Universities 'should use aptitude tests '

Universities should consider using US-style aptitude tests as well as A-levels to select students, a Governmentbacked inquiry is expected to recommend.

The aim would be to identify bright pupils from poor-performing schools who might otherwise not win places at elite universities.

A working party chaired by Professor Steven Schwartz, vice chancellor of Brunel University, is expected to say that universities could justify offering places to students with lower A-level grades if other evidence of exceptional academic potential was available.

But its report, to be published in full tomorrow, says each application should be treated on its merits. Positive discrimination in favour of students from poorer backgrounds could be illegal.

The recommendations of the inquiry, set up by the Government to consider how access can be widened, will be

watched carefully by independent schools. They fear their pupils could lose out if universities used blanket policies favouring pupils from poorer backgrounds, in order to hit Government targets. Professor Schwartz warns against using too many extra tests to choose the best students from among the many who now achieve top A-grades. Oxford has said that applicants for history or English courses will sit new entrance tests in those

subjects while Oxford, Cambridge and UCL are using separate tests for medicine and law.

Professor Schwartz believes this proliferation of tests is expensive for universities and could also create new advantages for teenagers at the best state and independent schools, who would be better able to prepare pupils for them. He would prefer a national test.

However, university academics warned today that students could also be "coached" for the US-style tests, and that they would not identify large numbers of bright students from under-achieving schools.

In a trial three years ago conducted by the National Foundation for Education Research, 1,300 pupils sat Scholastic Assessment Tests (SATs) - used by US universities to select students - before they took their A-levels.

The results showed that 30 out of 630 students from schools with poor overall results achieved SATs scores good enough for admission to the elite US Ivy League universities. Of these, only one managed the three grades at A-level necessary for entry to Oxford and Cambridge. But among the sample from independent schools, two thirds achieved three A-grades at A-level and half also got top SAT scores.

The NFER said "claims that tests can identify aptitude for university regardless of social and academic background were not supported".

Today, Professor Alan Ryan, Master of New College, Oxford, and formerly Professor of Politics at Princeton, said: "SATs reflect all the things that A-levels reflect, which is parental culture and the kind of stimulating environment in which youngsters grow up.

"They can also be coached. When I worked in America, my daughter put up her SAT score by paying $500 on classes to get her into Princeton."

SAT-style tests might discover aptitude, he said, but the danger was that they did not take into account the fact that UK university courses also required specific knowledge.

"In the US, students spend the first two years of their courses on general education and then specialise. UK degree courses last only three years because they assume that students start them with the necessary specialist knowledge.

"Going to a US-style system would mean longer degree courses. That raises the question of who would pay for them," he said.