<p>An American dream</p>
<p>Richard Scorer (Commentary in The Guardian, Tuesday April 15, 2008)</p>
<p>For anyone who wants a Britain in which every child can reach his or her full potential, the statistics on the social background of students admitted to our top universities are uniformly depressing. Oxford admits over 44% of its students from private schools and Cambridge 40%, even though those schools only educate 7% of the country's children. The figures for many of the other top universities are even worse.</p>
<p>What can we do? The university admissions system operated by the US state of Texas is worth looking at closely. Ten years ago, after a legal challenge to affirmative action policies prevented universities in Texas from considering race as a factor in admissions, the state's legislators came up with an innovative alternative. In an attempt to make affirmative action colour blind, the top 10% of students at all the state's high schools were granted automatic admission to state universities.</p>
<p>Now, you get guaranteed entry to the state university system by being in the top 10% of your high school, not by having to compete against students from higher-achieving schools. Students at the best high schools who fall below the 10% line don't get automatic admission, whereas students from poor inner-city or rural high schools who make the top 10% of their school peer group get a guaranteed university place.</p>
<p>The idea was initially greeted with scepticism by educational experts. Some feared that even the best students at poor rural and inner-city high schools would never survive academically at top colleges such as the University of Texas. But 10 years on, the system has proved remarkably successful.</p>
<p>At the University of Texas at Austin, students admitted under the "10% rule" tend to get better grades than other students. They have a higher rate of graduation. Racial diversity has improved; the number of Hispanic and African-American students has risen by around 30% for each group. The student body has become much more economically and geographically diverse. Before the rule, the Austin campus drew students from 616 high schools throughout Texas; now it draws students from 853 schools, many in deprived areas.</p>
<p>The rule has come to dominate university admissions in Texas. There is resentment at the difficulties created for students at high-achieving high schools who fall below the 10% line. But the rule is politically popular. Legislators representing rural and urban constituencies have prevented it being watered down because, for the first time, children from their areas are getting a shot at the best higher education the state has to offer.</p>
<p>The system has also proved much more effective in broadening diversity than traditional affirmative action programmes. Poor white students from rural Texas and poor urban black students now get a real chance of entering a top university. That does far more to promote genuine diversity than the traditional affirmative action programmes, which tended to give preferential admissions to children of upper-income ethnic minority families.</p>
<p>Could we do something like this in Britain? The details might be different, but the idea is surely worth serious consideration. Such a system would not only give more working-class children a better chance of getting into higher education, it would also create a disincentive for middle-class parents to congregate in high-achieving schools, whether state or private.</p>
<p>Suddenly, that inner-city comprehensive might seem rather more attractive to middle-class parents who want to ease their child's path to a top university. Parents playing the system (trying to find the school that would give their child the best chance of getting into a good university) would work in tandem with the right social policy objective (socially mixed schools), not against it. So the education secretary, Ed Balls, should look carefully at the Texas "10% rule". If we want a genuine meritocracy in Britain, it might help to show us the way. </p>
<p>Richard Scorer is a lawyer and Labour parliamentary candidate.</p>
<p>What</a> we can learn from Texas about university admissions | comment | EducationGuardian.co.uk</p>