Raising our game, not lowering the bar

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Laurell Milton, a student on Teach First's higher education access programme for schools (H.e.a.p.s), discusses widening access to higher education.

Business secretary Lord Mandelson's proposal to drive social mobility by encouraging universities to accept lower grades from pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds has drawn mixed reviews from critics.

Questions that have been asked are: Should educational disadvantage be addressed through ensuring a high quality and effective education for children of all backgrounds, or by seeking to reduce the damaging consequences of a poor one?

The plans are an interesting response to the second question. Yet I strongly believe that our first and best answer to educational disadvantage must be to try to ensure that children from all backgrounds receive the best possible education. And then they need the best possible support to capitalise on the opportunities it can bring. Only if this is deemed impossible should we start to think about the merit of other options.

Having gone to a disadvantaged school and engaged with pupils from both grammar and public schools, I feel that pupils from disadvantaged schools are just as capable of achieving high grades. However, I think that the quality of information and training that is supplied to teachers to enable them to support us to make informed choices about our study – at GCSE, at A-level and beyond - is lacking.

I have been lucky to go to a school where the university application process is adequately understood. Nonetheless there are many schools that do not have that understanding and as a consequence fail to send their pupils to top universities. For example, there is still a myth that Russell Group universities charge higher fees and some pupils simply do not know how to apply for funding for higher education.

I believe that it is the government's duty to ensure that all schools across the board are equipped with the same knowledge and teachers are trained to impart it. Only by providing teachers with adequate training and expertise on the university process can they give quality advice in relation to pupils' long term aspirations.

Organisations such as the higher education access programme for schools (Heaps), a Teach First initiative led by ambassadors (alumni) of its teaching and leadership development programme, and Sutton Trust strive to ensure that expertise knowledge of the university process reaches disadvantaged pupils.

Having been a part of both programmes, my understanding of how leading universities operate has increased. More importantly, my understanding of the actions I personally must undertake to ensure that I can apply to top universities – like being strategic in my subject choices, writing an engaging personal statement, obtaining work experience - has greatly increased.

Through these schemes I now understand the process and am aware that leading universities like Oxford and Cambridge do not charge different fees from the rest of the Russell Group or 1994 Universities. Yet I believe I have been fortunate: Opportunities for pupils like me are scarce. Many schools and pupils simply do not have the knowledge or the cash to take advantage of opportunities that are frequently used by pupils from middle class and above.

A good example of this is musical examinations from Grade 5 onwards and the Duke of Edinburgh Gold award - both earn participants additional UCAS points, which can contribute to a candidate's ability to meet university entry requirements. It is information like this that needs to be explicitly distributed to disadvantaged schools, and the funding provided to allow pupils of all backgrounds to take advantage of it.

So to go back to the original two questions: can we do more, or do we need to "lower the bar"? As outlined above, I think there's plenty more that can be done to enhance the experience and support for pupils in disadvantaged schools. I would advise that energy is directed into these simple solutions first.

Laurell Milton is a student at St Saviour's and St Olave's School in Southwark. She hopes to study English and History at university. Her ambition is "to break the stereotypical perception of a girl, from an ethnic minority, coming from a disadvantaged background".