Accountancy firms wake up to widening access

I am delighted to see today that EY has followed PwC's lead and scrapped their UCAS points requirement for student applications.

Thirty years ago, when I started teaching accounting at Oxford Poly, students on our accounting degree course were typically admitted with relatively poor A level results. In those days, course managers dealt with admissions and had a great deal of latitude: we had time to interview applicants and make a judgement about how well they might cope with degree level study. And, as the majority of staff teaching accounting had professional accounting qualifications, we could also develop some idea about whether the students were suited to and likely to be successful in subsequent professional examinations. Quite often, poor A level results could be explained by situations beyond the student's control and we could take those into account.

Many of these students flourished during their studies and achieved excellent degrees but those who wanted to become chartered accountants faced great difficulty in securing training contracts

Around that time, someone noticed a correlation between good A level results and success in ICAEW examinations. Accountancy firms were having to deal with increasing numbers of applications for training contracts, so setting a minimum A level score was an attractive, and apparently logical, screening process. The result was that our graduating students didn't even get as far as the interview stage. We tried to help, advising them to draft covering letters which stressed the value added of their university experience and to include a photo. We drew on our personal contacts in firms, encouraging them to visit us and meet our students and persuading them to make a case for interviewing strong applicants. We steered our students to apply to smaller firms where partners were often more interested in assessing how well a student might fit in to the team and have the skills to contribute quickly in a practical way than in their out-of-date A level results. For some, we suggested that they might find it easier to train with a different professional body, although an ICAEW qualification was, usually, in their view, the best: this was especially the case with our international students.

Our students had often felt that they had been written off at 18 because of poor A level scores but they had blossomed in higher education and regained confidence: it was very sad to see them denied entry to their chosen career paths, with three years of significant achievement dismissed as irrelevant.

The advent of online application meant we were no longer able to use any of our support strategies. A further blow: subsequent analyses of ICAEW exam performance revealed a correlation between a degree in a non-accounting subject and success in ICAEW examinations.  Our students could still find training contracts with smaller firms but those who succeeded with the Big Four became rare.

I'm still in touch with quite a few of my former students: they all became qualified accountants and many of them have had very successful careers, both within the profession and outside it. Some have even offered to employ me. But I still lament the loss to the profession which resulted from enforcing that rule for so many years and I greatly welcome the widening of access. I'm also delighted that one of my former colleagues is researching in this area: her work should provide sound data for future policy decisions.