Friday, May 23, 2025
Blog Page 829

St Olave’s Grammar, and the deeper problems with the education system

Lucas Bertholdi-Saad
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St Olave’s Grammar, and the deeper problems with the education system

On the 29th August, The Guardian broke a story about sixteen Year 12 students at St Olave’s Grammar School being removed from the school, possibly unlawfully, after they ‘failed to get top grades’ in AS level or internal exams. Within a week, the school backed down under pressure from parents, education lawyers and even MPs, and readmitted those students on the 1st September. But the Olave’s story has drawn attention to much broader issues with well-performing state schools throwing their students under the bus for a higher spot in the league tables.

I was a student at Olave’s for seven years, leaving in 2014. The school has highly selective entrance requirements to Year 7, high GCSE requirements to progress to the Sixth Form and, as was commonly the practice while I was there, further ones to continue to Year 13. It has had these requirements for a long time, and a couple of people I knew weren’t allowed back to finish their A-levels when I was there.

What the school did with these students, and the ones this week, was morally wrong, and possibly illegal. It was clearly not done in the best interests of students, but instead in the best interests of the school’s league table position. It is a lot easier to get 94%” A*/B grades if you cut out the bottom 10% of the cohort. These actions were part of the culture of the school, which pushed students hard and let some of them fall by the wayside.

Every student there knew the school was in a way an exam factory, and that it prioritised what it called ‘excellence’ – mostly academically, but also in music or sports. Aydin Önaç, the headteacher who taught us to pronounce his name ‘Önaç, as in, a natural talent,’ was obsessed with achieving good results. Anyone in my cohort or the ones around mine remembers the bizarre assemblies he gave, declaring not only that ‘Bs are not on our radar’ but also that St Olave’s students were ‘five times better’ than those at the local comprehensive.

I won’t deny that I enjoyed my time at Olave’s, or that the teachers treated me well and gave me lots of opportunities. But students who struggled to meet its tough academic standards were left behind, with no support. One of my old school friends is clear that he felt failed by the school for giving him neither academic nor pastoral support when he was having a hard time. If you had academic problems, it was obvious the school didn’t really care about you.

As Olave’s is a local authority maintained school, it is subject to Department of Education guidance that states that it is illegal to exclude a student for non-disciplinary matters, although there is some grey area regarding its applicability to St Olave’s Sixth Form. But what St Olave’s did would be completely legal for schools not maintained by local authorities, which account for two thirds of all state secondary schools in the country.

As Wadham’s SU president last year, one area I worked on was policy relating to academic monitoring and suspension. As it stands, it is in Wadham College policy – and the policy of many other colleges – that students must be maintaining “satisfactory academic performance”. Generally this means working at a 2:1 standard, and it is possible for students who have suspended their studies for health reasons to be refused permission to resume them if they do not achieve a 2:1 in collections before their return. Having spent many meetings with College staff and tutors discussing this, I am certain that the reality of Wadham’s suspension and readmission processes is one which is flexibly applied, takes into account the circumstances of the case, and where people do try and do the best for students. The provision is there, however, and tutors did defend it every time I objected on behalf of the student body, against the principle of throwing someone out on something that isn’t a failing grade.

I hope some of the academics who have followed the St Olave’s story in the news this week also consider it next time they are thinking about their own students, and their own academic policies. Equally, while the NUS has rightfully campaigned against the Teaching Excellence Framework and the marketisation of higher education, it is important to consider how these ruthless attitudes towards students, prioritising prestige and outward displays of achievement over learning and development, affect children and teenagers.

