THE Oxbridge admissions process discriminates against candidates from public schools in favour of state-educated applicants, according to Dr Anthony Seldon, Headmaster of the prestigious Wellington College.
Dr Seldon has described the “hostility” against students from schools such as his as “the hatred that dare not speak its name”.
The Oxford University Press Office told Cherwell, “Dr Seldon is quoted as saying that this year he had 62 pupils clever enough to get an interview at
Oxbridge, but he expected ‘only 20’ to be offered places – that’s a success rate of over 30 per cent. Compare that to the overall success rates for all applicants (below 20 per cent) and independent school applicants (under 25 per cent).”
Dr Seldon’s accusations came in the same week as the release of new data on university admissions, which showed that applicants from independent schools to Russell Group universities are achieving a success rate of over 75 per cent.
For Oxford, the rate of entry was three in ten for privately educated candidates, higher than the overall acceptance rate. In total the figures show that 42.5 per cent of UK university offers went to independently schooled candidates.
Such figures support comments made last Saturday in an open letter by Sir Peter Lampl, Chair of the Sutton Trust. He argued, “Despite improvements in access for state school students over the last 15 years, over four in ten Oxbridge students still come from schools attended by just seven per cent of the population”.
One second-year PPEist commented, “When you consider that private school applicants overwhelmingly secure A and A* grades – a requisite condition for Oxbridge entry – the dominance of public school types begins to make more sense. The injustice lies not in Oxbridge selection procedure, but in the state education system’s failure to meet private sector standards.”
