Oxford and Cambridge universities ‘dumb down’ degrees in ‘inclusivity’ boost

Oxford and Cambridge universities have sparked fury after they revealed plans to substitute traditional exams for “inclusive assessments”. 

The Russell Group universities have been given the go-ahead to move away from traditional examination methods towards more “inclusive” alternatives, including take-home and open-book tests.

Critics have now described the move as “dumbing down education” which would spell “disaster for the nation”.

The plans would help to close the grades gap between white middle-class students and those of poor and minority backgrounds, the Office for Students (OfS) reasoned while signing them off.

The new strategy, allowing more flexibility of assessment and a departure from in-person and closed-book examinations, is part of the Access and Participation Plans (APPs) drawn up by universities around the country each year to show how they’re benefiting students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Oxford University has pledged to “use a more diverse and inclusive range of assessments” to “improve the likelihood” of students from “lower socioeconomic backgrounds” getting top degrees.

Cambridge, meanwhile, has promised to “improve outcomes” for “Black-British and British-Bangladeshi students” and acknowledged that “assessment practices” may have been to blame in the past for “awarding gaps”. 

The plans have come under fire from a number of directions, with Church of England clergyman Marcus Walker suggesting that it signals “the dumbing down of education across the university sector” and a “disaster for the nation”.

He wrote on X: “If [the University of Oxford] has decided to trash itself, it will deserve to crash down international league tables.”

GB News presenter Tom Harwood joined the furore, adding: “Saying you need to make exams easier to boost the results of ethnic minorities is the most racist thing I’ve ever read.”

Data from the OfS shows a gap of 22% between white and black students who achieved at least a 2:1 in the last academic year, with an 11% gap between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged students.

While an attainment gap between disadvantaged and advantaged students is well-publicised, the reasons behind it remain unclear.

However, former Education Minister Sir John Hayes also criticised the move towards “inclusivity”, telling the Daily Mail that it was “deeply insulting to students from minority backgrounds”.

“This knee-jerk and patronising approach to dumbing down university education serves no one,” Conservative MP Richard Holden added. “Children from every background can thrive in a highly rigorous academic environment.” 

“Through APPs, we encourage universities to consider whether their assessments are working properly for all students because we know that some students are more likely to attain lower grades than their peers, even when their prior academic performance is the same,” a spokesperson for the OfS said.

They added that it was “appropriate” for universities to “trial and evaluate changes in the way they grade students … where there is evidence that current assessment models may not be fair”, although examination practices must remain “academically robust, credible and a reliable reflection of students’ hard work”.