The new royal baby is a political mistake

Ethan Croft
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The new royal baby is a political mistake

1981, 2011. Bunting, people in the streets wearing Chinese-made Union flag hats, and a public holiday. It has become a rule of modern monarchy that young royal couples excite euphoria, and the Windsor family knows it well. In times of economic depression and political discontent, the people in the Palace can be relied upon to instil a docile loyalty and vicarious happiness in the people. Their family is reported on as though it were ours, by lickspittle royal correspondents on rolling news channels. As the announcement of a third pregnancy came on Monday, television journalists kicked into royal reporting mode, making as much hay of an everyday event as possible. Before she could even work out how to pronounce Hyperemesis gravidarum (severe morning sickness), Victoria Derbyshire on the BBC’s morning current affairs programme told us the royal couple were expecting, and that everyone was very happy about it. Whether this was disclosed to her by strong powers of intuition, divine revelation, or some form of mass telepathy, I don’t know. I’m not so much striking at Derbyshire, but rather the television news style that makes all breaking stories glib and speculative. The question must be asked: is everyone really so happy about the new royal baby? Perhaps not.

To put it in the dispassionate (but altogether traditional) terms of the royal family’s biological snakes and ladders game, Wills and Kate have the Heir, and they also have the Spare. After a recent amendment to the Succession Act, female royals like Princess Charlotte now have the same rights of inheritance as their male siblings. The expected new child then, is somewhat surplus to requirements. Not that this should put off any loving couple from bearing children. Except actually, it might. Those many young families across the country struggling to buy a home, or afford a high cost of living, might think again before deciding to have more children. And those faced with Her Majesty’s government’s punitive two-child benefit cap have little choice – they are forced to draw a line under the idea.

Our recent general election, and the European referendum before it, showed the people are at this moment quite prepared to shake up or even shake off the ruling institutions they have grown accustomed to. Having just been treated to a week-long license-fee funded rehash of the 1997 Diana hysteria, I was reminded most of the speed and ferocity with which the country turned on Elizabeth II and her entourage as they hid away in Balmoral Castle. They were seen to have crossed the thin line from magisterial, to ‘out of touch’. The Windsor family might want to keep this in mind as its next generation rises to prominence.

Richardson’s comments are not just offensive – they’re dangerous

Naomi Packer
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Richardson’s comments are not just offensive – they’re dangerous

Speaking at the Times Higher Education Summit, Oxford University’s vice-chancellor Louise Richardson spoke about encountering students who feel uncomfortable being in a class with professors who express homophobic views. The answer for them, she said, was to engage with those views and challenge them.

Richardson claimed: “If you don’t like his views, you challenge them, engage with them, and figure [out] how a smart person can have views like that. Work out how you can persuade him to change his mind. It is difficult, but it is absolutely what we have to do.”

If it isn’t immediately obvious why such a sentiment is problematic, I will spell it out. In essence, what Richardson is saying is that in place of understandable outrage, students should grit their teeth and interrogate the intellectual validity of homophobia. There is no such validity. The identities of those who form part of the LGBT+ community are not up for debate and it is not for anyone other than the individuals themselves to analyse their lived experience.

The sort of invalidation which is implicit in Richardson’s comments isn’t just offensive, it’s dangerous. A recent study found that 40% of transgender people have attempted suicide and research by the LGBT foundation found that those who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual are two to three times more likely than heterosexual people to suffer depression. Oxford has one of the largest LGBT+ communities in Britain and therefore, shouldn’t the Vice Chancellor’s emphasis be on ensuring an inclusive learning environment in which all, regardless of their sexual orientation, are able to thrive?

Of course, we will all, at some point, encounter academic discomfort or a sense of intellectual inferiority at an elite university. But there is an important distinction between a tutor publicly dissecting and criticising one’s ideas and the same tutor promulgating homophobic bigotry. The former is an uncomfortable experience, but one which can be said to promote intellectual rigour, and the latter is prejudice, plain and simple.

Richardson is suggesting that instead of seeing such behaviour as offensive or intimidating, we should all have a long hard think about why clever people can also be homophobes, that maybe after racking our brains we will come to another conclusion other than the obvious: that such people are small-minded and discriminatory and have no place in positions of power in our institutions. Moreover, tutors and professors have agreed to undertake not only an academic role but a pastoral one, which ideally should ensure the safety of students of all backgrounds and identities.

