21 Oxbridge colleges took no black students last year

[MaeMobley]

Here is an article in the Guardian:

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/06/oxford-colleges-no-black-students?dm_i=D9F%2CBP8Z%2C2P0DKY%2CX1T9%2C1

Agree with those saying that this is a wider and more complex problem and definitely cannot be explained by naked prejudice by Oxbridge selectors. However, I do think that interviews are a pretty crap way of selecting people really and I think it has been shown time and time again (though can't be arsed to look up the research!) that people feel most comfortable with and therefore pick those who they perceive as most similar and akin to themselves. If I was in charge of admissions at Oxbridge I would experiment with randomly selecting from the pool of people with the requisite grades. It would take any bias/prejudice/secret old boys network out of the mix (and would probably save money in the long run).

Arionater is right about the misleading statistics - I had a lot of black friends at Cambridge, but very few were of black Caribbean origin and from underprivileged backgrounds - just plenty who were mixed race, or Nigerian origin (but had been to private or state grammar schools), or who were overseas students from Guyana etc. Still probably statistically under-represented though.

The thing with Oxbridge though is that the tutorial system means you have to have people who have the confidence to 'perform'. In a way, the interviews are about that - how do they perform under pressure, how do they think around the problem they are set? DH has interviewed prospective students and says some of the ones who're brilliant on paper just wouldn't last two seconds in the system, and that becomes clear at interview.

Yes, ds' school is exceptionally good on equal opps. He is extremely intolerant of intolerance of any kind; I'm really grateful to the school for teaching him to be such a great person. And yes, their results are really good too.

Any child coming from the sort of school which considers "5 GCSEs at A to C" to be the pinnacle of academic achievement is going to be at a disadvantage applying to Oxbridge - or indeed anywhere.

It would be interesting to see these statistics adjusted for income/wealth of families. I suspect that this is a poverty thing, rather than a race thing, and just as small percentage of poor white children get 3 As at A level.

It's a class issue more than a race one.

I don't think it's the education system failing working class children (of all colours) as much as the parents and society as large.

On personal observation I concluded that possibly:

Exclusive private local boys prep: 50% of my friend's boy's class are ethnic, predominantly Asian, there are no black boys.
Exclusive gils private school: 40 in the junior school, 2 are black.

Now these schools get their pupils into Harrow, Eton, St Paul, Godolphin, Westminster etc regardless of ethnic background. They are very good at it, however, the majority of children going are white or Asian.

State sector, black children represented as the typical % of population as you would expect, children shuffled into GCSE with poor advice, with an emphaisis on what subject they could get a high grade in to put on the school stats board not on what would get the child to a top university.

So black children are not a significant portion of the private schools who prime kids for top schools and universities, and then those in the state sector are channelled into easy to pass GCSEs for the school to get good stats, not for the child to get a decent university place. My neices were recently allocated GCSEs and my brother had to fight for them to be entered in the mainstream academic subjects, as he didn't want them with 5 GCSE ending in "studies" as he wants them to go for degrees.

Thus I think a great many students are being failed by the school system. If they don't study the right subjects and are advised against applying anyway, the likelihood is they won't apply. I'd prefer to see an article tracking the subject choices and attainment prior to application. I don't see how we can ever track those who were capable but didn't apply for one reason or another. But I do think the universities should not be blamed for a system that probably failed the children before they were 12.

The stats that would be significant would be: number of applications by ethnicity and gender, interviewees by ethnicity and gender. Selectors and interviewers by ethnicity and gender then a complete correlation...also across the whole of the university sector.

I think it would be worse if Oxford and Cambridge took people who patently would not be able to cope there. The only way they could do it would be to go on a big recruitment round to the careers advice services at schools and talk to 11 year olds directly. But they are not funded to do that, and they are already over subscribed, so there is no motivation either.

Well, when I was a personal tutor at one of the smallest Oxbridge colleges, in my tutorial group of about 20 I had two British students of African-Caribbean heritage -- that's 10%.

I suspect the statistics are impossible to work with because of the tiny sample size, and therefore change dramatically from year to year.

Besides, this is just an attempt to distract everyone from the real issue at hand -- the trebling of fees, which is only necessary because of the withdrawal of 80% of govt teaching funds.

if this was one of the smallest colleges, Beanlet, is it also one of the newer ones with a slightly different history and atmosphere from the big medieval foundations full of public schoolboys?
I am not surprised, for instance, that it was Merton they mention as having been singularly crap.

