Sir Peter Lampl: Bridging the social divide: Britain’s worsening social mobility problem

An ­Oxbridge degree gives you a successful career. But we have very low social mobility at the top.

Making Oxford and Cambridge more accessible to young people of real ability from low and middle income homes would have a major impact on this.

To be fair, there has been real progress in this area over the past 20 years. It is good that Oxford now has 60 per cent of students from a state school background – it used to be less than half – and Cambridge has slightly more.

That is a real improvement but with only seven per cent of students independently educated there should be many more state-school students.

Yet the odds are even slimmer for children from the poorest homes. Some of this can be explained by exam results: children from better-off homes get the better A-level results.

However, that is not the whole story. There are thousands of students each year who get the good grades but don’t even apply to a top university.

Many young people just don’t think Oxbridge is a realistic option. They don’t think they will get in and if they get in they don’t think they will fit in.

Without the right encouragement or support they are unlikely to apply. We know how important teachers are in shaping these aspirations yet our polling has shown that four in 10 would rarely or never advise their brightest pupils to apply to Oxbridge.

And perhaps more troubling is that teachers think Oxbridge is more elitist than it really is.

When asked what proportion of students at Oxbridge are state-educated a significant portion say fewer than 20 per cent, when the actual number is 60 per cent.

This is not about criticising teachers or Oxbridge dons. It is about both schools and the universities being prepared to look afresh at how they work together and being open to making the changes to break down these barriers and make a real difference to social mobility at the top.

Earlier this year, the Sutton Trust published a report on admissions to the two universities and made practical suggestions on making the process fairer for students of all backgrounds.
These included that the universities rather than the colleges control admissions, that the numbers of additional exams and tests be reviewed and that more should be done to consider contextual admissions, where additional information is taken into account.

Grammar schools still have disproportionate Oxbridge entries. Every comprehensive should have strong programmes to challenge their brightest students from early on.
Programmes that stretch the highly able must be embedded in the culture of every school as much as their support for those with special educational needs.

Our research showed what happens where schools don’t do this: we identified thousands of students in the top 10 per cent at age 11 who had fallen outside the top 25 per cent by the age of 16.

They could have been on course to top universities. In post-Brexit Britain we can’t afford to miss out on their talents.

We need to make sure that those who govern us and lead our professions are representative of our society.
This is vital for our society and our economy. Not only is failing to boost social mobility a personal tragedy for the bright young people missing out, it is a national tragedy for us all.

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