Oxbridge ‘must do more to help poor students’
OXFORD AND Cambridge should do more to “recognise potential” in poorer would-be students, the Government’s universities tsar has said.
The two prestigious universities still have a “mountain to climb” in ensuring bright but disadvantaged teenagers have a chance of winning a place, Professor Les Ebdon added.
Asked about the work the institutions are doing to widen access, Prof Ebdon, director of the Office for Fair Access (Offa), said: “Do I think there’s fair access at Oxbridge? Well obviously not. I am the director of fair access to education and I require Oxford and Cambridge to do more work than anyone else to raise their access and opportunities.
“They’ve moved significantly. We’re seeing the highest level of state school students at Oxbridge for over 30 years. It’s a real mountain to climb. Part of that mountain, of course, is the fact that typically, Oxbridge are asking for A*A*A for entry, and there are very few people in state schools who get that, and that’s why it’s important they work with schools to raise attainment, because that is where the real barrier is.”
Students could win places on some courses with lower grades, typically classics, he said.
Cambridge admission statistics show that in 2016, 3.3 per cent of the students accepted were from the fifth of areas with the lowest participation.
Speaking after a Buckingham University conference, Prof Ebdon said a number of universities with high entry requirements use “contextual data” – looking at young people’s circumstances and backgrounds.
Both Oxford and Cambridge take contextual information into account when they look at who to interview, so it’s not that they don’t do that. I might hope that they do it more systematically.
“I’m constrained by law from interfering with the admissions process of any university, and I won’t do that, but if you ask me should they be doing more, the answer is yes, obviously, because they have so few students from quintile 1 (most disadvantaged), so few students from free school meals, so few students from different ethnic minorities, so yes, they certainly should be doing more.”