Gender imbalance - boys, girls and going to university

I knew there was (what I thought a marginal) female majority in young people going up to university. I hadn't appreciated just how big this margin is these days:

‘Of all the A-level entries that were reported today, 55 per cent of them were female, and therefore 45 per cent of them male. That means that there were 81,000 more A-level entries from girls than there were from boys. And if you divide by three, figuring that most people do three A-levels, that’s 27,000 fewer males. That’s almost exactly the gap that we see today in the 18-year-old young men placed in universities compared to young women.’

This is from Mary Curnock Cook, educationalist and former head of UCAS and comes from a Spectator podcast. The report also comments that nobody is really interested in asking whether this gender gap is something requiring some attention. It may be that the young men are doing well-paid vocations like plastering, bricklaying and dicking about on computers but it could also be the case that our education system, having rightly adjusted itself to give greater opportunity to girls, has in the manner of Thurber's bear ended up leaning over too far backwards.

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Baby Boomer Myths - old people are horrid and have stolen our future

Text for today is this Tweet:



I'm guessing that it's some sort of 'subtweet' - directed to one or other 'boomer' on social media but not bravely enough to actually identify them. As one of those 'baby boomers', I find this sort of myth-making fascinating, especially given none of us spend our time fantasising about fighting in WWII.

The first observation in the Tweet does rather miss the point (and, of course, grants were means tested with the result that I got a full grant and my brother didn't) since in 1970 only 6% of school leavers went to university - nearly all of them male. Most of the 'middle class baby boomers' being complained about didn't go any where near a university education, they left school at 16 or 18 and went to work. Today approaching 40% of school leavers go to university despite those terrible loans (and well over 50% of those heading to university are women). So baby boomers can't remember getting a grant for a university education they didn't receive!

The next comment is about housing affordability. It's true that housing, especially in London, is less affordable now, but we should also remember that back in 1970 something like 45% of people lived in council houses. A fair load of the people our tweeter is dismissing as 'middle class baby boomers' were born and raised in council houses. It was only the glorious initiative of right-to-buy that gave loads of boomers the chance to own.

There's folk out there who want to lay the blame at the door of sixty-somethings rather than respond to the actual problem. For sure, the 'green belt' is second only to the NHS as a national sacred cow and the boomers (or at least the ones in the south) have done very nicely out of the house price gains. But this is no excuse for the sort of nonsensical 'old people are horrid and have stolen our future' comments this tweet illustrates.

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My new heroes - some Warwick University students

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Who chose not to be bullied and to further their education:

A group of history undergraduates at Warwick are causing controversy by organising their own student-led lectures while their tutors go on strike.

It doesn't matter whether or not you support the reasons for the strike, these students show initiative, creativity and leadership. They have every right to take this action, just as the lecturers have every right to go on strike. And it sticks a couple of fingers up at the bullying nature of trade unions when it comes to what they deem to be 'strike-breaking'. 

And the response of the union is, as ever, to threaten:

“Further escalation of the dispute, including a ban on marking, will unfortunately lead to greater disruption. We urge students to contact their vice-chancellor or principal and ask them to lobby the national employers’ negotiating body, UCEA, to urgently reopen negotiations.”

The message seems to be: "do what we say students or we'll stop you from getting the education you're paying for".

Well done to those students for standing up and making clear that they are the customer here - as one student put it:

"This is an argument between the staff and governing body, not the students and it is not right that we are jeopardised. It is unfortunate that the education system seems to be neglecting its primary aim in the face of monetary conflicts."

Well said and quite understandable given £9,000 in fees!

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How Trevor Philips' love of a headline does nothing for black students

There’s been an almighty outcry over the apparent fact (and we have only the EHRC’s word for this) that just one “British Afro-Caribbean” has been admitted to Oxford this year. Now, what we need to understand is that this figure is very specific – it excludes a range of categories that would normally be characterised as “black”:

Mixed: White & Black Caribbean
Mixed: White & Black African
Black or Black British: African
Black of Black British: Other

So the impression given – that just one black person is wandering round the dreaming spires as part of this year’s intake of students – is misleading. And, of course, these figures do not include overseas students.

The ‘Black or Black British: Caribbean’ category represents around 1% of the UK population so, on a straightforward distribution we would expect the number of students from this category to be around that proportion of the intake from the UK. Each year, Oxford takes in between 3,000 and 4,000 students but at least a third of these are overseas students. Let us be generous and say that 2,800 UK students are admitted. This would mean that an even distribution would have 28 students from the category ‘Black or Black British: Caribbean’. More than one, I’ll grant you but not quite as bad as you all thought when you didn’t have the context.

