That means fewer privately-educated students are getting in
majority of Britons are educated in state schools: 94% of the population and 83% of those who take A-levels. Until recently, admissions to the best universities did not come close to reflecting these numbers. In 2013 state-school students made up 57% of those admitted to Oxford and 61% of those getting into Cambridge. Admissions at other leading universities were similarly weighted towards the small proportion of teenagers who are educated privately.
What has sparked this change? A few things. The first is a push by government to encourage universities to take students from a wider mix of backgrounds. It has given cash to universities to reach under-represented students and, since 2018, required them to publish plans showing how they are doing this. At the same time universities have been bombarded by hard-to-ignore research into admissions disparities from organisations like the Sutton Trust.
Emma Smith, an English professor at Hertford College, Oxford, says the notion that state-school kids are intimidated by Oxbridge can be overstated. In 2017 a class from Kensington Academy, a school in west London, spent a week studying at Hertford after a fire at Grenfell Tower, a nearby block of flats, made their school building uninhabitable. During their time there they were shown around Magdalen, a cloistered and especially majestic college.
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