David Willetts said leading universities should admit bright teenagers from poor homes with lower A-level results than their middle-class peers in an attempt to boost social mobility.
As students across Britain continue to battle for remaining university places, Mr Willetts said admissions tutors in subjects such as law and medicine should increasingly judge candidates on their “potential”.
His comments come amid speculation that a shake-up of A levels could lead to a sharp drop in state school pupils entering university.
Figures published last week indicated that privately educated students were three times as likely to gain the A* grades. Teachers’ groups said this would increase their grip on leading universities as more institutions use the new top mark in admissions.
But Mr Willetts said universities should look beyond grades to identify pupils from the poorest backgrounds with the “aptitude” to do well, giving them a direct route into the most sought-after jobs.
“All of our leading professions are essentially full of people who have [come] from a relatively small number of elite schools into the most competitive universities with three As at A level,” he said. “I want the medical profession and the legal profession to have a diversity of people in them.”
In comments that could reignite the row over social engineering, he said in a television interview that universities were “entitled to judge their intake by their potential as well as by what they have already achieved”.
He backed a scheme at King’s College London, in which 50 state school pupils from the capital’s poorest boroughs are admitted to medicine courses with lower grades than other applicants. Mr Willetts said other universities “have got to do that as a way of spreading social mobility”.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “What universities cannot do is feel that they are fighting a class war. It is absolutely not acceptable for universities to chuck in the bin all the applications from children from independent schools.
“But British universities have always looked beyond A-level grades to other things such as applicants’ CVs, personal statements and their potential to benefit from a particular course.’’
Last week, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, said changes to university finance would be used to “promote greater social mobility’’.
--By Graeme Paton, 22 Aug 2010