Section:GDN 1N PaGe:9 Edition Date:190815 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 14/8/2019 20:29 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Thursday 15 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •
National^9
Belief in the value of university
declines among young people
Richard Adams
Education editor
Young people in Britain are increas-
ingly sceptical of the need to go to
university and are more aware of
apprenticeships, according to new
polling, as a record proportion of
school-leavers await their A-level
results today.
More than 300,000 sixth-formers
across England, Wales and North-
ern Ireland will fi nd out the results
of their summer exams and in many
cases use the grades to gain places on
undergraduate courses. But only two-
thirds of young people rate a university
education as important, according to
the poll conducted by Ipsos-Mori for
the Sutton Trust education charity.
About 65% of young people up to
the age of 16 said they thought it was
important to go to university, continu-
ing a downward trend since 2013 when
86% said a university education was
important, and 75% in a similar poll
taken a year ago.
This year’s polling also found nearly
two-thirds said they were interested
in doing an apprenticeship rather
than going to university after leav-
ing school, which the Sutton Trust
said “may in part be down to a grow-
ing awareness of apprenticeships and
other high-quality training routes”.
Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the
Sutton Trust, said that young peo-
ple needed better careers guidance,
including where diff erent degrees and
apprenticeships could lead.
“Young people face a dilemma. Ifthey go on to university, they incur
debts of over £50,000 and will be pay-
ing back their loans well into middle
age. And in many cases they will end
up with degrees that don’t get them
into graduate jobs,” Lampl said.
Despite the decline in enthusiasm,
the latest poll found no change in the
proportion of secondary school pupils
expecting to go into higher education:
77% said they were very or fairly likely
to go to university when they were old
enough, with only 40% saying they
were worried about cost.
This year’s A-levels were the last
large tranche of subjects given an over-
haul by Michael Gove as education
secretary. Candidates sat reformed
exams in 19 subjects for the fi rst time,
including design and technology,
Chinese, further maths and politics.School leaders warn that results
may be aff ected by the continuing
funding crisis that is especially felt
at post-16 institutions such as sixth-
form colleges and further education
colleges, whose budgets have been cut
compared with schools in England.
“Our members have delivered
another year of outstanding A-level
results. Students are coping extremely
well with the new-style A-levels
where exams are taken at the end of
the course, usually after two years,”
said Bill Watkin , chief executive of the
Sixth Form Colleges Association.
“However, it will be impossible tomaintain these high standards without
a serious increase in sixth-form fund-
ing in next month’s spending review. ”
Universities say they are prepar-
ing for higher than usual numbers
of students seeking places through
the post-results admissions process
known as clearing ; forecasts are for
70,000 or more this year.
“Traditionally, clearing was very
much the back-up option for students
to fi nd a place if they had not done as
well as they’d hoped in their exams.
However, increasingly students have
used clearing to eff ectively switch
to a new university if their results
exceeded expectations,” said Adrian
Dutch , the University of Westminster’s
director of admissions.
This week Labour pledged to delay
the university application process in
England until after A-level results were
published, so students would have a
clearer idea of courses they could
apply to.
A snap poll conducted by You-
Gov found widespread support for
the move, with 56% of nearly 3,
British adults saying they supported
post-qualifi cation admissions.Londoners
hail defeat
of ‘social
cleansing’ as
tower blocks
are saved
Diane Taylor
A determined coalition of east London
neighbours, including a 94-year-old
retired typist, have triumphed in a
battle to save their tower block homes
from demolition by the council.
The residents of the two blocks
in Tower Hamlets – which stand on
prime real estate – hailed the U-turn at
a meeting this week by the local mayor,
John Biggs, as a victory against social
cleansing in the capital.
Tower Hamlets council had
been looking at demolishing the
Whitechapel blocks, Treves House and
Lister House, which contain 51 fl ats,
for several years. At a public meeting
two years ago residents were dismayed
when Biggs admitted that the option of
building private fl ats on the land was
under consideration, and that dis-
cussions had been going on for a year
behind closed doors.
As they planned their fi ghtback to
save the blocks from demolition, the
residents met in the living room of
Sophie Spielman, who is 95 in a cou-
ple of weeks, and joked that her home
was the HQ of the campaign.
She originally came to the UK from
India and is not only the oldest resi-
dent but also the one who has lived
there the longest. Her late husband,
Nat, who opposed Oswald Mosley’s
fascists during the Battle of Cable
Street, moved in in 1959. She joined
him a couple of years later.
Spielman sat in the front row of this
week’s meeting, leaning on her walk-
ing stick and listening intently to every
word that was said by council offi cials.
She beamed when Biggs confi rmed
that the blocks would be saved.
“I’ve been happy here for 57 years. I
can’t imagine life anywhere else,” she
said. “All I want to do is live here for
the rest of my days and now I’ll be able
to do that.”
Neighbours from a wide range of
backgrounds, including Kay Ballard,
who says she can trace her cockney
roots back seven generations, and a
British Bangladeshi resident, Khayrun
Begum, were also involved in the bat-
tle to save the blocks.
The high-spec, brick constructed
fl ats were built in the 1950s in the NewBrutalist style and were designed by
Count Ralph Smorczewski for Still-
man and Eastwick, one of the foremost
architectural partnerships of the post-
war reconstruction years.
At the 2017 meeting which triggered
the residents’ concern, Biggs told the
attendees: “You would have to do a
deal in which you would build a large
number of properties – you would
build 100 or something and sell off a
large chunk.”
He claimed that building some fl ats
for sale on the open market on the land
where the two council blocks st ood
would generate enough income to also
provide some social housing on the site.
The justifi cation for the demoli-
tion plans announced two years ago
came from an expert report saying thata lot of structural work was required
to make the blocks habitable and that
refurbishment would be too costly –
£6.2m – so destroying the blocks and
rebuilding on th e prime site was the
preferred option.
The blow came at a time of dwin-
dling supply of council housing in the
capital and an ever-lengthening hous-
ing waiting list.
Similar battles over the destruction
of council housing are being fought in
many other London boroughs.
At the meeting two years ago Biggs
agreed to set up a working group. A
new expert report was commissioned
and completed in June this year.
It found that just £1.8m of works
were required to refurbish the blocks
rather than the £6.2m originallyquoted. “It is agreed the building is
generally structurally sound,” the new
report stated. The main work required
are new roofs and windows.
After announcing that demolition
was now off the table, Biggs said: “I
do appreciate it’s been pretty stress-
ful for all of you.”
Syed Ali, another of the resi-
dents, said the demolition plans
“social cleansing” adding: “Had
they gone ahead we would not have
been able to aff ord to live in our own
neighbourhood.
“I’m so relieved about this decision.
It’s not just the anxiety about where
we would go if the fl ats were demol-
ished but the sentimental value too.
“I was brought up in that fl at and
all my memories are tied up with it.” Residents
including Kay
Ballard, left,
and Khayrun
Begum, right,
met in Sophie
Spielman’s fl at
to oppose the
demolition
PHOTOGRAPH: SARAH
LEE/THE GUARDIAN‘I’ve been
happy here
for 57 years.
All I want to
do is live here
for the rest of
my days’Sophie
Spielman, 9465%
The proportion of young people
who think it is important to go to
university, down from 86% in 201370,
Number of students expected to seek
a university place this year through
the clearing admissions processРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS