University tests out new entrance exam
THE UNIVERSITY MAY be developing plans to resurrect entrance exams, after it was revealed that researchers had been developing tests to check students' aptitude alongside the normal application procedure.
150 pupils from independent and state schools took written tests last year, in a pilot scheme that could be extended. A University spokesperson welcomed the scheme, telling the Oxford Student that they were interested in developing a test for applicants. Oxford education expert Dr Jane Mellanby - a St Hilda's psychology fellow - carried out the study. "Although we will still use interviews in admissions to measure motivation, this sort of test will help us to look for potential," she admitted. The University would not deny whether the tests could be widely implemented. Their head of admissions, Jane Minto, said that the tests would "never replace our wish to see candidates, though it may give more formal evidence of their abilities."
She claims that new tests would make the admissions procedure more fair: "Admission to Oxford is highly competitive, and many young people apply who look equally well qualified on paper. But we need to analyse their potential for further development when they get to University."
She suggested that the only stumbling block to a new entrance exam would be the workload of producing the papers. "We are conscious of not burdening Exam Schools with extra work," she said.
OUSU Target Schools co-ordinator, Dan Waites, warned, however that any new tests could discourage candidates if they were not explained fully. "That's a job for the University's publicity machine," he said.
Dr Mellanby - a key figure in the research - is an educational expert. Her main areas of study include underachievement in primary and secondary school children. She emphasised that candidates from independent and state schools scored the same marks, regardless of their schools' GCSE results.
Candidates had to sit the old-style Oxford tests before being invited for interview. Bright students then usually received 'two E' offers if they performed well - until the entrance exam began to be generally phased out in the 1970s. But it was not until 1995 that the entrance exam was completely scrapped.
At the time, the move prompted uproar from independent schools. University bosses decided that coaching gave their pupils an advantage.
Wellington Square's Jane Minto quickly quashed any speculation that pupils from independent schools would be put at an advantage if new tests were introduced: "Coming to Oxford should not depend on the amount of preparation. We're not looking for polish and preparation."
Some candidates still sit written tests at interview, though. Tutors set exams for Medicine and PPE. Law candidates face up to seven written papers.
But access campaigner Dan Waites thinks those tests are human enough: "They're designed so that candidates don't need to have any previous knowledge. Getting into Oxford is meant to be difficult."
Historically, applicants had to satisfy tough educational standards to even matriculate. The University has since replaced those requirements
University College London is also developing its own pilot scheme with a specialist firm. UCL's Vice-provost admitted to journalists that he doubted A-Levels as academic indicators: "We need a way to identify a candidate's potential, flexibility and motivation."
The moves pave the way for the introduction into Britain of American-style Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs). They are used to spot bright pupils from more disadvantaged backgrounds. And the tests help to standardise education levels across state lines. But students have to pay to sit them, and are forced to pay a central agency $6 each time their score is passed on to an institution. Hundreds of preparation programmes have sprung up, and some parents spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on up to five years of coaching for the crucial entrance test.
One academic last year published a book slamming the US tests: "There are kids who are twisting their lives, and the parents, too, who twist their lives and rob themselves of their own childhood so that they can get into one of two or three or four schools. I think they're being irrational, or they're being obsessive."
8th Jun 2000