But how can it be proved that the ones who shone at interview (in the view of the interviewers) actually go on to shine throughout college and beyond? Perhaps it would be better to take a risk and assume everyone has the capacity to contribute and the tutors will have to encourage shyer ones who miss the point of tutorials as required? Also, I am absolutely ace at tutorials because I enjoy communicating in small groups but I'm extremely average academically, apart from writing good essays if pushed. Several of the quietest, most dull seeming, non-participating people I have met via various academic pursuits have done miles better than me when it counted in degree exams.

Applying to Oxbridge is exceptionally daunting on every level. For one thing, there are a whole array of colleges to research and decide between. Hard to go to all that trouble if you don't really think they want the likes of you anyway. State schools really, really don't have to time to give THAT much encouragement and support even if they'd love to. The whole system is geared up towards dynasties who know the ropes IMO.

Not sure David Lammy / Guardian would be involved in a deliberately diversionary tactic re fees! If anything, given the class / poverty influence on Oxbridge entrance, this exemplifies why the funding withdrawal / fees increase is divisive and socially pernicious.

It can't be proved - it's a hugely imperfect tool to gain entry to an imperfect system!

I feel quite disturbed by this tbh

Actually I read some other research which said that pupils who get into Oxbridge from non-traditional backgrounds are often the offspring of teachers.

I think random entry would be just as good.:)

It would be an interesting experiment.

Those stats are absolutely shocking.I agree that it is more a class issue.

I managed AAB st Alevel and decided Oxbridge application was pointless. But perhaps, having chosen the 'right' subject, I could have gone.

Friend with AAA attended an interview and was asked about thr metaphysical poets. He had no idea what they were talking about as had been studying feminist poetry and Seamus Heaney at comp.
The one that did get in had parents high up in the media, was lovely and very clever, and new the game he had to play to pass the interview.

'Knew' even, bloody spellchecker

My first thought, on hearing this, was to think that this would be a very good time for black sixth-formers to apply to Oxbridge. I have already advised someone I helped with 11+ to try Brasenose. (I am a bit uneasy with my own logic, but that was my first thought)

I have interviewed at both Oxford and Cambridge. It's an interesting - if exhausting - experience and I think sometimes it works well. I wouldn't be against random entry if there was a more effective way to narrow the pool. Three As is hopeless these days - there's much too wide a range of ability getting those grades. The A*s might help but haven't been much proved yet. Many departments in Oxford and Cambridge now use their own subject or aptitude test to make the first cut (with the bottom third, for instance, not being invited to interview). I wouldn't be against an exam-based system that automatically accepted all applicants in the top bracket on such tests, and chose randomly between students in the next bracket down, for instance. The problem of course is that the better schools will train students for those tests just as they do for whatever other kind of assessment you use.

The useful thing about interviews is that it really is very obvious when someone has been drilled. And in fact the 'good but not outstanding' candidate who has been heavily drilled is often at a disadvantage compared to a similar candidate who comes fresh without any school preparation - because what you are trying to do as an interviewer is push them to think rather than just regurgitate. The heavily drilled can be very hard to push off script, and easily panicked if you do manage it. Students who come without expectations can be much more rewarding as long as they are not too horribly nervous.

No seth; one of the oldest and most right wing.

bang goes that theory then

i know some tutors at Merton had to be practically forced at gunpoint to take female students too. There are people living, working and making decisions in these places who have not lived in the real world at any point. Many of them are still quite old and live in the most rarefied circles so probably haven't even noticed that Britain is increasingly ethnically diverse.

I am not surprised at BEM students being under-represented. In my college we had two (count em) black students, and both were exceedingly posh and had been to Eton or similar. Also IIRC both had families from Africa a couple of generations back, rather than the Caribbean.

Arionater - my state school attempted to do practice interviews to the applicants in my year. They never did it again after the candidates the rather walrus-like teacher scared off/made cry turned out to be the ones who got in

As Fayrazzled says, it's a class thing, not a race thing.

Black people in ths country, for a multitude of reasons, are disproportionately working-class. That's why they don't get into Oxbridge - and I don't think either Oxford or Cambridge deliberately discriminate against working-class students, I think working-class students are unprepared for Oxbridge.