That is the verdict of a new report which shows that Welsh pupils’ chances of getting into university vary dramatically according to which school they go to and its location – and irrespective of their individual performance.
The Cardiff University study – entitled Access to Higher Education in Wales – has revealed that pupils at schools with strong records of higher education participation were almost three times as likely to go to university than those at schools with average levels of higher education participation.
The school and the local authority in which the pupils study was more important than their own educational attainment, socio-economic or ethnic background.
Professor Chris Taylor, one of the senior academics who carried out the study, said: “Despite some positive changes in the patterns of participation among some population groups in higher education, with participation by women, some ethnic minority groups, and people with disabilities increasing substantially, major inequalities in levels of participation in higher education remain.
“For schools, the message is clear – they need to be as concerned about the destinations of school-leavers as they are over levels of attainment.”
Prof Taylor and Gareth Rees, of Cardiff University’s Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD), found that those at schools with the lowest records of higher education participation were found to be42 per cent less likely to participate in higher education than peers at schools with an average level of participation.
The report said that it is difficult to ascertain what brings about these sharp differences in participation chances. However, it stressed that the figures it had uncovered highlighted the key role that schools play in shaping patterns of entry into higher education.
The report showed that the pattern was true throughout the 22 local authorities in Wales.
However, a number of local authorities with the highest levels of socio-economic disadvantages – including Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda Cynon Taff and Blaenau Gwent – were found to be among those with the highest likelihood of young people participating in higher education.
In Merthyr, for example, young men are almost three times as likely to participate in higher education as those in the average local authority, with young women more than twice as likely to do so.
Ethnic background was also shown to be a highly significant factor in determining entry to higher education, with young people from both Black Minority Ethnic and White Other ethnic backgrounds much more likely to participate in higher education than the White British group.
The report was compiled in collaboration with the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW).
You can download the study at www.wiserd.ac.uk/research/publications/wiserd-publications/reports/