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  3. Social mobility in the U. K. could be reversed unless the government and universities make changes to encourage and pay for more

Social mobility in the U. K. could be reversed unless the government and universities make changes to encourage and pay for more

admin2017-04-20  21
问题     Social mobility in the U. K. could be reversed unless the government and universities make changes to encourage and pay for more students from disadvantaged backgrounds to take degrees, according to the government’s independent adviser on the issue. Alan Milburn said in a report that social mobility was now "flatlining at best" after gains in the early part of the last decade.
    "Given the headwinds that universities and higher education institutions are facing—tuition fees, student caps, public funding constraints—there’s a real danger things will go backwards, rather than forwards," Milburn told the Guardian. "As the economy changes, who gets into university does become a very important driver of social mobility."
    The report recommends changes across government policy and the way universities select, fund and encourage students from more disadvantaged areas, who he argues have been shown to do better at university than pupils from private schools with the same grades. Suggestions include offering all students from poorer backgrounds an interview and considering offering places to those with lower grades. Acknowledging pressure on public spending during the recession, Milburn calls on all parties to commit to government funding for higher education rising from 1. 2% currently to 1.5%, the average for the OECD group of advanced economies.
    The former Labour MP and cabinet member, who was the first person in his family to go to university, said social mobility created "falters as well as risers", echoing candid comments by the Liberal Democrat business secretary, Vince Cable, who told an audience on Wednesday that social mobility was often a "two-way street" and "a zero-sum game". "We want everyone to move up and no one to move down," said Cable. "But in the real world not everyone can be a star. Social mobility is often embodied in the comprehensive school pupil who reaches Oxbridge, but what about the school dropout who finished up in a lowly menial job? That is also social mobility. But this is surely what meritocracy is all about—success through hard work, not through birth."
    Milburn’s report says universities spend more than ￡400rn to soften the impact of higher tuition fees on students from poorer backgrounds, but says there is little evidence that it is well spent, and calls for deep changes. It advocates that money is spent not just on reducing fees but helping to fund poorer students, and calls for a new version of the scrapped Educational Maintenance Allowance, intended to help poorer pupils remain in school to do A-levels Universities are asked to agree to use "contextual data" when assessing applications to give pupils from worse schools a better chance, even if they have lower grades. Because some universities—especially from the Russell Group of higher ranked institutions—have objected to such a move in the past, Milburn offers them alternatives, including running new programmes to assess and prepare school-leavers, such as summer schools, and guaranteeing interviews to pupils from schools in disadvantaged areas.
    Ministers are urged to scrap a cap on student numbers, which Milburn calls an artificial limit on aspiration, and to better explain the tuition fees policy, under which students start repaying their loans when their earnings rise above a certain threshold. One option would be to rename the policy a graduate tax, which it is "in all but name", says Milburn, though he says it might be too late for that. He also calls for more funding for post-graduates, probably through upfront loans, saying the issue is "in danger of becoming a social mobility timebomb".
    The proposal to re-introduce the EMA was widely welcomed by social and education organizations, including the children’s charity Barnados, which said it had evidence that children were having to choose between the cost of breakfast and their bus fare to school. The left-of-centre IPPR thinktank welcomed the report’s suggestion that "we should look at applying the lessons of the pupil premium in schools to the university sector, with more funding being provided to institutions if they recruit from disadvantaged backgrounds".  
What is this passage mainly concerned?
选项 A、Education fund needs social mobility.
B、Education needs new policy and reform.
C、Children pay more premiums in schools, so there are difficulties in their lives.
D、Children were recruited from disadvantaged backgrounds, so they are very poor.
答案B
解析 主旨题。根据第六段和第七段第一句的叙述可知，米尔本对政策改革的呼吁得到多个社会和教育组织的广泛接受。孩子们还在早餐和车费间做艰难选择的事实更加说明第六段中所提到的改革的必要性，故选[B]。根据文意可知，社会流动性的实现需要更多的教育改革，故排除[A]；[C]和[D]均不能概括全文的主旨，故排除。
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