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A Cambridge college is to target the recruitment of students from elite private schools, interrupting decades of efforts to boost access for state-educated and disadvantaged pupils, the Guardian has learned.
Fellows at Trinity Hall college last month approved a policy to approach a small group of private schools, including St Paul’s Girls, Eton and Winchester, to improve the “quality” of students applying, claiming that “reverse discrimination” was a concern.
The move has horrified experts in social mobility and was opposed internally by a group of Trinity Hall academics who described it as “a slap in the face” for the college’s state-educated students.
Trinity Hall use a “targeted recruitment strategy” to individually approach about 50 independent schools to encourage applications in subjects including languages, music and classics. Most of the schools are in the south of England and charge fees upwards of £25,000 a year.
In a memo outlining the policy, Marcus Tomalin, Trinity Hall’s director of admissions, claimed “the best students from such schools arrive at Cambridge with expertise and interests that align well with the intellectual demands” of the subjects.
Tomalin added: “To ignore or marginalise this pool of applicants would risk overlooking potential offer holders who are not only exceptionally well qualified but who have been encouraged to engage critically and independently with their subjects in a way that Cambridge has historically prized.
“It is important that the crucial task of securing greater fairness in admissions does not unintentionally result in reverse discrimination.”
Trinity Hall staff who spoke to the Guardian said a “significant number” of fellows were upset by the new policy but had been powerless to stop it last month when it was formally presented to the governing body.
One said: “This is a deeply alarming policy. Claiming that the best students come from an elite set of schools will make many of our wonderful diverse community feel unwelcome and risks returning Trinity Hall to the boys’ club culture of the past.”
Another said it was a “slap in the face” for state-educated undergraduates and for those staff within Cambridge who had fought to widen participation and improve outreach to British state schools.
Lee Elliot Major, a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said: “What is truly shocking is the implication that widening participation students are academically inferior. The evidence is clear: when talented students who have faced greater barriers gain access to elite universities, they flourish precisely because opportunity, not ability, was the binding constraint.
“At a time when the educational playing field is more unequal than ever, universities should be identifying academic potential wherever it exists, not mistaking polished performance, so often shaped by privilege, for greater raw talent.”
A spokesperson for Trinity Hall said the college “has a commitment to admit the best and brightest students regardless of background and has a strong record of access initiatives aimed at students from disadvantaged backgrounds”.
Noting schemes including a residential programme for those from underrepresented ethnic minority groups, they said: “This latest initiative is aimed at targeted subjects to encourage students with high academic potential to apply to Cambridge. Those students come from all school types, including the independent sector, in line with the university’s access and participation plan.”
Tomalin’s memo said that while much of the university’s focus had “quite rightly” been on underrepresented and disadvantaged groups, “many” privately educated applicants “have faced considerable personal or financial challenges”, and it claimed that a “significant minority of students at leading independent schools are on full bursaries”.
However a recent survey of 200 wealthy independent schools suggested only 6% of fee income was spent on means-tested bursaries – of which a fraction would be likely to be full bursaries.
Cambridge and Oxford have made great efforts to shed a reputation for admitting students from a narrow pool of elite schools, particularly fee-paying institutions and highly selective grammar schools.
By 2022, nearly 73% of UK students admitted to Cambridge were state educated. But the proportion has since fallen to 71%, with 29% coming from private schools. About 7% of UK-educated students attend private schools.
In 2024, Cambridge removed specific targets for state schools admissions, under a policy imposed by the Office for Students, England’s higher education regulator.
Trinity Hall’s proportion of privately educated students was 32% in 2022, falling to 26% in its most recent data.
Trinity Hall is one of Cambridge’s oldest colleges. Founded in 1350, its alumni include Stephen Hawking, JB Priestley and Donald Maclean, who was recruited as a Soviet double agent while at Cambridge.
