The Great UCAS Fiction

Like a proud but nervous mother waving her son off to war, I’ve just said goodbye to my Year 13s (Upper Sixth, for the dinosaurs out there), who will sit their final exam in my subject immediately after half term. It ought to be a moment to lean back, put my feet up and smoke an imaginary cigar – a chance to reflect on a hard but satisfying year’s work.

Ah, if only.

Next up – alongside cajoling Year 12s (who are already mentally on the beach) to the end of term – is writing their University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) references. To this end, the college has helpfully provided a ‘refresher’ on best practice.

Now, you might think this is where a teacher’s professional judgement, based on two years’ knowledge of a student, is paramount. We are, after all, giving universities real insight into what their next intake might offer. That’s what you’d think. But no. Our job is to present a pen-pic of the uber-student – forever, in senior management’s words, “cycling downhill with the wind behind them”. While encouragement is in every teacher’s DNA, the references we are expected to write – liberally dusted with inspirational adjectives and superlatives – belong more to prize-winning fiction than honest educational assessment.

Take Lola, for example, who rarely completes homework. She will become “a visionary free spirit who selectively channels her boundless energy into the pursuits that truly ignite her soul”. Tyler, for whom abstract thought remains an occasionally visited country, is reimagined as someone who “approaches problems with unusual deliberation, preferring thoughtful reflection to rushed conclusions”. Serial non-attender Madison is eulogised as “a fiercely independent trailblazer who courageously follows her own rhythm”.

And for the genuinely talented? Harriet, if her reference is to stand out from her more mediocre peers, must possess “the work ethic of a Victorian industrialist and the quiet authority of a seasoned cabinet minister”. Okay, I might have over-egged that last one, but you get the idea.

No wonder most universities have abandoned selective interviews, doling out offers based on very flimsy evidence. Let’s secure the 30 grand, they seem to be saying, and worry about filling in the gaps further down the line. Ironically, the refresher session notes that prestigious universities are increasingly demanding additional admissions tests – UCAT for Medicine, LNAT for Law, TMUA for Mathematics – in a tacit admission that they can’t trust our hyperbolic word salads. Is it any surprise a university Maths department wants tangible proof of ability when we’re announcing the second coming of Sir Isaac Newton with every other candidate?

But surely our carefully considered predicted grades provide a reliable indicator? Dear reader, I refer you back to that wind-assisted cyclist. Students returning after summer will be delighted by forecasts that bear little resemblance to their Year 12 performance.

Even these optimistic predictions rarely satisfy. Cue the horse-trading, where a queue of ever so ‘umble students will appear at my door promising extra assignments and heroic effort if only I’ll upgrade that A to an A*. A few years ago I might have argued the toss. These days, in a culture built on mutually agreed exaggeration, I usually give them the extra star. Even the daftest of souls can finagle an A* A* A profile, and nobody really seems to care.

And so the great machinery rolls on: glowing references, inflated predictions, delighted parents – and the faint suspicion that everybody involved knows the game is up.

Dave Summers is a Sixth Form teacher and his name is a pseudonym.