How Britain’s private schools lost their grip on Oxbridge
“Five years ago, my son would have got a place at Oxford. But now the bar has shifted and he didn’t,” says my friend, a City of London executive who has put several children through elite private schools in Britain. “I think he got short-changed.”
I’ve been hearing this more and more from fellow parents with kids at top day and boarding schools in recent years. Some of it sounds like whining: most of us like to think the best of our progeny. But my friend has a point. After years of hand-wringing about unequal access to elite higher education, admissions standards are finally shifting.
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MORE students who are BAME, from state schools, and disadvantaged backgrounds are being admitted into the University of Oxford, a new report has revealed. The university’s fourth annual admissions statistical report was published yesterday, with results highlighting increased diversity at the university. However, while more poorer pupils in the UK are applying, applications from the EU have fallen. In total, 3,695 students were admitted to Oxford, about 400 more than usual. Almost four fifths of those places (2,950) went to students living in the UK. In the foreword to the report, vice-chancellor Louise Richardson says the highlights of the report are as follows: