At secondary school, and I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet, I was academically one of the brightest kids
in my year, consistently getting top marks.
Despite this, I never even considered applying to Oxbridge. I’d never met anyone who went to either university, and believed places there were reserved for posh, rich white people. So naive.
It wasn’t until I got to sixth form college and met a Black girl in my English class who was determined to get into Cambridge that I realised people like me could apply.
Fast forward to 2022 and more Black and Asian children than ever before are applying and getting into what are considered to be among the finest further educational institutions in the world.
We should be celebrating this fact. Instead, the question of who does and doesn’t get into Oxford and Cambridge has become another battleground in the never-ending culture wars.
Last week a Cambridge academic claimed white boys from top private schools were being “disadvantaged”. I had to check it wasn’t a very late April Fool’s joke.
It wasn’t. David Abulafia claims the fact boys attended private institutions was being used to “justify injustice” and that children from state schools are increasingly getting the top places.
Abulafia is stunned the number of Oxbridge places going to Eton pupils had halved between 2014 and 2022. My heart bleeds.
Yes, the intake figures are slowly being more evenly distributed, but Oxford and Cambridge still each take over 30% of their students from private schools, even though just 6.5% of pupils attend them.
So, far from being disadvantaged, this cohort is the embodiment of privilege. They are supported, tutored and coached on how to get into the best universities, where state-school children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, get in on merit.
Let’s not forget, during the pandemic, when exams were marked by teachers, private schools saw a much wider jump in the number of children getting top grades, which in turn means they will be at even more of an advantage when it comes to applying to uni.
So the elite universities should go further – their intake should be even more heavily balanced towards state- school pupils.
This matters because in the UK we are still overwhelmingly governed by people who went to Oxbridge. A report by the Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission found that, “Power rests with a narrow section of the population – the 7% who attend private schools and the 1% who graduate from Oxford and Cambridge”.
The report found 24% of MPs went to Oxbridge, 38% of peers in the House of Lords, 56% of civil service permanent secretaries, 71% of senior judges, 40% of public body chairs, and 33% of select committee chairs. Some 16% of senior armed forces officers and 13% of police chiefs went to Oxbridge too.
It is vital this changes to better reflect the whole of society and better look after the needs of everyone, not just the chosen few.
