LSE, Quotas and Freedom of Information

In the dying weeks of December 2004, a new sound could be heard as you walked along Whitehall : that of the paper shredder. But these civil servants were not shredding their credit card statements for fear of the identity theives. They were simply preparing for the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which came into force in January this year.

Just as it seemed that FOIA would be a paper tiger, with everything of interest either destroyed or (as in the case of Wars R Us QC's Iraq advice - hopefully more convincing than the speil we got in PIL) - exempt, along comes the rather embarassing disclosure of a document from our own dear LSE. Anyone reading this who's ever tried to print anything at LSE will have little difficulty believing that their shredders may not have been working...

The document, which naturally contained the caveat,

These notes should not under any circumstances be discussed with any member of the public, including students, parents and schools,

disclosed that the evil LSE is setting aside 40 places a year for applicants from state schools with poor records of achievement. Horror of horros ! Call Amnesty International - public school kids (a group which I must include myself in) have human rights too ! Toffs reclaim the streets !

But is the 'quota' really so bad ? 40 places is after all a modest number out of the total annual undergraduate intake...coming from what I term a 'privatised grammar school', I freely admit that I had smaller class sizes than in the state sector and it was therefore arguably easier for me to get higher grades...Moreover, lets remember the scheme was being run as a pilot and the numbers were not 'ring-fenced'. Nor are we dealing with a pro-state bias per se - merely a selection of the most failing schools.

Furthermore, it seems likely that a number of these schools are likely to be found in London's less-affluent boroughs; given its high proportion of international students' (far from being a bad thing) it is especially important that the LSE maintains some links with the city in which it is located.

Of course, its easy for me to say this being a) from a private school not in London and b) having gained admission to the LSE ...but hey, if you want to call me a hypocrite so be it.

So no great evil...just an embarrasing day for the person on shredder duty.