\n<\/p>\n
A Cambridge college is to target the recruitment of students from elite private schools, interrupting decades of efforts to boost access for state-educated and disadvantaged pupils, the Guardian has learned.<\/p>\n
Fellows at Trinity Hall college last month approved a policy to approach a small group of private schools, including St Paul\u2019s Girls, Eton and Winchester, to improve the \u201cquality\u201d of students applying, claiming that \u201creverse discrimination\u201d was a concern.<\/p>\n
The move has horrified experts in social mobility and was opposed internally by a group of Trinity Hall academics who described it as \u201ca slap in the face\u201d for the college\u2019s state-educated students.<\/p>\n
Trinity Hall use a \u201ctargeted recruitment strategy\u201d to individually approach about 50 independent schools to encourage applications in subjects including languages, music and classics. Most of the schools are in the south of England and charge fees upwards of \u00a325,000 a year.<\/p>\n
In a memo outlining the policy, Marcus Tomalin, Trinity Hall\u2019s director of admissions, claimed \u201cthe best students from such schools arrive at Cambridge with expertise and interests that align well with the intellectual demands\u201d of the subjects.<\/p>\n
Tomalin added: \u201cTo ignore or marginalise this pool of applicants would risk overlooking potential offer holders who are not only exceptionally well qualified but who have been encouraged to engage critically and independently with their subjects in a way that Cambridge has historically prized.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important that the crucial task of securing greater fairness in admissions does not unintentionally result in reverse discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trinity Hall staff who spoke to the Guardian said a \u201csignificant number\u201d of fellows were upset by the new policy but had been powerless to stop it last month when it was formally presented to the governing body.<\/p>\n
One said: \u201cThis is a deeply alarming policy. Claiming that the best students come from an elite set of schools will make many of our wonderful diverse community feel unwelcome and risks returning Trinity Hall to the boys\u2019 club culture of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another said it was a \u201cslap in the face\u201d for state-educated undergraduates and for those staff within Cambridge who had fought to widen participation and improve outreach to British state schools.<\/p>\n
Lee Elliot Major, a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said: \u201cWhat is truly shocking is the implication that widening participation students are academically inferior. The evidence is clear: when talented students who have faced greater barriers gain access to elite universities, they flourish precisely because opportunity, not ability, was the binding constraint.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt a time when the educational playing field is more unequal than ever, universities should be identifying academic potential wherever it exists, not mistaking polished performance, so often shaped by privilege, for greater raw talent.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Trinity Hall said the college \u201chas a commitment to admit the best and brightest students regardless of background and has a strong record of access initiatives aimed at students from disadvantaged backgrounds\u201d.<\/p>\n
Noting schemes including a residential programme for those from underrepresented ethnic minority groups, they said: \u201cThis latest initiative is aimed at targeted subjects to encourage students with high academic potential to apply to Cambridge. Those students come from all school types, including the independent sector, in line with the university\u2019s access and participation plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tomalin\u2019s memo said that while much of the university\u2019s focus had \u201cquite rightly\u201d been on underrepresented and disadvantaged groups, \u201cmany\u201d privately educated applicants \u201chave faced considerable personal or financial challenges\u201d, and it claimed that a \u201csignificant minority of students at leading independent schools are on full bursaries\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, recent research found that private schools spend only a fraction of their income on means-tested bursaries.<\/p>\n
Cambridge and Oxford have made great efforts to shed a reputation for admitting students from a narrow pool of elite schools, particularly fee-paying institutions and highly selective grammar schools.<\/p>\n
By 2022, nearly 73% of UK students admitted to Cambridge were state educated. But the proportion has since fallen to 71%, with 29% coming from private schools. About 7% of UK-educated students attend private schools.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Cambridge removed specific targets for state schools admissions, under a policy imposed by the Office for Students, England\u2019s higher education regulator.<\/p>\n
Trinity Hall\u2019s proportion of privately educated students was 32% in 2022, falling to 26% in its most recent data.<\/p>\n
Trinity Hall is one of Cambridge\u2019s oldest colleges. Founded in 1350, its alumni include Stephen Hawking, JB Priestley and Donald Maclean, who was recruited as a Soviet double agent while at Cambridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Cambridge college is to target the recruitment of students from elite private schools, interrupting decades of efforts to boost access for state-educated and disadvantaged pupils, the Guardian has learned. Fellows at Trinity Hall college last month approved a policy to approach a small group of private schools, including St Paul\u2019s Girls, Eton and Winchester,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[8074,535,4631,1877,20184,588,393,1741,781],"class_list":{"0":"post-40703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-cambridge","9":"tag-college","10":"tag-elite","11":"tag-private","12":"tag-recruitment","13":"tag-schools","14":"tag-student","15":"tag-target","16":"tag-university"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}