Leading universities are constantly under scrutiny to boost social mobility. The latest idea, suggests limiting the number of applicants from private schools, and a proposed lottery to encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds.
I think they're missing a point. A student from a northern town, in a state high school wouldn't apply to Oxford if there was a free bus to take them door to door. It's just not on their radar. When young people think about progressing to work, their knowledge of possible careers is limited to what they see around them, what their parents do, what their friends parents do and influencers on-line.
Parents also have limited knowledge, based on their own lived experience. Working in construction means working on a building site with a high-viz jacket and a hard-hat; working in medicine means doctor or nurse and working in finance means adding up in the bank. And there's always hairdressing or the supermarket. How can parents propose Biometric science when they don't know what it is, or understand how it relates to the real world.
Limited references=limited aspiration.
Working class families, who manage to work and maybe save a little for Christmas, are not thinking about Oxford Uni applications for their children. They are hoping to keep them off the streets, away from drugs and possibly start an apprenticeship or go to the local university to do anything that keeps them mentally stable.
These families have more immediate concerns; struggling to raise teenagers in a complex world riddled with reinforced self doubt. They don't sit around the dinner table pondering the merits of academic research, they worry about navigating student loans and grants to get them on a course; any course as long as it's useful. Then they worry about keeping them on the course when they are parenting from a distance.
Levelling up strategies in education focus on the belief that students from poorer backgrounds should have access to top universities, but it's not about giving kids access to courses they don't understand in a posh neighbourhood, it's about steps and pathways that encourage them to continue learning, anywhere. A student who studies to be mechanic, could complete a level 3 course and be considered prepared for a career in industry. But why stop there? Why not offer pathways to a degree in business or mechanical engineering? Or why not be a 'master mechanic' cherry picked from obscurity to work on high end sports cars?
Equally if you really want to encourage a kid from Leeds to study an Msc in Applied Digital Health at Oxford, then provide links and pathways from the local provision of Health and Social Care in Leeds. Invite him to stay for a week and experience elements of further study. Build relationships with his local high school, not in a 'you might be eligible to enter our very high-brow competition' way, but in a hands on local lecture theatre way, demonstrating interesting projects which explain courses with scary titles.
We don't need to make state school kids go to Oxbridge universities, we need universities to come into state schools and sell but more importantly, we need kids to engage with further education of any kind.