Black students condemn MP’S claim of ‘social apartheid’

OXFORD University’s Afro-caribbean Society has said that university bosses should not be blamed for racial inequality, as they hit out at the intervention of David Lammy, the Labour MP.

They said Mr Lammy’s attack on the Oxbridge admissions policy – which he called “social apartheid” – risks doing “more harm” than good, as it reduces a complex issue to a mere “soundbite”.

Mr Lammy, a former education minister, commented on the under-representation of black students at Britain’s leading institutions after revealing that nearly one in three Oxford colleges failed to admit a single black British Alevel student in 2015.

Similar data released by Cambridge revealed that six colleges there failed to admit any black British A-level students in the same year. Mr Lammy went on to organise a letter, signed by more than 100 MPS, calling on the vice-chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge to take “urgent action” to help disadvantaged students and those from under-represented areas gain an Oxbridge education.

Now a group of black students at the university have criticised Mr Lammy’s intervention, pointing out that admissions data “does not show how our education system has continually failed students from particular cultural and economic backgrounds”.

In a statement published on its website, the Afro-caribbean Society said it welcomed “collaboration and dialogue” about the issue.

But it added: “Attempting to reduce such a complex issue to a series of political soundbites only serves to obscure the depth of the problem and can often do harm to the progress being made in the area of changing perceptions and breaking down barriers for the students at the very heart of this discussion.”