Oxford admissions statistics – how diverse is the university and what has David Lammy said about it?

OXFORD University has come under attack for failing to open up places to poorer students and those from ethnic minority backgrounds.

MP David Lammy slammed "glacial progress" and claimed the elite university was a "bastion of privilege". Here's the lowdown.

How diverse is Oxford University? What are the admissions statistics?

The latest report in May 2018 reveals only 11 per cent of undergraduates in 2017 came from socio-economically disadvantaged areas.

That is up from 7 per cent in 2013.

Just under 18 per cent of last year's new undergraduates identified as black and minority ethnic, up from 14 per cent four years ago.

Of those who were schooled in the UK, some 41.8 per cent went to independent schools and 58.2 per cent went to state schools, up slightly from 56.8 per cent in 2013.

Nationwide, around 18 per cent of pupils are in private education after the age of 16.

Among A-level students who got three As or better in 2015, just over 80 per cent were white and 19.7 per cent were minority ethnic including 1.8 per cent who were black.

Last year around 1.9 per cent of new Oxford undergraduates were black, up from 1.1 per cent four years earlier.

According to one report, more students from a single elite school - Westminster - were given offers to study at Oxford last year than black students from the whole of the UK.

The regional differences were also stark: nearly half of new UK students were from London and the South East, while only 2.3 per cent were from the North East and 7.6 per cent from the North West.

But those differences broadly match the proportion of applicants from each region, suggesting there is no bias.
Rather the problem may be not enough people from the North are applying.

What has David Lammy said about Oxford admissions?

The campaigning Tottenham MP has previously accused Oxford and Cambridge of creating "social apartheid".

After Oxford's admissions stats were revealed in May 2018, he said: "The progress is glacial.

"The truth is that Oxford is still a bastion of white, middle class, southern privilege."

He claimed white students were "twice as likely to get in" as black students and that Southerners were more successful than Northerners.

His figures appear to relate to the total population in each region rather than the number of applicants.

Mr Lammy went on: "Thirty black pupils applied for computing last year. Not one of them gets in.

"Are we really saying there isn't a black student in Britain who can apply for computing who is worth a place at Oxford? Surely not."

Universities Minister Sam Gyimah, who is black and went to Oxford, said the institution needed to "double down" on its work to engage with potential applicants at an earlier stage.

He said: "It's about raising aspirations, it's about helping prepare students at the GCSE level and then when it gets to application stage, knowing how to actually play the system."

Oxford University says some talented students are put off applying because they think they will not fit in.

It vowed to expand its summer school programme to encourage bright teenagers from poor and ethnic minority backgrounds.

But it will not make lower offers to take account of students' more difficult circumstances.

Samina Khan, the director of undergraduate admissions, told the BBC: "You are looking a very different applicant pools.

"We are not getting the right number of black people with the talent to apply to us and that is why we are pushing very hard on our outreach activity to make sure we make them feel welcome and they realise Oxford is for them."

Oxford students' unions blamed schools for "attainment gaps... which greatly disadvantage black pupils and those from low-income backgrounds, among other underrepresented groups."