State school pupils in inner London are three times more likely to get into the universities of Oxford and Cambridge than those in the North West and other regions of England as the gap in access rates reaches record levels, figures suggest.
Figures from the Department for Education show that 1.5 per cent of pupils from state-funded mainstream schools in England progressed to Oxford or Cambridge in the two years after they left school in 2019-20 – up from 1.3 per cent the year before.
Rates have been increasing more dramatically in inner London – from just 1.2 per cent in 2015-16 to 3 per cent last year.
However, just 1.1 per cent of pupils in the West Midlands, the North West or Yorkshire and the Humber go to Oxbridge – with little or no improvement in recent years.
