UCAS Admissions Process Review

Commenting on the Russell Group’s submission to the UCAS Admissions Process Review consultation, Russell Group Director General Dr Wendy Piatt said:

“After carefully scrutinising the evidence, we do not believe the proposals for a post-results system would improve on the current system or offer significant benefits to students, schools or universities.

“UCAS’ proposals could make it harder for universities to make a fair and thorough assessment of applicants and harder for applicants to make informed decisions about the right university for them.  

“It is far from clear that a new post-qualification system would be fairer or improve access to leading universities. We are very concerned that the changes could hamper our efforts to attract students from disadvantaged backgrounds, for example by limiting the time we have to run special access schemes.

“Most importantly these changes would do nothing at all to tackle two fundamental problems: the attainment gap which restricts access to leading universities, or the poor quality of information, advice and guidance received by some students.

“We take very seriously any evidence of unfairness in the current system and we are ready to continue to explore whether improvements to the application process could be achieved in other ways. We are supportive in principle of some of the enhancements proposed for the 2014 year of entry, although these will need further discussion and consideration on the basis of more detailed proposals.”