovely high termly fees, is not as necessary as originally thought.
so it is all about the money, still that is better than the other possible reading of the quote which is that pupils of comprehensives really shouldn’t be allowed to go to university: they might spoil it for the rest.