The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) exam board for England and Wales has been heavily criticised for its proposal to award students from poorly performing schools with additional university entrance points.

Pupils who performed better than average for their school would be awarded additional points, taking into consideration their home background and “educational context,” in a bid to try and widen university access and promote social mobility.

The exam board, which does not operate in Scotland, offered St Georges’s Hospital Medical School in London as an example of how the plans would work: “[St Georges] operates an Adjusted Criteria policy, through which it offers places in medicine to applicants with lower A-level grades (down to ‘BBC’) than the standard offer of ‘AAB’ or above, providing they are at least 60 per cent better than their school average.”

However these suggestions have come under fire from many within the education sector who argue that the proposals are simplistic and would be discriminatory against many students, particularly those from private schools.

Dr Tim Hands, headmaster of Magdalen College, Oxford, and co-chairman of the Independent Schools’ Universities Committee, said, “It is extraordinary. It takes no account of home background or the amount of tutoring a pupil could have.”

The Russell Group, of which Edinburgh University is a member, also condemned the idea saying that the plans were “crude and highly unlikely to help widen access.” Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, said admissions tutors already considered students’ academic achievements within a broader context through personal statements.

Similar schemes already operate in areas of Scotland, where students in certain schools must be accepted if they meet minumum entry requirements.