Predicted grades erode equity. The UK should reconsider abolishing them

The publication of Future of Undergraduate Admissions by Ucas a year ago lifted the spirits of educators across the UK eager to abandon what former universities minister Lord Willetts called our “medieval” admissions system.

The headline was that free-form personal statements and academic references were to be replaced by a series of structured questions in the hope of improving equity. But, as the first cycle of applications under the remodelled reference process draws to a close and we start preparing future cohorts of applicants for the reformed personal statement, doubts remain about how much difference the reforms will really make.

The revised reference process seeks to enable higher education providers “to compare applicants more meaningfully” and “redress the imbalance of effort invested in reference writing”. Regarding the former, universities are now usefully provided with more contextual background on applicants’ schools and more information regarding any extenuating circumstances applicants might face.

But advisers are also offered an opportunity to “outline any other supportive information specific to the applicant and relevant to the course(s) applied for that you think universities/colleges should be aware of”. Inevitably, responses to this will vary. Some schools will follow Ucas’ recommendation of concise statements of endorsement, others will not. Worse, the optional terms of engagement risk creating a divide between applicants and advisers who have access to the ”hidden curriculum” of social capital, information and guidance, and those who do not.

Navigating the personal statement has also been easier for those with access to the “hidden curriculum”. Indeed, 79 per cent of applicants found it too challenging without any support. It has, however, taken the best part of two decades to address the challenge first highlighted by the 2004 Schwartz Review: students from different backgrounds receive disproportionate levels of support.

In principle, then, the step away from a free-text model is progressive; it gives applicants greater structure and more direction, reducing – but not eliminating – the need for external support. However, I fear that the proposed question “what else have you done to prepare, and why are these experiences useful?” paves the way for applicants to be judged on both the quantity and quality of opportunities available to them, rather than their engagement with whatever opportunity is at their disposal. For applicants to be compared fairly and meaningfully, open-ended questions need careful consideration.

But the equity gap will not close until we face up to the elephant in the room, curiously unacknowledged in the reforms. Arguably the most powerful vehicle of inconsistency and disadvantage in the entire UK admissions system is the use of predicted grades – which, at their worst, can facilitate unregulated and manipulative practices within schools to give their own students an unfair advantage in admissions.

Given that 79 per cent of applicants did not meet their predicted grades in 2019, it is unsurprising that, according to the Office for Students, the average 18-year-old A-level student will be “predicted 2.35 grades above their achieved grades”. High-quality disadvantaged students, by contrast, tend to be under-predicted. 

Ucas’s vague, laissez-faire guidance inevitably breeds an inconsistent approach to predicting student outcomes, from which some win and others lose – in part because some teachers feel pressured, according to the OfS, “whether by senior staff, students or parents, to submit…overly ambitious predicted grades”.

An outlier by international standards, the predicted grades process is just another additive to the emotional melting pot that characterises teaching and learning in one of the world’s most stress-laden education systems. Rarely have I encountered an applicant who is not – at the very least – concerned or anxious about the role played by predicted grades in the admissions process.

There is, perhaps, too much wishful thinking behind the adage that predicted grades motivate applicants. By issuing them barely halfway through Level 3 courses, we risk cementing low expectations among certain groups of students – a potential catalyst for a deterioration in their mental well-being.

The lip-service paid to this in the government’s mid-pandemic Post-Qualification Admissions Consultation – on which the current reforms are based – does nothing to meet the increasingly desperate need for investigative research that captures the live impact of predicted grades on students’ well-being and learning behaviour at a critical stage in their education. In part, that is no doubt because timing a consultation that proposes further disruption to the status quo during a period of global turbulence is hardly conducive to yielding the most salient feedback.

Misjudged timing was exacerbated by unrepresentative findings. While the response to the consultation acknowledged the palpable imbalance between participants from the areas with the lowest and highest rates of participation in higher education, there were also disproportionately low responses from participant students in receipt of free-school meals and participant schools in lower-achievement areas. Surely, then, we ought to park this self-selecting consultation and re-run it properly, actively seeking out the voices of those most affected by the inherently unfair practices within our existing system.

Our hopes for reform need not be dashed. Ucas claims, after all, that reform and constant improvement are part of its DNA. So far, however, all we have seen is a gentle erosion of these medieval structures, rather than the thorough demolition and rebuilding that is required to truly level access.

Luke Ellmers is a former head of sixth form, an incumbent school governor with oversight of post-16 provision and a university admissions consultant. He is pursuing postgraduate research in education policy.