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0001, FRIDAY 14th MAY 2021
Many measures of socio-economic disadvantage that use ‘proxies’
based on local areas are not effective at identifying low-income
students and could discriminate against certain groups such as
those from BAME backgrounds or those students with young mothers.
This is according to a new report by the Sutton Trust that looks
at data from over 7,000 young people in the Millennium Cohort
Study, exploring how different measures of disadvantage relate to
long-term family income.
The report - by Professor John Jerrim of UCL Social Research
Institute - aims to identify the most effective measures of
disadvantage – particularly to support universities in their
outreach work and in using contextual admissions to widen access.
Contextual admissions involve universities looking at additional
barriers faced by individual students and giving extra
consideration to their application or giving them a slightly
lower offer.
A major challenge for universities is access to high quality
information on a young person’s background, so as to identify
those young people who should benefit from contextual admissions
and widening access schemes. Universities often use ‘proxy’
measures, for example looking at the local area someone grew up
in based on their home postcode. This report provides a
comprehensive overview of how well such measures capture
individual family income.
Of the nine measures examined in the research, the most effective
available indicator of childhood poverty is the number of years a
child has been eligible for free school meals. However,
universities don’t have access to verified data on free school
meal eligibility and rely on students self-reporting their
eligibility.
Because of problems accessing data on free school meals
eligibility, universities commonly use POLAR (Participation of
Local Areas) data in their admissions processes. This measure
looks at a young person’s local area and assigns them into one of
five groups, depending on the proportion of young people in their
area that go on to university. These equal groups, or quintiles,
range from the most under-represented areas to the least.
According to today’s report, POLAR is a very poor indicator of
family income, in part because it was never designed to measure
socio-economic disadvantage. Almost half (48%) of children
classified as disadvantaged by POLAR are not from a low-income
background. Of all the measures studied in today’s report, it
also contains the greatest biases against certain groups.
A focus on POLAR fails to capture many BAME students, those
living in London, those with young mothers and those who rent
their home. However, other area-based measures performed better
than POLAR in capturing long-run family income, including ACORN,
a tool which needs payment to access. ACORN uses the Land
Registry and various other data sources to classify UK postcodes
into 62 different types by level of socio-economic advantage.
The findings are also relevant for employers, charities and other
organisations who want to accurately identify low-income young
people in order to provide them with further support. The Sutton
Trust is making several recommendations in today’s report to
improve the targeting of university widening access schemes and
the use of contextual admissions.
- The Department for Education needs to ensure that
universities have access to data on free school meal eligibility
so that they can make the fairest admissions decisions.
- There should be greater transparency and consistency from
universities and employers when communicating how contextual data
is used and how certain markers are used.
- The Office for Students (OfS) should review the role of POLAR
in advance of the next round of Access and Participation Plans,
as this is a key driver of universities’ behaviour. These plans
set out how individual universities will improve access and for
underrepresented groups and are monitored by the OfS.
For its part, the Sutton Trust will review the basket of measures
it uses to target its own access work to ensure it is as
effective as possible at identifying socio-economic disadvantage.
The Trust will also be convening university partners and
non-profits working in the access space to discuss the findings
and share good practice.
Sir Peter Lampl, founder and chairman of the Sutton Trust
and chairman of the Education Endowment Foundation,
said:
“In order to widen access fairly and effectively, universities
need to know which students would benefit most from outreach
programmes and contextual offers. But as today’s research shows,
the measures they use are not as effective as they should be at
identifying low-income students. They miss out some who deserve
support while inaccurately flagging others. It is of particular
concern that local area indicators such as POLAR are biased
against some groups like young people from BAME backgrounds or
those that live in rented accommodation.”
“As a practical next step, the government should make sure that
universities have access to data on free school meal eligibility,
and target support where it is most needed.”
