Oxford top ranking…for least state-schoolers

The league tables haven’t been going so well, but Oxford is top on at least one.

Unfortunately, it’s ‘lowest admission of state-schoolers in Britain’.

The figures were released last week by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, and Oxford are top, as usual; their 57.4% of state school admissions represents a slight decrease in both number and percentage from last year. Two others – Bristol and St. Andrew’s – were below 60%.

The official “so, you’re an Oxford student” Tab game. 1) Print this photo off. 2) Put a photo of you above it. 3) Enact massive budget cuts.

However, two other unis who were in that category last year not only moved out of it, but put up nation-leading numbers with their change from the last year. Cambridge had 63.0% admissions come from state-schoolers – still the fourth-lowest in the nation, but that represents a national-best 5.1% increase from 2011/12.

Similarly, Durham improved from 59.2% to 63.4% – good for the third-biggest increase, behind Manchester.

Top unis continued to be disproportionally private-school – of the ten unis with 70% or lower, nine were Russell Group, with St. Andrew’s the sole exception.

As a whole, the Russell Group took 74.5% of admissions from state schools – an increase of 1.3% –  but that came off primarily off the back of a few high-fliers. The aforementioned three were joined by Nottingham and Leeds to comprise the top-5 increases nationally.

At the end of the day, they’ve got 95% of the private schoolers with 5% of the prestige.

At the other end, several saw big falls. Oxford, Bristol and Liverpool all dropped slightly, and Edinburgh were the worst in the country – they went from 70.3% to 67.3%, taking them below the likes of Exeter, KCL, and the LSE.

Scottish universities as a whole saw a fall in state school admissions of 1%, taking them down to 86.9% – the worst among the home nations.

Official Russell Group uniform, right here.

The University of Ulster took home the least-posh crown again, with just 0.1% of their students coming from private school. In England, Bolton and Liverpool Hope had less than 1% private-schoolers.

Across the UK, the total proportion of full-time, first-time undergraduates from state schools increased by 0.4%, though 25,000 less were actually admitted as overall admissions fell by 11% nationally, with the vast majority of that coming from England.