Oxford University has announced the highest proportion of places to state school and BME pupils in its history, in a major step forward after criticism was levelled at the historic institution last year for perceived failures in the diversity of its intake.

The University recently announced statistics of its offers for the 2020/21 academic year, highlighting that 69% of places had been offered to students from state schools, up 4.5% from 2019/20 out of the 3,000 total places.

The rise marks a shift in Oxford’s intake trends with the Director of Undergraduate Admissions, Dr Samina Khan stating: ‘This creates a strong foundation for what we aim to achieve. We know that students from some backgrounds are not as well-represented at Oxford as they should be, and we are determined that this should change.’

Oxford was quick to attribute this rise to success in its access initiatives, with two new programmes, Foundation and Opportunity Oxford, coming into fruition this year, with Foundation Oxford providing a preliminary year of study to give high potential students from disadvantaged students support in reaching the country’s elite universities.

The performance of state schools and their pupils was not mentioned in the university’s official release, raising questions over potential tokenism of the offers. This is the idea of offers being given for the sake of meeting quotas rather than in recognition of the success of many state schools have achieved despite their monetary disadvantages compared to the leading public schools.

Despite this, the news was met with complaints from many in the private school sector, over fears that private school students would be ‘squeezed out’ in a drive to make intake more diverse.

The University is also celebrating it’s highest yet numbers of BME students, rising to 22%, up 4% from the previous year, a number which can be recognised as part of the universities wider drive to improve the diversity of its intake.

Oxford University came under media fire last year, with Glastonbury headliner, Stormzy, alleging that Oxford turned down his proposal to sponsor two black pupils – a proposal which was later taken up by Cambridge. Oxford denies this, claiming the proposal was ‘unclear.’