As the press reports say:

The elite university recruited more than 3,000 students last year and almost 90 per cent of them were white.

However this shouldn’t be a surprise since nearly 90% of the UK population is white (England & Wales: 88.7%). Oxford may be elitist, it may take in too many posh kids for some folks liking but it cannot really be faulted for its record on taking non-white pupils when the proportion almost exactly mirrors the proportion in the country.

This is just another example of the selective, misleading use of statistics by the “equalities” industry. Rather than this unjustified shouting at universities, people like Trevor Philips should turn their attention to why it is that afro-Caribbean children do so poorly at school:

“African Caribbean boys, in particular, start their schooling at broadly the same level as other pupils, but in the course of their education they fall further and further behind so that in 2003, for example, roughly 70% of African Caribbean pupils left school with less than five higher grade GCSEs or their equivalents. This represents the lowest level of achievement for any ethnic group of school children. In national examinations African-Caribbean boys have been the lowest achieving group at practically every key stage for the last four years.”

This is the real scandal – we reinforce for no good reason the view that black kids are thick condemning most of them to a life at the bottom of the pile. Berating Oxford doesn’t help these youngsters and rather than do this the EHRC should be supporting efforts to produce better outcomes for young blacks – even when they’re promoted by segregationists like Lee Jasper. At least they recognise the problem.

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Talbot to Ludlow

I thought long and hard about whether to call this particular little piece, "keeping the Welsh out" but decided since that was a fool's errand to talk instead about games. And why we play them.

The title I've chosen refers to an event card from the game Kingmaker which has long been one of my favourites featuring all the best things about games - plague, pestilence, storms, battles, castles and general skullduggery (and the picture is Ludlow Castle). And since I was brought up in the days before computers, we played games involving small pieces of card being piled up on a board and moved around. Proper games, if you ask me!

Indeed - along with ridiculous amounts of D&D - I spent a significant proportion of my waking hours at university playing games. Along with Kingmaker we played Machiavelli (no surprises that this is set in renaissance Italy), Mighty Fortress (set in reformation Europe) and assorted Diplomacy varients. These games required thought, considered approaches, some understanding of strategy and a wide streak of devious nastiness. Which I guess is why they don't appeal to everyone - I'm told there are people out there for which the prospect of a rainy day in playing board games is some kind of purgatory.

Today we still play board games - Kingmaker if we can find enough willing victims (I think they like to call themselves 'players') but more usually more recently publish board games like 'Ticket to Ride', 'Carcassonne' and 'Puerto Rico'. And I still have a love hate relationships - great to play, exercises the mind. But when you're as competitive as I am rather stressful. And don't get too near me when I'm losing!

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Kids, parents and a few teachers have worked it out - pity the education establishment hasn't

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Much fuss and bother about 'A' Level results including, of course, the 'it's all fixed in favour of public schools' argument from the unions, Guardianistas and assorted educational experts. Now leaving aside that this Guardian piece is rather speculative (to say the least) and that the Universities say it ain't so, it does appear that the kids, their parents and possibly some teachers (who aren't wasting their time being spokespeople for unions) have worked out the best way to improve the odds of getting into better universities:

This week's A-level results showed that pupils were increasingly shunning so-called "soft" subjects in favour of science, economics and maths.

Bit of a clue there, eh?

Two family stories - and why barring people without a degree from nursing is wrong

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Family Story #1

My Uncle was a judge. OK, I hear you - "Tory has judge for uncle, surprise, surprise". But my uncle - Ray Palmer - was one of the first solicitors to join the circuit.

So what? Oh yes - my uncle did not have a university degree. He joined a solicitors at 14 straight from school and worked his way up through the firm.

Today a young man from Ray's working class background would find it really hard to achieve what he did - to achieve without a university degree

Family Story #2

My wife is a publisher. She was a director of a leading academic publisher for many years and is widely regarded and respected in the business.

I'm very proud - she has achieved more and contributed more than I have.

So what? My wife does not have a university degree.

Taking these two stories as examples - and there are thousands more. Why are we barring yet another profession - nursing - to those who choose not to go to university. The idea that you can learn how to be a nurse in three years at university is ridiculous - and thousands of young people with loads to contribute are now unable to fulfill their promise and their dreams.