Britain's elite universities take fewer state school pupils

The number of state school pupils entering Britain's elite Oxford and Cambridge Universities dropped in 2003.

Data released yesterday shows the two universities also fell well short of the Government's 75 per cent target for the proportion of students they should be taking from state schools.

Some 53.8 per cent of Oxford's intake in 2003 came from the state sector, down from 55.4 per cent the previous year; at Cambridge, the state intake slipped to 56.9 per cent, from 57.6. The state school intake across all universities in Britain in 2003 was 86.8 per cent.