Finally, one struggles to see how such a debate could be fruitful. Even if a student could summon the wherewithal to argue such sensitive matters with their professor, doing so would be counter-intuitive. The professor will, more often than not, be 30 years their senior and hold sway over their marks, their references and perhaps even their final degree result. The odds are stacked against students before they even open their mouths.

Richardson’s comments demonstrate a worrying lack of understanding, and show that she is apparently oblivious to the power dynamic which exists within an educational context. We should all be concerned by her remarks. To paraphrase one student’s remarks on a public forum: homophobia is not, and never will be, a valid intellectual position.

There is an open letter to the Vice Chancellor and Senior Staff which can be signed here if you would like to denounce her comments.

Oxford named best university in the world for second year running

Jack Hunter
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Oxford named best university in the world for second year running

Oxford University has consolidated its place at the top of the Times Higher Education (THE) world rankings, fending off its historic rival Cambridge.

Oxford came first in the rankings for the second year running, with Cambridge rising from fourth to second. It is the first time that two UK institutions have come first and second in the rankings.

The two universities were followed by the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Oxford vice-chancellor Louise Richardson said: “I am delighted that Oxford has held its position at the top of these global rankings. Success in our field is never an accident; it is achieved by a relentless pursuit of excellence, creative brilliance and a deep commitment to our enduring values.

“To be judged the best university in the world for the second successive year, against the backdrop in which Britain’s role in the world is uncertain, and the place of universities in society open to question, will be a great source of pride for everyone at Oxford, and, I hope, for the whole country.”

Further down the list was Imperial College London in eighth, UCL in 16th and LSE in 25th. Overall, the UK saw 31 of its institutions feature in the top 200.

THE uses 13 different performance indicators to produce the rankings, grouped into five different areas: teaching, research, citations, internationalism, and industry income.

The Top Ten

1 – Oxford University
2 – Cambridge University
3 – California Institute of Technology
3 – Stanford University
5 – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6 – Harvard University
7 – Princeton University
8 – Imperial College London
9 – University of Chicago
10 – ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Second-year PPEist Sam Wycherley said: “It’s nice to have Oxford on top, but I wouldn’t put too much faith in the impartiality of a newspaper staffed largely by Oxford grads.”

Grayson Perry’s Polymorphous Popularity

Georgiana Wilson
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Grayson Perry’s Polymorphous Popularity

Welcome to “The Most Popular Art Exhibition in the World!” – Grayson Perry’s latest public performance in his fluid identity as man/woman, craft potter, celebrated fine artist, esteemed Reith lecturer and TV presenter. His new show is at the Serpentine Gallery in London, on the site of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851 – the hugely anticipated show of international culture and industry in a specially-constructed crystal palace. According to Perry, his exhibition is potentially even more sensational.

Identity and how we define ourselves within society is at the heart of this exhibition. Just inside the entrance a large piggy bank blocks the way, with two heads and different slots for Urban, Left, Male, Leave, Fear, Poor, Old, and many other options. Feel like you might fit into more than one slot? Put another coin in- it’s all the more money for Grayson! Next is a vast woodcut of Perry himself, reclining, nude, made up as his alter-ego Claire, with breasts and penis. Equally self-aware and playful are the two nearby ceramic vessels entitled “I Really Love You Super Rich Person”, and “Puff Piece”, with the invented sycophantic remarks of famous art critics inscribed on its body, (“Wow” says John Berger).

One room shows the works made in his Channel 4 documentary “All Man”, which investigated cultural prejudices surrounding masculinity. The phallic pot “Object in Foreground” is one of Perry’s less subtle works about bankers in The City. It is decorated with images of money, along with George Osbourne’s face. Beside it, another towering woodcut titled “Animal Spirit” represents the stereotype of alpha masculinity as a horned bear with an erection labelled “reasonable” and “objective”. On the subject of Brexit, Perry has made two pots (one for each side of the debate) depicting his own biased perceptions of the type of people who voted for each.

