Chancellor alleges univ is being forced to make up for govt’s deficiencies
london: Fed up with being criticised for being elitist the Chancellor of Oxford University has decided to hit back by insisting that Britain’s top university would not favour poor students over those from richer, private school backgrounds.
Lord Chris Patten said that while Oxford would strive to be ‘socially inclusive’ it would be ‘suicidal’ to accept students who were ‘second best’.
Britain’s elite universities Oxford and Cambridge have been engaged in a public row with government over private schools’ domination of admissions. After coming under flak for being elitist Britain’s version of the Ivy League had promised that they would try to expand their proportion of state school pupils.
However speaking at the annual Headmasters’ Conference in London, Lord Patten said Oxford would reject any attempt by the government to widen its intake by lowering standards.
“The sense that many universities have is that they are being asked to make up for the deficiencies of secondary (government) education,” said Lord Patten, a former Conservative minister and the last British governor of Hong Kong. “The unacceptable feature is that for all the public money, for all the rhetoric, our state schools are not better,” he added.
Last year only 58% of applications to Oxford University were from state school students while government schools actually educate 93% of pupils.
Lord Patten went one step further urging the government to lift the “intolerably low” £3,140 limit on university tuition fees for domestic students. “It is a mad world in which parents are prepared to shell out tens of thousands of pounds to put their children through private schools to get them into universities and then object to paying a tuition fee of more than £3,000 when they get there,” said Lord Patten.
The Chancellor said he would like to see universities being given the freedom to set their own fees. “It is astonishing that in the middle of a credit crunch, Patten is proposing that hard-working families pay even more towards the cost of higher education,” said Wes
Streeting, president, National Union of Students.
