The post-GCSE Oxbridge open evening at my child’s northern comprehensive was attended by about 250 parents, a perfect reflection of its wide ethnic diversity. The speaker was an overseas Oxbridge master’s student, whose only experience of British education and Oxbridge was the 12 months’ studying she was partway through. According to her script we “shouldn’t be worried or confused about colleges, they are just like houses”. It took me, a Russell Group professor, a moment to realise she was alluding to houses in the public school sense. Had she added, “like in Harry Potter” it might have connected better; but for the audience, the world she described was equally one of fantasy. Two years later, and it is only the children of white middle-class parents (like me) who are applying for Oxbridge, wearing, without exception, the Toynbee clothes peg.

Their visits have demonstrated the self-evident truth that Oxbridge is largely whites-only (Oxbridge still failing black pupils, 20 October; Going backwards: richer students from the south-east still dominate Oxbridge intake, 20 October). Social media sharing tells them to expect, in interview and beyond, ad hominem attacks on gender and accent, masquerading as being “challenging”. They know their role will be to raise the game of public school dunces, and teach them better to interact with their perceived social inferiors.  will be that of the British public school. Their hope, nonetheless, is that they will get the intensive teaching from the world-class faculty that their love of learning has led them to crave; some, too, are cynical about the social advantage they will gain. Even then, a better education in many subjects can be had at other British universities; and our problem is not just what happens to exclude black and working-class students before they get to Oxbridge; but afterwards how Oxbridge graduates then extend that exclusion to the workplace.
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