18 Wednesday June 8 2022 | the times
News
The number of pupils at private schools
in Britain has risen even though the
proportion winning places at top uni-
versities has fallen, a survey reveals.
The independent sector sent 4.3 per
cent of its leavers to Oxford and Cam-
bridge last year, down from 5.3 per cent
the year before and 6.5 per cent in 2016.
Exeter, Durham, Bristol, UniversityMore pupils at private schools
but fewer make it to Oxbridge
College London and Nottingham also
took fewer privately-educated under-
graduates than the previous year, ac-
cording to the Independent Schools
Council (ISC) census.
Professor Stephen Toope, vice-
chancellor of Cambridge University,
said last month that private schools
must accept that they would get fewer
students into Oxbridge because of the
competition from the state sector. He
told The Times that leading universities
needed to make it very clear to
independent schools that their “prem-
ium” was likely to be reduced.
However, the average independent
school pupil still has a better chance of
getting into Oxbridge than those
educated in the state sector, which
sends roughly 2 per cent of its intake
each year to the two universities.
The census found there was a record
544,316 pupils at the ISC’s 1,388 member
schools, up from 532,237 last year. How-
ever, boarding school numbers had not
returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the ISC,
said in the foreword to the census:
“Pupil numbers grew to reach a record
high, despite the impact of Covid on the
ability of pupils to travel to the UK and,
for some parents, loss of income. This
census has also recorded that feeincreases were kept quite low for the
second year in a row.
“Reassuringly, we have once again
seen a rise in fee assistance provision,
with the amount for means-tested
fee assistance rising to a total of
£480 million. International pupils bring
a global perspective to our schools,
enrich the community, and are a vital
pipeline to British universities. Non-
British pupils whose parents live over-
seas accounted for 4.6 per cent of the
total ISC pupil population this year.
“We have also seen growth in over-
seas campuses, the income from which
helps fund bursaries and keep costs
down in the UK.”
Fees were frozen at many schools
during the pandemic but increased by
an average of 3 per cent this academic
year. The average boarding fee is
£37,000 a year and the average fee at
day school £15,600.
Fee assistance worth nearly £1.2 billion
was provided this year, an increase of
4.8 per cent, the ISC said. However only
half of the £960 million fee assistance
coming from schools was provided on a
means-tested basis. Only 6,000 — 3 per
cent — are on full bursaries.
Around 5 per cent of independent
school leavers went abroad for univers-
ity, with the US accounting for almost
half of these.
Special needs children make up a
higher proportion of private school
pupils than last year, with an increase of
0.6 percentage points, to 17.6 per cent.
The largest increases were in pupils
with autistic spectrum disorders and
issues relating to mental health.
The census also suggested that the
number of all-girls schools was growing
while boys’ schools were in decline —
136 schools have exclusively female
pupils, up from 131, while 98 schools are
all boys, down from 102 last year.
Winchester College has announced
that it will take girls in sixth form and
Charterhouse now accepts girls
throughout the school.
More private schools have opened
branches abroad, up from 81 last year to
93 this year. In China alone there are 47.
They educate nearly 60,000 pupils.Nicola Woolcock Education Editor
George Willoughby8%
6
4
2
16 17 18 19 20 21 2022Percentage of private school leavers
attending higher education at Oxford
or CambridgeHighest proportion of pupils from private
schools attending university in 2022- University of Exeter
- Durham University
- UCL
- University of Edinburgh
- University of Bristol
- University of Cambridge
- University of Oxford
4.6%
4.4%
4.1%
4%
3.5%
2.2%
2.1%Study destinations
College off hook for trying
to move ‘slaver’ monument
George SandemanJesus College, Cambridge, will not have
to pay the legal costs of a group of
alumni who stopped it moving a memo-
rial to a benefactor linked to slavery.
The Rustat Memorial Group claimed
the college had acted unreasonably in
applying to remove the monument
from Jesus College chapel and the at-
tempt had incurred unnecessary costs.
Yesterday David Hodge QC, ruling in
the Consistory Court of the Diocese of
Ely, refused the group’s application for
costs. Hodge had ruled in March that
the memorial to Tobias Rustat should
not be moved.
“I am satisfied that the college acted
entirely properly in bringing this
matter before the court in the first
place,” he said in his judgment. “This
was a paradigm example of a significant
item of contested heritage associated
with the trade in enslaved people,
which, in the absence of any precedent
to assist the college in its approach, in-
evitably and properly became the sub-
ject of consistory court proceedings.”
He added: “I am satisfied that thecollege did not act at all unreasonably
in the way in which it approached and
conducted this inevitable litigation.”
Rustat made a donation of £2,000 —
the equivalent of about £500,000 today
— to Jesus College, his father’s alma
mater, to fund scholarships for the or-
phaned children of Anglican clergy.
In 1694 a 3½-ton memorial made by
the studio of Grinling Gibbons was in-
stalled in the college chapel.
Cambridge began an inquiry into its
links to slavery in 2019, and Jesus Col-
lege set up a working party on the
legacy of slavery.
As Black Lives Matter protests swept
Britain after the murder of George
Floyd in the US in 2020, the college
announced plans to relocate the
memorial. It cited Rustat’s investments
in the Royal African Company, which
transported almost 150,000 slaves to
the Americas.
In December 2020 the college ap-
plied to the Diocese of Ely. Sonita
Alleyne, master of Jesus, said it would
be “the right solution for our college”.
The plan was challenged by the memo-
rial group, which forced the hearing.Top universities such as Oxford are taking fewer students from private schools
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