Eton beaten by 15 state schools for top university places

FIFTEEN state schools around the country get more offers from Russell Group universities than Eton, an analysis by The Daily Telegraph suggests.

Between them these schools have sent more than 30,000 students to leading universities in the past three years.

The Telegraph has obtained detailed data, after a series of freedom of information requests, from Russell Group universities about the 10 schools they have made the most offers to between 2018 and 2020.

The 15 state schools that outper- formed Eton were mainly sixth form colleges which have built up an expertise in teaching a rigorous, A-level curriculum. Universities have come under increasing pressure to boost their intake of students from state schools.

Russell Group universities have spent millions of pounds on “outreach” programmes in recent years and many make lower offers to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The state school with the highest number of offers from a Russell Group university was the Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge, where pupils received more than 4,500 offers over the past three years.

With over 2000 pupils aged 16-19, the sixth form college is one of the few state schools in the UK to offer Latin A-level.

The 15 state schools generally have far more students than the £42,500-a-year boarding school in Berkshire, which has 1,350 pupils aged 13-18. While the majority of Russell Group universities make the most offers to state-educated students, private schools still come top for Oxbridge offers.

Over the past three years, Oxford has made more offers to students from Eton than from any other school, while Cambridge has made the most offers to students from Westminster School.

Of the 24 members of the Russell Group, all but five – Cardiff, Southampton, Birmingham, Glasgow and Queen’s University Belfast – responded to the FOI requests with the relevant data.