David Cameron is plain wrong about Oxford and race. Here’s why

I applaud the Prime Minister for pointing out the scandalous lack of black students at Britain’s top universities, but he’s wrong about whose fault it is – at least when it comes to Oxford, his alma mater. Yes, it’s true that Oxford only admitted five black British Caribbean applicants in 2013, a disgracefully low number, as David Cameron points out, but there’s no evidence to suggest that the cause is ‘ingrained, institutional and insidious’ attitudes, i.e. racism, on the part of Oxford’s admission authorities.

How do I know this? Because Oxford already publishes a wealth of data about admissions – the new law Cameron is drafting to force universities to publish their data about the gender and ethnic and social background origins of students who apply for places will merely force other universities to catch up with Oxford in this regard. You can see Oxford’s data on undergraduate admissions in 2013 here.

This is quite a chunky document, but if you scroll to page 28 you can see the table showing the number of black British Caribbean students admitted in 2013.