Re your leader on St Olave’s grammar school (Pupils paid the price. It was their school’s failure, 12 July), it is not the first time that the school’s admissions policy, among other matters, has been the subject of a report. In 1868, in his report on the endowed classical or grammar schools of the London postal district, Daniel Fearon, the assistant commissioner to the Schools Inquiry Commission, had much to say about this ancient foundation. But the problem was, in a sense, the opposite of the present situation. The school was then situated in Southwark and was bound like many grammar schools, by its charter, to make educational provision for the rich and the poor. But by 1865 many of the professional and commercial inhabitants had left the parish and so the school had become one for the education of the labouring classes. It needed, in the view of the governors, to attract middle-class children in adjoining parishes and several respectable families in the parish had said they would be glad to send their children to the school if “a separation could be guaranteed from the lowest class”. The solution, in the view of the governors, was the introduction of fees!
Paul Haslam
Derry
• As a teacher in inner London in the 1970s, I told the head of year that enforcing all the details of school uniform was a waste of everyone’s time (Mother to sue over school uniforms guidance, 7 July; Letters, 10 & 14 July). His response was that kids will always object to something, and it may as well be something as pointless as uniform as anything more important.
Marian Nyman
Whitstable, Kent
• The Office for Students is right to urge universities to introduce “contextual admissions” for students (Give more places to disadvantaged students, watchdog urges universities, 10 July) but the discrimination does not end with graduation.
We know from the experience of our own alumni that too much entry-level recruitment remains weighted in favour of graduates from middle or higher income backgrounds – in the creative/cultural sector alone 92% of jobs go to more advantaged socioeconomic groups, according to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport’s own 2017 figures.
Universities UK’s 2016 report, Working in Partnership: Enabling Social Mobility in Higher Education, recognised these recruitment barriers facing graduates from low-income backgrounds and promised to work with employers to do something about it.
As a funder championing fair access to entry-level arts jobs for graduates from low-income backgrounds – and changed recruitment practices to encourage this to happen – the Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries welcomes both updates on their progress and the opportunity to lend support.
We welcome too any move by universities to include socioeconomic background in their surveys of graduates’ career progression.
Kate Danielson
Programme director, Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries
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