Rethinking merit? The development of more progressive approaches to university admissions in England

This paper explores how highly selective universities in England have responded to the Office for Students' call to make faster progress on widening access by 'rethinking how merit is judged in admissions' (OfS 2019: 8). Our analysis of the Access and Participation Plans (APPs) for 2020/21 to 2024/25 submitted to the Office for Students shows that England's most academically selective universities have committed to much more ambitious widening access targets than ever before. We also find that these universities have begun to articulate more structural explanations of socioeconomic inequalities in prior attainment; are making greater use of contextualised approaches to admissions; and are beginning to acknowledge the role they must play in supporting disadvantaged students to succeed at university. We argue that this represents the fragile beginnings of an important shift away from the traditional meritocratic model of admissions, in which university places go to the most highly qualified applicants irrespective of socioeconomic background, towards a more progressive model of admissions that seeks a greater degree of distributive fairness.