According to the recently published figures,
Oxford University is expected to have the largest number of state school pupils in its undergraduate intake this autumn. Private schools candidates received only 41.5% offers while 58.5% of offers were made to state school pupils. Compared to previous years, the proportion of state school pupils will be 1% lower than this year. Such a difference in acceptance of offers reflects a rise in applications from pupils from state schools.
Record state-educated children intake could have been caused by the tuition fees. Actually, universities have been told that in case they do not accept a wider mix of students, they will not have a possibility to charge higher fees. Nowadays the greatest difference between state and privately-educated pupils is at Oxford. At Oxford University nearly 47% of the intake are students educated at private schools.
Mike Nicholson, the university's director of undergraduate admissions, wrote in his
essay papers: "We are pleased that figures for 2010 and preliminary offer figures for 2011 show the proportion of state students gradually rising. We believe this shows the great amount of effort and energy we have put into our outreach work is paying off."
This autumn the applications to Oxford have increased to a record high of 17,300. According to the admission figures for 2010 entry, 55.4% of Oxford�s intake belonged to state-educated pupils. However, the latest admissions figures show high success rates of state school pupils attending Oxford's summer school. Actually, more than 40% of summer school students received offers.