An art exhibition by a transvestite exploring the idea of the self and more specifically, gender fluidity couldn’t be more appropriate at a time when this subject is the current hot ticket for media debate. Rather than achieving a subtle commentary on our society’s beliefs and identity, however, these illustrations of stereotypes throughout the exhibition highlight how ridiculous it can be to try to strictly define a person. Perry enjoys a special polymorphous position as a cross-dressing ceramicist with a teddy bear and a big macho motor bike which defies categorisation.

Having started cross-dressing when he was a child, Perry has now become a self-proclaimed mascot for fluid identity. He chose to dress Claire as Little Bo Peep because this is the furthest from alpha masculinity: “vulnerable, innocent” and pink. “I tick so many boxes” boasted Perry in a recent interview.

In this exhibition, Perry addresses quite a few minorities in the art world (and by consequence wins some small ownership over that minority), despite not being a part of it. A flag on the wall, entitled ‘Gay Black Cats MC’, shows two grinning cats embracing on a motorcycle as it escapes the bared teeth of a rearing lion in a domed church, not to mention the candy pink “Princess Freedom Bicycle” (custom-made for his alter-ego Claire) and the pink hearts on his motorcycle. All these grant him a ‘gender privilege’ over the female, gay, black or ‘straight white male artist’. In the “most popular” current identity debate, he is a clear winner.

But Grayson Perry continues to present himself as a jester on the margins of the art world and British culture, licensed to observe everything from the outside. In self-consciously confronting his own influence and “popularity”, he excuses the contradictions that are so obvious throughout his self-presentation. “Irony has become this crippling get-out-of-jail-free card”, he says. Yet his play on outsider art, a talismanic shell sculpture of the artist’s teddy bear in the exhibition called “Outsider Alan” pretends to be something outside the mainstream.

Perry may still enjoy performing as a twee, marginal, craft potter, but as early as 2008 he was ranked number 32 in The Telegraph’s list of the “100 most powerful people in British culture”. It is with this power that Grayson has made himself untouchable, beating the critics to the first and last comment through his popular TV programmes, lectures and books.

One label he can’t hold on to is his self-made reputation for controversy. I recall walking, amongst large crowds of families, through his 2015 Margate exhibition – “Provincial Punk”. In a festival atmosphere, large groups giggled and photographed the pornographic pots and obscene slogans. Perry is mainstream. His self-conscious title: “The Most Popular Exhibition in the World!” is, irritatingly, appropriate.

Hollywood’s Hellboy watershed moment

Greg Brinkworth
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Hollywood’s Hellboy watershed moment

All told, it hasn’t been the best week in the PR offices of the Hollywood film industry.

In what might be the first move of its kind, Deadpool star Ed Skrein announced his departure from the cast of Hellboy and his role as Asian-American soldier Ben Daimio on Monday, citing Hollywood’s “worrying tendency” to reimagine ethnic minority characters as white. As his decision was lauded by many on social media, including the original creator of the Hellboy comic series, actress Chloe Bennet revealed that she changed her name from Chloe Wang, after repeatedly facing discrimination from Hollywood casting agents. Again, not the best week for PR.

What both actors accused Hollywood producers of was ‘whitewashing’ – a term that is fast becoming the most toxic label to be associated with a fledgling studio project. American cinema has always struggled with the concept of racially sensitive casting, from the crude and offensive blackface of the 1920s to more recent criticisms of films like The Ghost in the Shell and Dr Strange, which cast Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton respectively in roles originally written as south-east Asian characters.

Following on from the ‘#OscarsSoWhite’ controversy last year, it should have been apparent to the producers of Hellboy that the tide of public opinion is turning, and shoehorning a white actor into a role that they really don’t belong in is as bad for business as it is morally reprehensible. It remains an uncomfortable truth, however, that Hollywood is perfectly happy to develop stories that borrow from other cultures, whilst denying non-white actors a chance to participate in their production.

The whitewashing debate, like all conversations around minority representation, often attracts criticism from its detractors as yet another example of the pitfalls of political correctness. Clearly, the expropriation of cultures and histories, alongside the marginalisation of the people to whom they belong, goes far beyond this. Denying non-white actors access to breakthrough roles in big-budget productions not only contributes to the embarrassing lack of diversity in Hollywood, but more worryingly reinforces the insidious notion that white actors are worth more on screen than their non-white counterparts.

