State grammars lead private schools
Students who apply to Oxford from state grammar schools are more likely to win a place than those from private schools. Figures released to The Oxford Student under the Freedom of Information Act show that 32.4 per cent of students who applied to Oxford from grammar schools for 2004 entry were offered a place, compared to 31.5 per cent of independent school students.
Students from comprehensive schools lag far behind, with only one in four - 25 per cent - of applicants offered a place, less than the average success rate for 2004, 25.9 per cent. The figures, released to The Oxford Student after a six month battle with university authorities, are the first public record of how ‘bog standard’ comprehensive schools fare in the Oxford admissions process.
The university publishes admissions statistics annually, but groups together grammar schools, comprehensives and other types of state school, obscuring the differences in the performances of different school sectors.
David Johnston, Co-ordinator of the Oxford Access Scheme, which works to encourage young people from non-traditional Oxford backgrounds to apply to the university, said: “It is very important for Oxford to remain aware that grouping schools under the heading of ‘state sector’ is misleading and allows the success of selective schools to mask that of the comprehensive sector.
“The Oxford Access Scheme has focussed its work on the comprehensive sector to try and remedy this imbalance and provide the advice and support often lacking.” In contrast to Oxford, Cambridge University annually publishes figures showing applications and acceptances, explicitly documenting the performances of different types of schools.
The 2004 figures show that, at Cambridge, 22 per cent of comprehensive school students were successful in their application, compared to 27 per cent from grammar schools and 29 per cent from independent schools. The average acceptance rate for all schools was 24 per cent. An Oxford spokesperson said: “We’re not masking anything. You have to make a decision about what we present in the figures and what we don’t.
“We have to choose what details we think will be most useful to display in an easy-toread format. “If there is a feeling that more details should be given in specific areas, there is scope for that in the future.” The released figures also show which subject areas are dominated by particular types of school pupil.
Over 70 per cent of the 2004 intake for Classics were from independent schools, with all but one of the 13 students accepted for Classics and Modern Languages educated in the private sector. Private school students also had high application success rates in Materials Science, Music, Maths and Statistics, and Theology.
Students from comprehensive schools fared best in applications to study Chemistry, and Modern Languages, but in both cases their success rates were still below the averages for students from all school types. The course with the greatest proportion of comprehensive school students for the 2004 intake was Modern Languages and Linguistics with 36 per cent.
Modern History and Politics had the second highest intake, with 13 of the 48 students accepted across the university having studied at a comprehensive school. Grammar school students did best when applying for Chemistry, Engineering, and Classics. Brian Wills-Pope, chairman of the National Grammar Schools Association, said: “These figures show that the 164 grammar schools that are left in the country are doing a good job.
Grammar schools do take students from all walks of life, which I’m sure must be beneficial to Oxford from an admissions point of view.” University authorities initially claimed they could not release the admissions statistics, arguing that the Data Protection Act meant they could not release figures where student numbers were 5 or less. They said that individual students could potentially be identified from such small numbers.
This rendered the figures incomplete, and useless, but the university finally relented last week, admitting: “It is accepted that there is little or no danger of individuals being identified from the figures, even where the numbers concerned are small, and that sensitive personal data is not a factor.”.
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10th Nov 2005