The headteacher of Northampton School for Boys (NSB) has said he is concerned about the background information universities using on students before offering places on degree courses.
In a speech to the Higher Education Policy Institute’s (HEPI) conference today, Mr Griffiths, expressed his fears about the use of “contextual data” by institutions to check information such as postcodes or the education of a student’s parents.
Mr Griffiths, who is currently taken a secondment year form his job to be president of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), has called on UK universities to be “open and honest” about what they want from potential students, including which subjects they should study at A-level.
He said: “I’m worried that my students might be offered, or not offered, a place on the grounds that my school is successful, or unsuccessful, that their house might be in a particular unfavoured postcode or even that self-declared information about parental higher education experience or not might be used to either make, or not make, an offer.
“I believe that universities should be offering places on the basis of what an individual student can bring to that university and how much that student will benefit from a university education.”
He also said that universities needed to exercise their “power of choice” over which students they admitted responsibly.
“There must be no secret garden of unwritten criteria,” he said.
“Apart from youngsters with good academic backgrounds, just what do you want?
“We sometimes in schools get rather confused and I appreciate there is a big difference between universities, but do you want pure academics who can’t change a light bulb or do you want well-rounded individuals who can converse confidently on a range of topics and who have taken advantage of a host of experiences beyond the curriculum?”
Mr Griffiths, also called for “absolute clarity” about which subjects universities preferred, and said institutions were sometimes guilty of giving courses “sexy” sounding titles to get more applicants.
He said: “Many youngsters, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, will be attracted to courses that seem to lead to a specific career, a course with prospects.
“Some vocational subjects, such as medicine and dentistry will almost inevitably lead to employment, since careful control is kept on the numbers being trained.
“But other courses at some universities are often given more sexy sounding titles which purport to lead to a career but may well have disappointing records in placing graduates in that field.
“For instance, how many graduates of forensic science are employed as forensic scientists?
“Or are most such jobs actually given to those with a degree in, say, chemistry.
“Universities should publish data not just on the proportion of students who are employed after graduation, but also on the type of job that they are doing,” he said.