Oxford has long argued that school type is a crude and misleading indicator of disadvantage. Your article (“Oxbridge colleges named and shamed for failing to admit disadvantaged students”, News,) chose to focus on out-of-date figures relating to Oxford’s state/independent mix.
Our agreed targets with the Office for Fair Access focus on what we consider to be more precise – and more challenging – categories of disadvantage. On these measures, we are undoubtedly progressing: more than 34% of accepted UK candidates are now from one or more target categories (compared to 31.5% five years ago).
Citing figures from individual colleges fundamentally misunderstands how Oxford selection works. Our system of reallocating pooled candidates means applicants’ chances of getting a place at any Oxford college are broadly consistent, no matter which college they apply to.
Oxford is committed to selection based on academic merit. This does not mean candidates’ achievements are considered in a vacuum. Admissions tutors at Oxford ensure that all candidates’ academic performance is evaluated in as much context as possible. This rigorous and fair selection process is supported by a comprehensive programme of outreach, work with teachers and financial support for students from low-income backgrounds.
Professor Sally Mapstone
Pro vice-chancellor (education)
University of Oxford
Let’s book into a stately home
Catherine Bennett’s piece will have ruffled some National Trust feathers and not before time (“Rebuilding stately ruins is not always the wise response”, Comment).
Ruined Clandon Park should, sensibly, be abandoned. Alternatively the site could be cleared and used for affordable housing with the space for allotments for those tenants who so choose. Built tastefully of course.
However the NT has an even bigger blind spot. While Portugal and Spain have pousadas and paradors – great houses transformed into hotels – the NT is content for the British public merely to gawp at the confections the rich could afford to build. What a great initiative it would be for the NT to modify some of its properties so people could stay and enjoy them. The NT has huge financial resources, a small trickle of which could transform the fortunes of many of Britain’s great houses.
David J Handley
Gargrave, Yorkshire
An undemocratic education
The government’s dictatorial tendencies identified by Andrew Rawnsley reach well beyond Westminster party politics (“The Tories are unstitching the tapestry of our democracy”, Comment. For example, under their education bill currently going through parliament, no consultation with parents and others affected would be allowed when the secretary of state, Nicky Morgan, decrees that a school, regarded as struggling, is be taken over by a particular academy sponsor chosen by her.
In a concession designed to ward off a threatened Lords rebellion, the sponsor must “communicate” their plans, which means telling everyone what is going to happen. The Tories have also said that they want to write local government entirely out of English education, meaning that in a country of more than 50 million people the only significant democratic input would come from the centre. Despite their low vote share and narrow majority their view must trump everything. It is a chilling scenario.
Ron Glatter
Emeritus professor of educational administration and management, The Open University, Herts
True legacy of Cecil Rhodes
Will Hutton takes issue with those who wish to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oxford on the grounds that they are trying to rewrite history, since, as a racist, Rhodes was merely a man of his age (“Cecil Rhodes was a racist, but you can’t readily expunge him from history”, Comment). But he confuses two things – history and memory. History is about the critical evaluation of sources and contextualisation; memory is about identity, allegiances and legitimacy.
Rhodes will always have his place in the history of the British empire, but the “memory wars” around the empire articulate the conflicts of today. Do we want to retreat into a complacency about our imperial past that reinforces an Anglo-Saxon national identity or can we take a more questioning view of empire that speaks to the descendants of those we colonised as well as to the descendants of the colonisers? Hutton concedes that “black and ethnic communities are too under-represented at our universities and in leadership roles more generally”. Is this surprising if places such as Oxford are apparently wedded to the cult of imperialists and supremacists?
Robert Gildea
Professor of modern history
University of Oxford
Quality way to train small boys
Many years ago, my small sons scorned the potty, wishing to be grown up and practise their projectile skills as Daddy did (“God bless reduced Quality Street”, Comment). A Quality Street tin was placed in front of the lavatory pan and their little Start-Rite shoes fitted neatly within the rim of the lid. Sweet success... well, most of the time.
Joan Purkiss
Beverley, East Yorkshire
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