By the time you read this article, the long rambling saga of who will lead the country as Prime Minister will finally have been resolved. As I write, the frontrunner is Liz Truss who presents herself as the change candidate, despite being part of the government for the past few years.
The polls, or at least the polling of the Conservative party members who are eligible to vote in this process, indicate that she has a significant lead over Rishi Sunak, although as ever polls come with many flaws and caveats.
Much has been said by both candidates in their pitches to this selectorate, and it may be that both candidates will wish to forget some of the promises they have made. However, one particular comment regarding education captured the interest of the media, at least until the next announcement was delivered. Liz Truss stated that she would look to introduce a policy whereby all pupils who scored straight A* grades in their A Levels would automatically be invited to interview by Oxford or Cambridge. This would, in her view, level up the socioeconomic background of those who would be eligible to attend either of these universities.
Aside from the practical and legal problems associated with this policy (government has no power to intervene in individual selection policies for universities, for example, and most places are awarded at Oxbridge on the basis of predicted grades rather than achieved grades), it is an interesting issue to make part of her leadership campaign. No such commitment is made, for example, about the remaining members of the so-called G5 universities (Imperial College, UCL and LSE) or indeed about the wider Russell Group universities, the top 20 or so research-focussed universities in the UK.
What is it about those two universities that merited special attention? Partly it is because the selection procedure for Oxbridge is different from other universities; they are the only two universities in the country that routinely interview for every course, and the collegiate nature of the University makes the application procedure more complicated. No doubt it is also because Oxbridge comes under extra pressure to ensure the offers are made to applicants from as wider background as possible. To their credit, they have put a lot of work into widening participation over the past few years and many colleges of those institutions have a proportionate share of applicants from state schools across the country.
However, focus on these two institutes is not the way to address educational inequality across the country. Between them, they admit less than 5000 undergraduates every year how many of those are from overseas. This is a tiny fraction of the population, and whilst no doubt the policy is well-intentioned, it is highly likely to be the transformational move that is both desired and needed. If anything, the reverse the opposite of this policy is needed.
Rather than focusing on a very small minority and the most selective and competitive institutions, the government should focus on the wider post school picture. Degree apprenticeships, for example, still suffer from a lack of parity of esteem with university life degrees. However, there is growing evidence that those who leave school and take at one of those courses can get a much richer experience in preparation for the world of work. The government will be better placed on those as a means of social ability rather than playing to the galleries with eye-catching but ultimately impact-free announcements.