Colin Murphy: Brilliant students lost in the trenches of poverty suffer real unfairness in the CAO points race

There was disquiet last week about university places being allocated at random, but that’s not the worst injustice of the system

The great divide .... differences in attainment between rich and poor students are down to resources, not aptitude or ability

Colin Murphy

“Random selection” has been widely decried this past week. Our third-level admissions system prides itself on fairness; so, when a tiny number of top-performing students missed out on places in their chosen courses because those places had to be randomly allocated, this was seen as an injustice.

It is, indeed, unfair. I’m sorry for those students, many of whom will be devastated. But they’ll get over it. They’re the country’s top scholars. They’ll be fine. As far as systemic unfairness in the education system goes, this is pretty minor.