Elites have a bad name. Conjuring up images of toffs in top-hats and Eton collars, they are almost invariably paired with the adjective ‘out-of-touch’. But that need not be so. We must be careful to distinguish elitism of social background and elitism of the intellect. Any society requires its share of talented people, driven and nurtured to produce the best work that they can, and we all benefit from this. In the world of competitive sport this is uncontroversial, yet the educational institutions which nurture our intellectual elite are under constant attack for their exclusivity. While I have not seen many Eton collars at Oxbridge, places like Oxford certainly accept a disproportionate share of people from a privileged background. This produces not only an unpleasantly stratified society, but waters down the intellectual elite by missing out on potential from large swathes of society. The way to open up this talent pool, however, cannot be for Oxford and its peers to reduce their standards. Instead, we must turn our focus to improving primary and secondary education.
Those who like to scorn elitism would presumably rather elite scientists develop their vaccines, elite surgeons operate on them, and elite engineers design the bridges they drive over. These people have reached the heights of their ability by the rigorous process of selective and intensive education. We are all better off if these functions are performed by the most qualified people. It is simply the case that there are tasks requiring technical skill, which should be carried out by those whose education has qualified them to do so.
At the same time as acknowledging the need for an educated elite, we must admit that there is a problem with who gets the opportunity to develop these skills. Though Oxford is ostensibly open to anyone, there can be no doubt that attending certain schools puts applicants at a significant advantage. It also happens that many of those schools charge large sums of money. And so it is likely that applicants of a similar innate ability are being disadvantaged by their social background. This is not only unfair, but, by reducing the pool from which our intellectual elite is selected, diminishes the quality of that elite.
So what can Oxford do to solve this problem? One option is to lower the standard of entry (for certain groups, at least). This is the worst option. In theory, people might overcome their disadvantages and reach the same level as their more fortunate peers. But they are fighting against all the odds. The resulting downward pressure on the degree not only would reduce the capacity of that vital elite (and make it lose out to foreign competition), but would remove a significant lifeline for those from lower social backgrounds who do get in. If the academic qualification is less meaningful, inevitably connections and social capital more readily accessible to the wealthy will become more influential in their future careers.
In reality, there is only so much that Oxford can do: most of the disadvantage of bad schooling has been baked in by the time of university admissions. But I have two suggestions. Oxford could involve itself in schools by focusing outreach work not simply on persuading pupils to apply, but helping teachers prepare children for academic rigour. Secondly, we could look at France. Upon leaving school, children set on the academic path move to an école préparatoire for a year or more, before taking the entrance exams of the grandes écoles. Rather than rejecting those with genuine potential who have been failed by poor education – or letting them in with a lower standard – could we not run something similar aimed at those who, with the right education, have a good shot at getting in? These might be run at Oxford, a sort of transitional year, or instead as a form of extended secondary education provided by the state. Programmes such as UNIQ, though no doubt valuable, does not come close to this in length or scope. There does exist a foundation year, but it only has 68 places – indeed, I hadn’t heard of it before researching this article
Nevertheless, the impetus must lie with improving primary and secondary education. There is precedent for this: the rise of academically selective state education after the 1944 Education Act led to significantly increased Oxford admissions from state schools. As Adrian Wooldridge notes, the percentage of the privately educated at Oxford fell from 55% in 1959 to 39% in 1969. Over a similar period the proportion of the eldest sons of peers who got a place fell from 50% to 20%. One Eton headmaster is cited as believing that 60% of private schools would have gone under if most grammar schools had remained (obviously there are still a few). Of course, there were flaws in the 1944 settlement, and we need not copy the model exactly (for example, there could be more opportunities to move to a selective school than the all-or-nothing 11-plus), but the key point is that selective state education can be tremendously beneficial. Why should academic selection be the preserve of private schools?
Oxford cannot alone make up for the failure of schooling without compromising its own academic standards. To do so would disadvantage everyone who relies on the research that it produces, and would work against the disadvantaged who do make it here. We are right to decry the fact that access to the intellectual elite is so much easier for the social elite. Unfortunately, Oxford can only play so much of a role in changing that.