Yet thanks to the actions of Ed Skrein (and doubtless the support he has received on social media) things may, finally, have reached a turning point. Crucially, Skrein spoke out against whitewashing before starting work on the film, unlike Johansson, Swinton, and many others, who took up their artificial roles before clutching at some form of retroactive justification for their actions. And equally, the Hellboy production team have apologised for their offensive casting, rather than attempting a damage-reduction approach of denial.

In these monolithic film companies, with their eyes aggressively fixed on profit margins, change thus far has been depressingly thin on the ground, and even harder to achieve in an industry notorious for conducting most of its business behind closed doors. Whatever progress has been made on this issue, individual cases do little to help the lack of diversity in general – we still have a situation where unless a role mandates a non-white actor, in all likelihood the position defaults to a white one.

From the days of early cinema, the guise of institutional racism in Hollywood has morphed, a fact which the film-going public is increasingly waking up to. But Ed Skein’s brave decision to speak out, emphasising that whitewashing is still a shameful tendency in mainstream film production, is perhaps a sign that things are slowly getting better.

Student wins battle to remain in UK and take up Oxford place

Cherwell News
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Student wins battle to remain in UK and take up Oxford place

A student has won his battle to stay in the UK and take up his place at Oxford University.

Brian White, an orphan from Zimbabwe, was facing deportation but has been granted indefinite leave to remain.

He spent the first six years of his life at at an orphanage in Zimbabwe, but moved to the UK with his adoptive family at the age of 15.

He received three A stars and an A at A-level at Highfields School in Wolverhampton, and held an offer to study Chemistry at Lady Margaret Hall.

Fears over his immigration status and inability to obtain student finance meant his offer had already been deferred by 12 months.

White’s schoolfriend Luke Wilcox set up a change.org petition which last week gained the support of over 110,000 signatures including the author Phillip Pullman and the comedian Frankie Boyle.

On Monday, White’s lawyer Louis MacWilliams confirmed to him that he would be allowed to stay in the UK.

White told the Wolverhampton Express and Star: “I got the email from Louis and sat down and let it sink in for about five to 10 minutes. Then I started ringing everybody round to say thank you. I owe so many people so much.”

LMH Principal Alan Rusbridger welcomed the news on Twitter.

The Arpaio pardon is misuse of power, plain and simple

Grace Bowland
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The Arpaio pardon is misuse of power, plain and simple

Joe Arpaio, one-time sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona: not the racist, sexist monster that the media portrays, but a devoted law enforcement officer just trying to do his job?

I’m just kidding. He set up self-described concentration camps, and chain gangs. He ignored over 400 sex crimes, including 32 cases of child molestation. He faked an assassination plot against him for political capital. He ordered his department to racially profile Latinos, his county lost millions in lawsuits to the families of victims killed in his jails, and he looks like the old man from Up‘s evil twin. There should be no question as to the nature of his character.

Trump’s recent pardon of Arpaio is controversial to say the least. In a recent poll, 60% of Americans said that they disapproved of the pardon. Already, legal challenges have sprung up against it. The most worrying part, however, is not the President’s support of such a controversial figure; we already knew what kind of man the 45th President of the United States is. It’s the conviction itself.  In July, Arpaio was convicted of contempt of court following a refusal to stop his department’s racial profiling practices, and this is the conviction that Trump has intervened on. By pardoning him, Trump shows blatant disregard and disrespect for the decisions of the court; to do so is not only to condone Arpaio’s original crimes, but also to give presidential cronies free rein to ignore the law. The concept of the presidential pardon sits uneasily with the ideal of the separation of powers to begin with, and when applied to a conviction for disobeying the court, it becomes far more sinister.

