Top schools confirmed as best routes to Oxbridge colleges

FIVE schools sent more students to Oxbridge over three years than the bottom 2,000 put together, a new report has revealed.

Westminster School, Eton College, St Paul’s School and St Paul’s Girls School, which are all private, and Hills Road Sixth Form College, a state school, produced a total of 946 Oxford and Cambridge entrants between 2007 and 2009, according to the Sutton Trust.

In the same period, the bottom 2,000 schools and colleges in the country produced just 927 Oxbridge entrants.

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Tables produced today by the charity, which promotes social mobility in education, show the Grammar School at Leeds has Yorkshire’s highest rate of university applicants being accepted into Oxford or Cambridge.

The school based in Alwoodley, which was formed as a result of a merger of two single sex schools in 2005, saw more than in one-in-10 of its students going into higher education secure a place at Oxbridge.

Sheffield High School for Girls and St Peter’s School, in York, also feature in a table of the top 100 schools in the country with the highest rates of students getting into the country’s two most prestigious universities.

Ermysted’s Grammar School in Skipton – a selective boys school – was the region’s highest ranked state school for successful Oxbridge applicants over the past three years followed by Skipton Girls High. St Mary’s RC in Ilkley was the highest ranked comprehensive school in Yorkshire.

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The combined sixth form of St Aidan’s and St John Fisher School in Harrogate was the highest ranked comprehensive school in Yorkshire in a table measuring how many pupils got into the most 30 selective universities in the country.

St Aidan’s head teacher Dennis Richards said: “We have heard it said that many comprehensive school teachers do not encourage their students to aspire to the top universities including Oxbridge.

“This is an appalling slur. While we are proud to be comprehensive and value all of our students higher education placements there is no reason why our students should not compete with the pupils of Eton for places at the elite universities and we encourage them to do so.”

The Sutton Trust report shows there is a strong link between A-level results and the chances of going to university.

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However, pupils at some schools with similar exam results had very different rates of pupils going on to higher education.

The report shows there were two comprehensives with almost identical A-level results, where one sent 57 per cent of pupils to selective universities while the other sent just 27 per cent.

Sutton Trust chairman Sir Peter Lampl said: “We know these stark inequalities in university progression rates are driven primarily by the exam results in schools, yet the data we are publishing today also reveals that university chances can vary dramatically for schools with similar average grades.”

The report said levels of aspiration at the schools as well as interview preparation could account for different success rates.

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It said: “Such differences cannot be explained by the ability range, but may be influenced by parental backgrounds, geography, curriculum and information, advice and guidance.”

When it came to the 30 most selective universities, 48.2 per cent of independent school pupils were accepted compared to just 18 per cent of pupils from non selective state schools.

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