UNIVERSITIES which lower entry grades to help poorer students are being disadvantaged in prestigious league tables, a key official has warned.
Professor Peter Scott, Scotland’s Commissioner for Fair Access, said current rankings took no account of efforts to improve the social mix of higher education.
And universities who offer lower entry grades to talented pupils from poorer backgrounds can actually be marked down.
Mr Scott called on league tables to take account of access programmes - and even suggested a new “fair access” table.
He said: “Perhaps those working to achieve fairer access, nationally and in institutions, should devise a separate fair access league table.
“No university wants to be at the bottom of any league table, and a fair access ranking would boost some institutions discriminated against in existing league tables.”
Mary Senior, UCU Scotland official, said academics were judged primarily on research outputs.
She added: “There are barely any performance frameworks that credit them for undertaking work critical to the widening access agenda.
“If we have to have league tables then it is important they look at all aspects of universities including fair access measures.”
A spokeswoman for Universities Scotland said: “Some league tables capture students’ average attainment on entry as part of their rankings.
“This means that lower entry requirements with the aim of widening access could adversely affect an institution’s ranking.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here