Labour MP David Lammy wrote about Oxford and Cambridge admissions, raising the spectre of "a system in which getting a place remains a matter of being white, middle class and southern" (The Oxbridge whitewash, 7 December). Eye-catching, but misleading.
If Oxford were really excluding people from certain groups, it would be incredibly self-defeating. Exclusion isn't in the interests of world-class universities. If you want the best people, then by definition you want them whatever their background.
Lammy talks about differences in success rates between black and other applicants. "Applications are being made but places are not being awarded," he says. Our own recent analysis shows that subject choice is a major reason for the lower success rate. Black students apply disproportionately for the three most oversubscribed subjects: 44% of black applicants, compared to just 17% of white applicants.
Food for thought, certainly, and that is why we are looking hard at what more we can do with schools, teachers, and prospective candidates. But the statistics emphatically do not show anything to substantiate accusations of discrimination or exclusion by Oxford.
School attainment is the single biggest barrier to getting more black students to Oxford. The same is true for certain socioeconomic groups and certain regions. If Mr Lammy thinks Oxford and Cambridge's data makes "shocking reading", he should try the national figures. In 2009, 29,000 white students got the requisite grades for Oxford (AAA excluding general studies), compared to just 452 black students.
Lammy uses statistics extremely selectively: "Merton College, Oxford, has not admitted a single black student for five years", he says. Any statistician could have told him that breaking down small numbers into even smaller groups is simply not relevant. And the "fact" about Merton College isn't even true as of 2010.
He also writes about socioeconomic groups, giving this example: "Brasenose College, Oxford, recruits 92% of students from the top three social classes." Again, the reality is rooted in prior attainment, where futures are being fixed at a much younger age than 18. Research by Lammy's Labour colleague Frank Field found that children's life chances are most heavily predicated on their development by age five; the Institute of Education this week noted the "strikingly large" performance gap between middle-class children and their less advantaged peers by age seven; and a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies this year stated: "Socioeconomic disadvantage has already had an impact on academic outcomes at the age of 11 and this disadvantage explains a significant proportion of the gap in HE participation at age 19 or 20."
Lammy talks about geographical disparities too. "Over the last four years the London Borough of Richmond received more than eight times as many offers from Oxbridge as were awarded to Rochdale, Barnsley, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough and Stoke combined. In fact, that same borough received only 18 fewer Oxford offers than the whole of Scotland." Again, school attainment, as shown by the local authority breakdown, is a major issue. And, further, there are practical reasons: Scottish students can avoid fees by going to Scottish universities – so they do, in large numbers – while some northern students simply prefer to be at a university relatively close to home.
But where the attainment is there, the students are getting in: Darlington has the highest success rate for Oxford in the whole country.
Our university travels all over the UK to try to encourage applications. We had contact last year with 78% of all schools and colleges offering post-16 education. Our undergraduate admissions director is from Newcastle and our pro-vice-chancellor for education is Scottish. Why on earth would Oxford want to exclude certain areas?
"In the US, Harvard proactively writes to every high-achieving minority student," Lammy says. "Where are the Oxbridge schemes?"
Answer: last year Oxford conducted 1,500 separate outreach events. The university spends over £4m on this annually, on top of the £6.6m spent on bursaries.
He also says that "Oxford targets 21% of its outreach events at independent schools". One part of Oxford's outreach is about providing information and guidance to all potential Oxford applicants, from all school types. Given that independent school candidates make up 33% of all those in the UK achieving three As or better at A-level, this information-based work inevitably brings us into contact with the sector. But nearly 80% of our work is with state schools. I would challenge anyone to find another university that has done so much work with the state sector.
Is outreach working? Well, state school applications have risen by over 80% over the last 10 years. And black students gaining top grades are actually more likely to apply to Oxford than their white peers: in 2009 nearly half of all black students nationally who got the requisite grades applied to Oxford – compared to around 28% of white students with the grades.
We want anyone with the talent, wherever they come from and whoever they are, to apply. And we spend more time rigorously scrutinising every application than probably any other university in the world. We would dearly like to see more suitably qualified students coming to us from these undeniably under-represented backgrounds. But we cannot make that happen on our own.