Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what measures they are taking to increase the diversity of the undergraduate body of students at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are entering at record rates to the most selective universities. There are also record entry rates across all ethnic groups.

The guidance to the Director of Fair Access (DfA), published in February 2016, asked for the most selective institutions, to make faster progress on widening access, and to ensure their outreach is more focused. This report can be found in the attached document.

The DfA has agreed access agreements for 2018/19 with plans for universities to spend more than £860 million on measures to continue to support improving access and student success for students from disadvantaged and under-represented backgrounds, up significantly from £404 million in 2009. We are introducing sweeping reforms through legislation. The Higher Education and Research Act includes a transparency duty requiring all universities to publish applications, offers, and acceptance and retention rates broken down by gender, ethnicity and social economic background. This will help to hold them to account for their performance on access and retention. In addition, we expect all universities, particularly the most selective, to help raise attainment and support school improvement, including through school sponsorship and by establishing new state schools.