Ucas chief seeks post-qualification admissions debate ‘third way’

The behaviour of each new cohort of students as they choose where and what to study reflects an ever-changing mix of factors influencing both applicants and universities.

In the UK, this year’s admissions cycle was no exception, with the fraught financial situation prompting high-tariff institutions to take a bigger share of entrants at the expense of less selective providers, and growing numbers of applicants using Ucas’ “decline my place” tool to change their study plans or applying direct to clearing.

Speaking to Times Higher Education as her first cycle as Ucas chief executive neared its close, Jo Saxton said that this dynamism was a reflection of “students exercising the agency that they have in a marketised system”, and that if harnessed correctly, it should mean more young people – particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds – securing the right courses for them.

One long-running debate about the UK’s admissions system is whether it should move to post-qualification admissions (PQA), something for which Dr Saxton expressed support when she took up her previous role as chief regulator at the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual).

Recalling a parliamentary hearing prior to her appointment as chief regulator in 2021, she said: “I’m on public record as saying that I hoped to be able to use those powers to support PQA.

“And I said that at the time because I was thinking about the minority of disadvantaged students who I’d served as a school leader, who you would try and convince that they could and should go to university, but who didn’t quite believe that they’d get the grades or that it was for them.

“Then they would get the grades but would say, ‘Well, I’m sorry Miss, but I can’t spend a year [waiting to go to university], that’s just not going to work in our family.’”

However, Dr Saxton said that she was equally aware of the pressure PQA would put on others in a system with very little room for manoeuvre.

“There are some proponents of PQA who I think believe that exam boards are just sitting there twiddling their thumbs for a few weeks, and that they could just get the results out earlier.

“I can absolutely categorically on the record say that is not possible, not least with all those additional teenagers coming through: the first summer I was chief regulator, there were 200,000 more GCSE papers to mark than had ever been marked before in a summer. There’s just no extra time to build in a few weeks and take it out of the exam system.

“So then you’re left with taking away some teaching time to get results out earlier, but that’s not the right thing for this generation, who have had their education disrupted by the pandemic.

“Equally, universities don’t want to reduce their teaching time and put their term starts back.”

She was now clear that the “binary” debate about pre- or -post-qualification admissions was unhelpful, and said she believed a “third way” was possible.

Her solution is to acknowledge the way in which clearing is being used, with more dynamism from both applicants and institutions once results are known, and modernise it to “give the students what they’re trying to do themselves, and have the best of both worlds”.

Campus resources on how to make university admissions processes more efficient and transparent

Dr Saxton stressed that while serving the interests of students was a “golden thread” for Ucas, the organisation was equally committed to serving the institutions it was set up to support as a centralised admissions service, and that any reform would be consultative.

Some change is already under way – the adoption of structured questions in place of the personal statement, for example, to try to level the playing field for less advantaged applicants.

She said this was an example of the organisation’s collaborative approach: “The three questions absolutely represent what admissions teams told us that they needed to know.”

But she added that while she had been able to implement some changes swiftly, such as an application fee waiver for those from poorer backgrounds, modernising clearing was a longer-term project (although she hoped for some incremental improvements by next summer).

Behind all of this is a determination to deliver a system that supports access and opportunity.

Having led Ofqual in the aftermath of the pandemic, and as a former school leader, Dr Saxton has seen at first hand the lasting impact of Covid on a generation of learners.

“The most damaging thing was the breaking of the social contract: the given that you attend school or college, and that that’s a good thing for you,” she said.

She highlighted practical things that could be done – from collecting missing attendance data for post-16 education so that the scale of the issue is fully understood, to helping deliver advice and guidance at a time when schools are weighed down by other responsibilities.

“They’ve become the fourth emergency service. It used to be the AA, now it’s schools,” she said. “If they are now the place where, as a society, we carry out things like dental screening, then the role of Ucas is even more important, because we need to ensure that the time that is required to advise young people on their next destination doesn’t get squeezed out.”

In dealing with the “legacy of learning loss”, she added, it was also vital to recognise that “the thing that students who were affected really need is more education – so it’s more important than it has ever been that young people are supported to progress to university”.

john.gill@timeshighereducation.com