Oxbridge ‘plans to reduce number of public school pupils’

PRIVATE schools must accept that they will place fewer pupils at Oxbridge, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge has warned.

Prof Stephen Toope said that the “premium” attached to independent schooling was in decline. He added that the increased intake of state school children at Cambridge – rising from 68.7 per cent in 2019 to 72 per cent last year – was “real progress”.

Prof Toope, a Canadian who leaves his post this September, told The Times: “I would never come in from the outside and say the system is fundamentally wrong and has to be completely overthrown.

“I would say we have to keep making it very, very clear we are intending to reduce over time the number of people who are coming from independent school backgrounds into places like Oxford or Cambridge.

“Individual students who are talented, we would want them, but they’re going to be competing against an ever-larger pool because there are more students coming from state schools.”