Success at Oxford is about work ethic not background

In 1965, Hertford College, Oxford appointed a Tutor for Admissions to revolutionise the College’s admissions process. Neil Tanner, an Australian from what we might call a disadvantaged background, was tasked with changing a system which “overwhelmingly favoured applicants from public schools”.

He set up the “Tanner Scheme” – an outreach programme which would seek out and request grammar schools which had never sent pupils to Oxford to put forward their best students for interview, with the successful candidates being offered a place at Hertford on the condition of obtaining two E grades at A-level. One of the Tanner Scheme boys was Keith Dorrington, a butcher’s son and the first in his family to go to university, who came up to Hertford in 1971.

Tanner would likely be immensely proud of the fact that Dorrington is now a successful doctor as well as an Oxford don, deciding the fate of young applicants himself. He would doubtless be much less thrilled about the fact that, 50 years on, the University is still fighting claims that the admission process is biased against certain groups of students. Last week the Labour MP David Lammy accused Oxford of being a “bastion of entrenched wealthy, upper-class, white, southern privilege”.

Having studied there myself, I feel compelled to say my experience doesn’t support Lammy’s statement.

Contrary to what some may believe, there is no “Oxford type”. Indeed, it is entirely possible to go through the full three or four years there without being aware of the existence of the Bullingdon Club, or delivering a precocious lecture at the Oxford Union that might come back to haunt one later in life.

Yes, going up to Oxford is intimidating, but not in the way people might think. Much more daunting than the imposing architecture is the fact that every one of your fellow students – whatever their educational background – is at least as clever as you are, and that however bright you are, there’s no way you can bluff your way through a one-on-one tutorial on an obscure aspect of European Law when it’s your tutor who has written the textbook. The only thing that determines your success once you’re in is your work ethic and your performance – nobody cares a jot whether you’re celebrating your birthday at McDonalds or Le Manoir.

If we want our top two universities to continue to be globally prestigious, we need to ensure no bright young person is put off from applying. There is undoubtedly a debate to be had about state schools not only ensuring their brightest children attain the grades they deserve, but also that they encourage them to attempt admission to Oxbridge.

Oxford itself needs to do more to encourage people from different backgrounds to apply; it is heartening that the percentage of state school educated pupils there has gone up from 34 per cent in 1961 to over 59 per cent in 2018, but privately-educated students are still disproportionately represented.

But while, yes, Oxford is undeniably intimidating, as Tanner knew and proved through his admissions scheme, whether a candidate is able to overcome that intimidation has little to do with their background. FOLLOW Dia Chakravarty on Twitter @DiaChakravarty;

at telegraph.co.uk/opinion To order prints or signed copies of any Telegraph cartoon, go to telegraph.co.uk/prints-cartoons or call 0191 603 0178

Even if you don’t shop much at M&S these days you probably felt something like sadness when you heard the bad news last week. Perhaps a twinge of guilty bereavement at the decline of a friend with whom you had fallen out of touch? Would decent old M&S really be the latest casualty in the high-street apocalypse? Forget all the abstract arguments about the state of the economy: this is real life.

My own high street which once had a butcher, a fishmonger and a hardware store is now filling up with coffee chain outlets, nail parlours and charity shops – just like yours, I expect.

Everybody, apparently, knows who is to blame: the rapacious councils, who have made local parking ruinously expensive and formidably difficult. (In my borough you can only pay to park with a smartphone, which rules out much of the elderly population.) Then there is the escalation of business rates, which makes running an independent shop prohibitively expensive. Yes, we have heard all of this and it is certainly true. But surely there is another element readerprints@telegraph.co.uk