Leader: Time to address postcode route to information

The hunt is on for a better measure of who goes to university than postcodes. Postcodes are used for all kinds of purposes other than sorting the mail, one of those unintended consequences that make predicting future applications of innovations so difficult. But however handy they may be for by-and-large activities such as assessing insurance risks or targeting marketing mail shots, as an instrument for measuring the social spread of participation in higher education they have drawbacks: too easy to cheat; too blunt an instrument in a country where residential districts can, happily, be very mixed socially; and too uncertainly correlated with individual students' educational potential and attainment. The Conservatives' campaign to get the list of supposedly deprived area codes released suggests that they have seen possibilities for political fun.

It is an odd situation. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service is able to compile figures for the social composition of a university's intake because it has access to personal details from applicants about the occupational status of the family's principal earner. This information is not available to admissions staff. Why not? If the intention of the government's widening participation policy is that higher education should attract, admit and retain more poorer students rather than just more with worse qualifications, it would seem sensible, instead of relying on surrogate measures, to give them information about students' backgrounds that has already been collected. The reasons why this information is withheld may no longer be valid and should be reviewed.

Informed consent is considered to be the key criterion for allowing organ retention after treatment or autopsy (pages 8 and 18). It is considered to be the necessary pre-condition for setting up a national DNA/lifestyle databank, as the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council plan. So why should potential higher education students not be asked to give consent to the release of information on their personal background to admissions staff?