I’m a parent of two girls who attended Oxford University between 2009 and 2015. They are northern, from state schools and women of colour (white Irish mum, black African dad). I want to see an increase in the numbers of students from similar backgrounds at Oxford but the debate around this needs to be sensible and based on a true understanding of the issues (Oxford faces anger over failure to improve diversity among students, 23 May).
First, students apply to colleges for a variety of reasons. My younger daughter studied English so she applied to a college with a good reputation for English. Oxford’s record on attracting students from her background should not be reduced to a number for each college but viewed as a whole – what is the overall intake? Once the numbers are up we can quibble over the distribution across colleges.
Second, we need an educated agreement about what is a realistic target for the number of entrants each year based on the percentage of students within this demographic who get the grades and apply. Third, if we want more applicants from this background we need to change the conversation. Stop using words like posh, elitist, privileged. Use words like world-class, excellent, top 10.
Fourth, help students from the north with transport costs. Newcastle and Oxford are far away from each other. It’s cheaper to go to a university nearer your home. Fifth, widen the remit and increase the funding for the excellent school liaison officers who visit schools to encourage students to attend Oxford. Finally, publicise success stories. What about a video of ex-students highlighting their positive experiences, their current jobs and their advice to applicants?
Shona Nsoatabe
Manchester
• That Oxford, along with many other Russell Group universities that never get mentioned, fails to improve diversity among students is indisputable. The problem with statistics is that they can obscure the outliers or minority cases. Even in colleges with small numbers of black British students, intense efforts are being made by some to address these inequalities. It is dispiriting for colleagues such as the highly regarded female English fellow at Exeter College, Oxford, who, for two decades, has encouraged and accepted into her cohort a majority of students from state schools, including black British students, to always read of the failures of the institution. When presenting a generalised – and in this case justified – narrative, let us not forget the untiring efforts of those who do otherwise.
Sophie Watson
Professor of sociology, Open University
• It is difficult to disagree with David Lammy’s conclusion that Oxford “is happy to remain an institution defined by entrenched privilege that is the preserve of wealthy, white students from London and the south-east”. If Wadham College thinks drawing its “undergraduate body from a wider social base” drives up standards, why isn’t its percentage of state school students far higher than the present 68%, and why don’t all the other colleges follow suit? The answer clearly lies in Oxbridge’s bias towards white, privately educated candidates.
Samina Khan might well claim Oxford’s admissions process is “fair and transparent”, but what the new figures did not reveal is how many of its students from public schools gained the required entry qualifications by taking Pre-U examinations instead of A-levels, knowing the exams are set and marked by teachers in the independent sector, and are not regulated by the Joint Council for Qualifications, as A-levels are. It’s obviously not the parents, Ms Khan, who need to be “convinced and turned around”.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool
• Diversity at Oxbridge is a smokescreen to deflect attention away from the fact that these two universities, along with the public school system which feeds them, exist to maintain the establishment and its privileges. That the Guardian peddles such stories shows either that the diversion is working or that you’re complicit in this deception. The implication – that “everyone should aspire to go to Oxbridge” – is simply part of the same problematic discourse. The only practical way to increase real diversity where it matters in the UK is to abolish both the public school system and these two universities, at least in their current form.
Steve Rouse
Gee Cross, Cheshire
• I am an immigrant and a person from a minority ethnic background. I am also a graduate of Oxford University, matriculating in 1970 at a time when a tiny number of members of the ethnic communities went there. The figures which you quote show that that has changed dramatically. That is a cause for celebration. But there is no room for complacency. No serious commentator would doubt that Oxford tutors assess applicants on the basis of merit. If applicants from the ethnic minorities are proportionally under-represented in Oxford’s intakes, surely the key question is whether our schools and applicants’ families are performing an adequate role in enhancing the merits of university applicants? Objective assessment of merit is a central tenet of our education system. Nobody from an ethnic minority ought to be happy to be accepted by a university on the basis of the colour of their skin alone. I would not have been.
Christopher Muttukumaru
Bromley, Kent
• As a secondary headteacher in and near Oxford during the 1990s, I was invited to a number of meetings at the university to discuss how it might broaden access for students from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds. The agenda always seemed to be more about what schools could do to make their students more suitable, than what the university might do to change things. Each time, there was a wringing of hands about the colleges’ autonomy in the matter of admissions. Having suggested several times that if Oxford wanted to broaden access it should get on and broaden access, there seemed no point in continuing to attend such meetings and I stopped going.
Bernard Clarke
Oxford
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