Famke Veenstra-Ashmore was an intern at HEPI in the summer of 2024. She previously completed a BA and an MPhil in English at the University of Cambridge and now works as a parliamentary researcher.
My report about the gender awarding gap at Oxbridge has generated a lot of discussion on social media. Though I was astutely warned by HEPI’s Director to expect flak from certain right-wing publications, I was surprised that the only explicit and personal attack came from a female Times columnist.
Melaine McDonagh’s column objected to the report’s suggestion that historic institutions like Oxford and Cambridge ought to consider re-thinking the style and presentation of examinations for certain subjects where large gender awarding gaps exist. McDonagh argued that this suggestion was patronising and underestimated the ability of female students to stand their intellectual ground.
The Times column seemed to pick up on the argumentative threads of much of the discussion about my report online. I noticed a lot of the criticism of the report came from Oxbridge graduates from my parents’ generation, though this view was also held by younger Twitter users, such as Policy Exchange’s Lara Brown.
While debates around the supervision system and examinations are certainly legitimate and acknowledged in the report, much of the criticism was steeped in a kind of political and institutional nostalgia. A sense that Oxbridge might disentangling itself too much from its traditions for the sake of progressive politics.
As a recent graduate of Cambridge, where I spent four years, I understand the urge to herald its unique history and methods of teaching. Personally, I thrived, earned two degrees, and enjoyed both examinations and supervisions. But my report wasn’t about personal experience – it was about systemic flaws which were patently disadvantaging entire groups of students.
Why is it that so many people yearn for the days where women where ‘chewed and spat out’ (to borrow Melanie McDonagh’s phrase) at Oxbridge? David Butterfield’s recent take-down of Cambridge and its ‘infantilising’ approach to teaching also comes to mind when thinking about this surge of ex-Oxbridge students or academics criticising the evolution of institutions in reaction to social change.
From my perspective, this trend of thinking isn’t sincere. It is not rooted in a genuine concern over the way universities operate and how students think and learn and organise. Rather, it stems from a grievance towards the diversification of student cohorts which has caused the uncomfortable recognition, for Oxbridge traditionalists, that as the student body evolves, the manner of teaching and assessing may have to shift accordingly.
Many of these commentators miss this crucial point and their thinking is limited by the belief that all of Oxbridge’s academic traditions should be preserved. Butterfield, for example, claims that the ‘freewheeling process’ of allowing a larger proportion of state school students into Cambridge has ‘placed politics ahead of talent’. With similar logic, McDonagh reasons that adjusting examinations and supervisions to address institutional inequalities would unfairly benefit women, who have done nothing to deserve better outcomes, and should therefore receive no extra consideration when it comes to systemic methods of assessing their academic performance.
Though the comparison between state-school versus private school students and male and female students is limited, I suggest that the arguments offered by Butterfield and McDonagh are motivated by the same emotional basis.
Research by Cambridge Assessment has shown that state school pupils tend to outperform independent school pupils with similar A Level results at university. The study offered two potential explanations for this: that for independent school pupils there are simply less incentives for them to perform highly, or they have been ‘coached’ at school to do well in exams but then struggle when left to their own devices.
Are progressive politics, then, getting in the way of talent? Or are they enabling students who have not had the most privileged resources in their secondary education to thrive and contribute to an academic community which takes their contributions seriously?
We know that students from academic private schools aren’t entitled to higher marks, nor enjoy higher thresholds of talent, just because of their schooling. In a similar way, we know that Oxbridge was constructed around the education of a very specific, public-school educated, white and able-bodied man. When data suggests there is a problem worthy of addressing, why do ex-students and academics recoil from recognising and addressing this issue?
Many of the detractors of Oxford and Cambridge’s cultural and social modernisation are pushing against the demands of our rapidly shifting present. The desire to keep things the same is not without merit – the supervision system will rightly continue to be lauded by many. Equally, women at Oxbridge, through the criteria by which they are selected, will do well in exams. Change is so incremental at these institutions that I doubt fundamental changes will ever be on the negotiating table.
However, small evidence-based changes, such as the scaffolding of exam questions in specific subjects, can make a huge difference to the experience of female students at Oxbridge. Enabling more women to match their male counter parts will encourage more of them to progress into postgraduate study and strengthen academic departments – not weaken them.
Oxford and Cambridge pride themselves on their reputation for advancing research, technology, and educative practices. In their combined age of around two millennia, why would they stop now?
Well said. I’m a Cambridge graduate from an older generation (graduated 1988) and I saw way too many people damaged by the system.
At the time I bought into the overtly macho culture of “show how tough you are” – I had succeeded in it after all !
But as an educator myself I absolutely cannot condone it.
You’ve done an impressive job of working out all your critics’ motives! It was worth the effort, because it saved you from having to reply to any of their arguments.
Your argument seems to be rooted in the role of Oxford and Cambridge in British society – and to engage (in this article) not at all with research in pedagogy. So the argument for change doesn’t clearly answer the “why” question.
To the last point, yes these universities continually evolve. They don’t do so by embracing every trend but by taking on board new ideas where they are supported by evidence. An easy solution to a perceived awarding gap would be too undertake statistical normalisation: that would be a bad approach. Far-reaching change requires strong evidence: and evaluation of that evidence necessities a clear definition of the goal to be achieved.
No one should argue that an system developed around educating men should not change to meet the needs of women. By properly including women in the elite education system, society benefits massively by leveraging everyone’s abilities, not just mens’.
But sometimes, change is driven by a woke agenda.
I have two boys in an all-boys prep school, at a time when many private schools, both prep and senior, are going co-ed. I see significant benefits in a curriculum and timetable developed around the needs of boys. For example, the huge time spent on sports allows them to sit and focus in the classroom.
The British education system, once a beacon of quality, is under attack by wokeism:
– Transition to co-education when scientific evidence shows that boys and girls learn so differently. Males and females are not equal – physically, emotionally, learning styles, in their responsibilities (eg men cannot give birth), etc. None is better than the other, but they are different.
– An attack on the private sector through addition of VAT on school fees, as a weapon against class, rather that appreciating the value of private education.
Our education system is going through a crisis: university funding shortfalls, cut back on STEM subjects, devaluing of grades both at senior school and university, attack on private schools, and so on.
The British education system was previously doing something very right. That does not mean it shouldn’t progress and keep improving. But change for the sake of change, or for some woke agenda, is destroying it.
Equally, tradition for the sake of tradition hampers progress and improvement. But there’s something in those old traditions that is grounded in an understanding and appreciation of what works. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.