MORE middle-class children are attending Britain’s elite universities, despite government schemes aimed at widening access for poorer students. The class system is being perpetuated by teachers advising pupils according to their own university experiences, say the authors of a new study.

From The Margins To The Mainstream, a report on widening participation in higher education, will raise pressure on top universities before tuition fees of £3,000 start next year.

In spite of institutions paying lip service to improving opportunities, in reality only the newer universities are embracing the agenda, as “equality of participation by students from lower socioeconomic groups remains a challenge”, the authors say. The study found that last year the Russell Group of 19 top universities accepted 30.5 per cent of their students from families of higher managerial and professional occupations, compared with 33.5 per cent in 2000. They took 11.9 per cent from families of lower managerial positions last year, compared with 11.2 per cent in 2000. The report stated: “Applicants from the highest socioeconomic groups have increased their share of applications to the more selective institutions.”

For 2005-06, universities were granted £284 million by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to widen participation and increase retention rates. At least £30 million was meant to help to target students in worse-off areas.

In 2002-03 England had the lowest rate in the UK of poor children at university, with 28.6 per cent, compared with 41.6 per cent in Northern Ireland.

Part of the reason, says Liz Thomas, of the Higher Education Academy and an author of the report, is that teachers who select pupils for outreach programmes are out of touch and projecting their own memories on to the universities. “If they are thinking what higher education was like when they went there, they may be directing their students to the same institutions and so perpetuating the class system,” she said. One way to change that, Dr Thomas said, would be to engage teachers better with top universities’ open access schemes.

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