The separation of powers has long been held up as one of the foundations of any successful democracy, and a fundamental aspect of this is that the executive should not have control over the decisions of the judiciary. The American approach to the power of pardon has long undermined this principle. Using the pardon to nullify a conviction only a month after the guilty verdict is returned makes a mockery of the system. Why respect the law when the President can decide, on a whim, that it no longer applies to you?

Perhaps my British perspective skews my approach. While our Prime Minister is very much “first among equals”, appearing to act mostly as a figure for roughly half of the country to hate at any one time, the President holds a far greater constitutional authority. Our closest equivalent to the presidential pardon, the royal prerogative of mercy, is a far more controlled process. The Queen acts on the suggestion of her ministers, who review the case thoroughly beforehand, and generally uses the power for less controversial reasons. Recent examples of the British use of the power of pardon include the early release of two prisoners who saved a man’s life in 2001, and a posthumous pardon for Alan Turing in 2013, after his conviction for gross indecency in 1952. It is for those kinds of cases that I shy away from suggesting that we abolish the pardon all together.

The pardon itself is not necessarily outdated, or a constitutional crisis. Used correctly, a pardon is an instrument for checking the judiciary; the law is not always right, and wrong decisions will be made. Posthumous pardons, like that of Alan Turing, are an excellent example of this.  The law was wrong, the conviction was wrong, and while the past cannot be changed, reparations can be made. However, the rampant American exercise of the presidential pardon undermines the decisions of the courts. It is no longer part of the system of checks and balances, instead used for political manoeuvring. Where was the injustice in Joe Arpaio’s case? In what way had he demonstrated that he was deserving of mercy?  This misuse of the power sends a strong message, but possibly not the one Trump was aiming for. The Presidential pardon has gone unregulated for too long – it must be reined in, before men like Trump can abuse it further.

Oxford SU “angered and dismayed” by vice-chancellor homophobia comments

Fred Dimbleby
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Oxford SU “angered and dismayed” by vice-chancellor homophobia comments

Louise Richardson, the Oxford vice-chancellor, has come under fire from Oxford Students Union (SU) for comments regarding homophobia at the University.

Richardson, who also attacked “tawdry politicians” for the handling of the dispute around her pay level, suggested that students cannot be offended on University campuses.

Speaking at the Times Higher Education summit, Richardson said: “I’ve had many conversations with students who say they don’t feel comfortable because their professor has expressed views against homosexuality. They don’t feel comfortable being in class with someone with those views.

“And I say, ‘I’m sorry, but my job isn’t to make you feel comfortable. Education is not about being comfortable. I’m interested in making you uncomfortable’.

“If you don’t like his views, you challenge them, engage with them, and figure how a smart person can have views like that.

“Work out how you can persuade him to change his mind. It is difficult, but it is absolutely what we have to do.”

The Oxford SU LGBTQ+ Campaign has today criticised her comments saying that they were “angered and dismayed” by the remarks.

Mentioning the high levels of discrimination that LGBTQ+ individuals can suffer at university, and within the country, they accused the vice-chancellor of “furthering an environment which makes LGBTQ+ people feel more unwelcome in Oxford.”

They added that while they “recognise that individuals are entitled to personal views and opinions, we see no way in which these are relevant to an academic context, and believe that the expression of such views has detrimental effects which go far beyond making students feel ‘uncomfortable’.

“This is hardly the conduct one would expect in an individual, tasked with ensuring that all members of this University are able to thrive. These attitudes are a failure to recognise the very real impact of homophobic views on both academic success and personal well being, and we hope that she, and others, will consider the issue with more nuance in future.”

The vice-chancellor’s comments have sparked considerable debate online, with many students and JCRs expressing outrage.

In an open letter to the vice-chancellor, Wadham SU said her comments could “legitimise and normalise homophobia from academics and staff.”

It added: “We believe such a comment sends a bad message to LGBTQ+ students, and all students who have faced harassment and discrimination.

“Moreover, the comments made will discourage students from approaching their senior tutor in college when faced with discrimination from tutors, something that we already struggle to encourage students to do.

