Socially segregated Oxbridge colleges are a dreadful idea

The Guardian has published a piece by Andrew Adonis urging Oxford and Cambridge to set up ‘access colleges’ which would only admit applicants from comprehensives.

I’ve long been a fan of Adonis. He did more to drive up standards in state schools as a Labour education minister than most Conservatives do as education secretaries. Unlike his partisan colleagues, he has also been wholly supportive of the free schools programme and gave me some much needed words of encouragement when I was trying to set one up. So I was disappointed to see him resurrect this old idea. The last time it was run up the flagpole, five years ago, I opposed it in an Oxford Union debate and my views haven’t changed.

Adonis rightly points out that Oxbridge has a poor track record when it comes to recruiting students from disadvantaged areas like Rochdale, Sunderland and Weymouth. Last month, the Sutton Trust published research showing that just eight top schools – most of them private – got more children into Oxbridge than 2,900 comprehensives combined.