Almost two-thirds of all state schools in England did not send a single student to Oxford or Cambridge in the UCAS year 2009/10, according to newly released figures from the Department of Education (DfE).
Part of the government’s ‘transparency agenda’, the destination data was released for the first time in a bid to increase the amount of information available to parents.
The disclosed figures apply to the cohort of students who have just completed their third year at university.
Schools Minister Lord Hill said, “We are opening up access to this new data so people can see how different schools and colleges, and local authorities, perform. It gives parents greater information on which to base decisions.”
A mixed picture
Overall, 1,395 institutions (64.5%) sent no pupils to the ancient universities, out of a total of 2,164 English maintained schools and sixth-form colleges surveyed.
The local authority that sent the highest proportion of its school leavers to Oxbridge was Reading (7%), followed by Sutton (3%). The national average was approximately 1%.
When looking at Russell Group rather than just Oxbridge entry, however, the top regions were the North West (12%) and Yorkshire and the Humber (10%).The national average for entry to these twenty universities was 8%.
Lord Hill remarked that it was “interesting to see how well some schools and colleges in more deprived local authorities do in terms of students going to our best universities”.
Oxford students’ assessments of the figures were mixed. Hertford historian Rhys Owen was pleased to see “increasing” social mobility. “There is a very wide range of authorities doing well, many of which we might not have expected. It is true that access to Oxbridge is still very London- and South East-heavy, but it shows moves in the right direction.”
Conversely, St Anne’s access rep Joe Collin, who previously attended a Birmingham comprehensive, felt the data highlighted a negative “cycle” whereby “year after year, no one applies from these schools, so students there don’t see anyone they know attending. As a result, they think people like me don’t go to places like that, when they could not be further from the truth”.
Data needs “proper context”
However, proportional figures may not be entirely conclusive. A Sutton Trust report earlier this year showed that one state school, Hills Road Sixth Form College, sent on average 68 pupils a year to Oxbridge in the last three years.
In comparison, the largest proportional contingent from an individual school, Colchester Royal Grammar (16%), amounted to 24 a year in the same period.
A spokesperson for Oxford University warned that the data, if not contextualised, could give misleading conclusions. She criticised the DfE for “not including any useful attainment data-by-school that would put the destination data into its proper context”.
She added, “Admissions figures in themselves do not mean anything without context: most importantly attainment, but also how many people actually apply. Of those 1,395 schools, for example, how many of them fielded any AAA+ candidates? The DfE doesn’t supply this information, but it’s critical to helping understand why those schools don’t send anyone here.”
“Despite the enormous amounts of time and effort we spend on outreach, headlines like the ones these DfE releases produce only tend to reinforce the false perception that Oxford isn’t open to everyone – discouraging those we most want to reach from applying in the first place.”
OUSU Vice President for Access and Academic Affairs, David Messling, concurred, commenting, “Releases of this kind aren’t going to shift perceptions of Oxford. But events like last week’s creation of the Moritz-Heyman scholarship are.
“Oxford has some amazing stories to tell about life-changing opportunities available to students on grounds of academic ability and potential, and we are trying our utmost to make sure that these are the stories that reach schools.”
