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‘No room for complacency’ as Oxbridge numbers rise

EDUCATIONAL barriers after the pandemic leave no room for complacency in ensuring good representation of black students at Oxbridge, a leader in diversity and inclusion warned today.

The number of British undergraduates with black African or black Caribbean heritage admitted to Oxford has increased from 1.9 per cent in 2017 to 3.5 per cent last year, while Cambridge admitted 128 UK black undergraduates last year, compared with 26 in 2011.

Target Oxbridge programme founder Naomi Kellman said: “As much as the result right now is really good and we’re really happy, we know that we can’t be complacent about that because recent circumstances mean that black students are going to be facing a lot of barriers with their education.”

Tom Levinson, head of widening participation at Cambridge, said: “The effort to make the university more representative of wider society is far from over, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with the programme.”

A spokeswoman for the University of Oxford said the figures reflect “our ongoing work to ensure that the most academically able pupils in the country aspire to study at Oxford and have a fair chance of admission.”

 

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