Nearly one in three Oxford colleges failed to admit a single black British A-level student in 2015, with the university accused of “social apartheid” over its admissions policies by the former education minister David Lammy.
The data shows that 10 out of 32 Oxford colleges did not award a place to a black British pupil with A-levels in 2015, the first time the university has released such figures since 2010. Oriel College only offered one place to a black British A-level student in six years.
Similar data released by Cambridge revealed that six colleges there failed to admit any black British A-level students in the same year.
Lammy first requested the ethnicity data from Oxford and Cambridge in 2016. While Cambridge provided it immediately, Oxford finally released it on Thursday after it was informed that the Guardian was preparing a story.
As part of a set of data released by the two universities that also revealed a stark regional and socio-economic divide in their intake, the figures showed that just 1.5% of all offers from the two universities to UK A-level students went to black British candidates.
Lammy said the figures showed that many colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge failed to reflect the UK’s population, and called into question the universities’ claims to national standing.
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