Oxford university plans to boost the proportion of British undergraduates from less privileged backgrounds to a quarter within the next four years through two new programmes unveiled on Tuesday.
It will provide preparatory courses for those admitted from 2020 who are judged to need extra support, as well offer an additional “foundation year” to those with high academic potential but who are not yet in a position to make a competitive application.
The moves signal a significant escalation in its efforts to improve social mobility as Oxford and other top universities come under criticism for failing to do more to offer opportunities from school students from low income and socially deprived backgrounds.
Louise Richardson, the university’s vice-chancellor, said: “This is a sea change in Oxford admissions. Any reasonable person would say we’re heading in the right direction. It was slow but the trajectory is right. There was a sense of impatience to accelerate.”
The two new programmes are designed to add 250 students each year from less privileged backgrounds by 2023 from the approximately 385 currently, out of a total British intake of 2,570.
Students targeted by the new programmes will include those who qualify for free school meals or who have had their education disrupted as a result of factors such as care responsibilities, long-term health problems, time in care or status as a refugee or asylum seeker.
Cambridge university, like Oxford, has also recently unveiled initiatives after the Office for Students, the regulatory body, called on both institutions to step up social mobility programmes against the backdrop of a recent fall in the proportion of undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds attending more prestigious universities.
Stephen Toope, Cambridge’s vice-chancellor, told the Financial Times last month that his institution would offer an additional 200 places this year to students who did better than their predicted A level results, and from next year begin offering foundation programmes.
Prof Richardson said Oxford’s schemes would not offer lower entrance standards. “Every year a significant number of kids exceed our requirements and are turned down,” she said. “We’re looking at the margins, to give the edge to kids from deprived backgrounds, not admitting ones who are less qualified.”
Its new foundation programme, which she said would initially involve about half of the university’s colleges, draws on a pilot launched by Lady Margaret Hall, from which three-quarters have gone on to undergraduate degrees, while the others all received offers from top universities, mostly in the Russell Group.
Nick Hillman, head of the Higher Education Policy Institute, a think-tank, praised the Oxford programme as a “welcome step change” that was “evidence-based and well targeted”. He argued that the best answer to “unfairness” in admissions at Oxford and Cambridge was to expand total intake, including through the creation of colleges.
