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Schwartz Review

Schwartz Report - Review 2008

In 2003, the then Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Charles Clarke, asked Professor Steven Schwartz to lead an independent review of the options that English higher education institutions (HEIs) should consider when assessing the merit of applicants for their courses, and to report on the high-level principles underlying those options. The final report of the Steering Group Fair Admissions to Higher Education: Recommendations for Good Practice (published 2004 and hereafter referred to as the Schwartz Report) set out five Principles which the Group believed formed the basis of a fair admissions system. A number of recommendations were also made to the wider education sector.

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) commissioned this review in response to one of the Schwartz Report's recommendations to Government that a further review be undertaken after three years. This review was managed by the Supporting Professionalism in Admissions (SPA) Programme and carried out by a research team based at Sheffield Hallam University from the Centre for Education and Inclusion Research, together with staff from the Institute for Access Studies, Staffordshire University:

The Review Report, published on 10 December 2008, comprises three reports, published as Fair Admissions to higher education: a review of the implementation of the Schwartz Report principles three years on:

Report 1 - Executive Summary and Conclusions word version / pdf version

Report 2 - Research Findings word version / pdf version

Report 3 - Themes and good practice case studies word version / pdf version

The original Schwartz Report Fair Admissions to higher education: Recommendations for good practice (2004) word version / pdf version

To visit the original Schwartz Report website, please go to www.admissions-review.org.uk

The research team in 2008 reviewed the implementation of the principles of the Schwartz Report using a variety of methods to identify qualitative and quantitative data. A questionnaire was distributed UK wide to all publicly funded higher education provider institutions in the UCAS scheme. There were 160 respondents to the survey, with 71% of HEIs and 27% of non-HEIs responding. Fifty-nine higher education provider institutions volunteered to be involved in the case studies - a very good indication of the positive response to the Schwartz Report in their institutions and their willingness to share examples of good practice. Ten institutions in England were chosen; representative of institution type, size and mission group. A review of institutions' websites in terms of accessibility and transparency with regard to certain aspects of admissions was also conducted by the research team.

The Review revealed that a number of the principles in the Schwartz Report have been successfully adopted by the higher education sector, particularly in relation to the areas of transparency, staff training and continuing professional development, aspects of professionalism and the use of technology to share resources and information. Key findings include:

• 98% of respondents agreed that it was important that universities and colleges have students from a wide range of backgrounds, a slight increase on those responding in the same way to the 2004 consultation questionnaire;
• Almost all respondents thought that it is desirable or necessary to consider additional measures of assessment in admissions outside of specific measures (e.g. portfolios for creative arts courses or auditions for performing arts courses). This was an increase on those who agreed in 2004;
• A third of respondents stated that their admissions decision-making function had become more centralised since the Schwartz Report, the reasons for this included internal changes in the institutions and changes introduced as a result of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) Code of Practice on admissions to higher education (September 2006) and the publication of the Schwartz Report. Entry Profiles were increasingly used to outline entry criteria and other requirements; and
• Institutions used a variety of data and methods to monitor and evaluate their admissions policies and practices; universities and higher education colleges were more likely to have a code of practice or policy on admissions than further education colleges.

Reviewed: January 2009