Bristol University is pioneering a scheme to encourage applications from students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Annabel Miller explains the plan and asks what it can achieve

Catholic head teachers have applauded a groundbreaking move by the University of Bristol to lower its entry requirements for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Bristol Scholars scheme offers dozens of places to Bristol pupils who have high potential but who may not, due to personal circumstances, achieve the top A level grades usually demanded by the university. The scheme will allow such pupils to fall below the usual standard by four grades. For example, an offer which would usually be “A*, A, A” could fall to “A, B, C”. No grades below C will be accepted, and students applying for “professional” subjects such as medicine and dentistry will be interviewed.

This grades concession will be open to independent schools in the city as well as state schools, because it is recognised that the personal difficulties that hold children back are not limited to financial poverty. Each school in Bristol will be able to put forward five students, who will be offered a conditional place with reduced grades.

The Bristol Scholars scheme was launched by the Secretary of State for Education, Justine Greening, at St Bede’s Catholic College in Bristol. The assistant head at St Bede’s, Malcolm Strange, told The Tablet his school had selected five “excellent” students, chosen because they might not get the top grades that the school believes they would have achieved had they had a “fair crack of the whip” in education. He emphasised that the disadvantages the five students faced had not been purely financial, but included a range of health and socioeconomic issues. The students were chosen by the school, whittled down from a shortlist of 10, some of whom did not want to study at Bristol.