The claim
“If you look at Oxford and Cambridge – the percentage of pupils from state schools going to those universities has actually gone down over the last 20 years…Only one black person went to Oxford last year. I think that’s disgraceful.”
David Cameron MP, April 11, 2011
Cathy Newman checks it out
When the prime minister graduated from Eton to Oxford University by way of the Bullingdon Club, he would have had to work quite hard to break out of the all-white, private-educated social milieu to which he’d become accustomed. But David Cameron thinks Oxbridge now is even more elitist than it was. True, or does he need to see the statistics professor?
The analysis
David Cameron says Oxford and Cambridge are more exclusive than around the time he graduated with a First in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) in 1988.
But both universities strongly dispute the Prime Minister’s claims. The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) says that between 1997/8 and 2009/10 the number of state school students at Oxford and Cambridge has risen by 9 per cent and 16 per cent respectively.
In 2009, state school students made up a total of 59 per cent of Cambridge University’s intake and 54 per cent of Oxford’s.
Cambridge told FactCheck that throughout the late 1980s and early 1900s the proportion of the University’s intake drawn from the state sector was in the range of 44-50 per cent. In 1989, Oxford says it admitted 44.5 per cent of students from state schools.
So the situation is improving.
But there’s clearly still some way to go when you consider that just 13 per cent of all A-level candidates hail from private schools.
OFFA points out that the most advantaged 20 per cent of young people are seven times more likely to enter the most selective institutions than the most disadvantaged 40 per cent.
And turning to ethnicity, there’s no denying that the black student community at Oxford is eclipsed by a white majority, though it’s not quite as bad as David Cameron suggested.
(Downing Street have insisted that the Prime Minister meant to claim just one black Caribbean student was admitted to Oxford in 2009).
In total, only 41 British students of black origin were admitted last year out of a total of around 3,000.
More than 80 per cent of Oxbridge candidates were white, and in 2009, 29,000 white students got the AAA grades required – compared to just 452 black students.
Oxford says that subject choice is a major reason for black students’ lower success rate. “44 per cent of all black applicants apply for Oxford’s three most oversubscribed subjects – compared to just 17 per cent of all white applicants,” Oxford University said.
OFFA backs this up, and points out that nationally, black students are not under-represented.
“Evidence suggests that ethnicity groups are not necessarily under-represented – the issue is more that they heavily subscribe to certain institutions and certain courses,” a spokesman for OFFA said.
“Under-representation in higher education by ethnicity is a complex issue. Current available evidence suggests that, at a national level, many minority ethnic groups have higher participation rates than white groups,” he added.
Cathy Newman’s verdict
Much has been made of David Cameron’s gaffe about the paucity of black students at Oxford University. But his claim about the number of state school students heading for the ivory towers of Oxbridge is just as dubious. The prime minister’s old tutor Vernon Bogdanor has described him as “such an able student”. But FactCheck wouldn’t award him an alpha for his use of statistics this week.
The Analysis by Emma Thelwell