“Of course we want to encourage free speech and open discussion but to put the burden of challenging homophobic viewpoints on LGBTQ+ students is unfair and dangerous to the mental well being of those students.”

Hertford College JCR, in an open letter to Vice-Chancellor Richardson, said her comments were “of considerable concern to us, as we are of the view that homophobia has no place in Oxford or indeed our wider society.

“Although we do agree with the right to free speech, and acknowledge and celebrate the diversity of views expressed by those at the University, we want to make it clear that we feel there is a point at which ‘uncomfortable’ comments become hateful language.

“We must therefore wholeheartedly reject any notion that views against homosexuality have acceptable grounds within academic conversation.”

Oxford SU took a similar approach, offering advice to those who had been impacted by the comments.

Student Union President, Kate Cole, was more explicit in her criticism of the statement.

Richardson also drew criticism from those outside of Oxford with Dawn Foster, a Guardian columnist, and Charlotte L. Riley, a historian at the University of Southampton, both attacking the comments.

An open letter addressed to the vice chancellor has been launched.

Louise Richardson attacks “tawdry politicians” over tuition fees

Akshay Bilolikar
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Louise Richardson attacks “tawdry politicians” over tuition fees

Oxford’s vice-chancellor, Louise Richardson, has criticised “tawdry politicians”  for linking high levels of pay for university vice-chancellors with tuition fees.

Speaking at the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit, Richardson warned that “mendacious media and tawdry politicians” risked undermining Britain’s higher education sector, and called on academics to resist the “acceptance of a post-truth world.”

She described it as “completely mendacious” of politicians “to suggest that vice-chancellors have raided the £9,000 fee to enhance their own salaries”.

“We know that the £9,000 fee was to substitute for the withdrawal of government funding,” she said.

Richardson, whose £350,000 salary was described as “grossly excessive” by the New College bursar, said her own pay was “a very high salary compared to our academics.”

She said that pay rates reflected a “global marketplace” with American university chiefs much better paid than their British and European counterparts.

Figures released in January showed Louise Richardson was the third highest-paid VC in the UK, and that on average, the VCs of Russell Group universities took home six per cent more than they did two years ago.

Labour’s Lord Adonis and the Universities minister Jo Johnson have criticised “excessive” pay levels in the higher education sector.

Adonis, a former education minister, called for an inquiry in the House of Lords after criticising the “serious controversy” of an 11% salary increase awarded to the Bath University vice-chancellor in contrast to the 1.1% public sector pay cap.

“The highly paid should set an example to the rest of the community, particularly at a time of pay restraint,” Adonis said.

Richardson said that she hoped that the “spurious” correlations between fees and executive salaries would end, “not because it’s embarrassing for me and my colleagues, but because it’s damaging” to the reputation of UK higher education.

She added: “Why would you want to try and damage what is one of the most successful aspects of the British economy?

“The calibre of university education is something that should be celebrated on a daily basis – not just trying to drag it down by making spurious correlations between fees and salaries.”

Lord Adonis criticised Richardson’s remarks, accusing her of a “head-in-the-sand” attitude. He told Cherwell: “There is clearly a link between the hike in fees and the hike in vice chancellors’ pay and that of the army of highly paid university administrators under them.

“Instead of denying it, Prof Richardson would have done better to announce a cut in her excessive salary and a reduction in fee levels at Oxford.

“This head-in-the-sand attitude is damaging our universities and harming students who now face debts of up to £100k on graduation.”

“If you don’t like his views, you challenge them.”

Richardson also challenged universities to protect free speech on campuses, stating that students did not have a right to not be offended.

“I’ve had many conversations with students who say they don’t feel comfortable because their professor has expressed views against homosexuality,” said Prof Richardson. “They don’t feel comfortable being in class with someone with those views.

“And I say, ‘I’m sorry, but my job isn’t to make you feel comfortable. Education is not about being comfortable. I’m interested in making you uncomfortable’.

“If you don’t like his views, you challenge them, engage with them, and figure how a smart person can have views like that.

Oxford University was contacted for comment.

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