At the moment, students from Wales are under-represented at Oxford. To help change this, the University has launched Oxford Cymru: an extensive community outreach programme, offering bespoke and local support to students of mixed ages, their families and teachers.

Welsh primary school children visiting College, March 2020.

Three Oxford colleges, Jesus College, New College and St Catherine’s College, have joined forces to lead on delivering this exciting new programme. By working together, these colleges will ensure that for the first time the University of Oxford is able to offer a coherent outreach programme that covers the whole of Wales. Our aims are ambitious and split in to two key areas:

Outreach Work

1. To ensure that the proportion of outreach work delivered by the University reflects the proportion of schools in each Welsh region by 2024 / 25.
2. To increase the amount of outreach work in Mid, Northwest, and West Wales to ensure it reflects the proportion of all schools in these regions by 2024 / 25.
3. To create a digital and print marketing campaign to reach all Welsh secondary schools by 2023, helping to raise the profile of Oxford University in Wales.

Applications:
1. To increase the rate of application growth from Welsh state-school students to 5% per annum by 2024 / 25.
2. To increase applications from South West and West Wales so that they make up at least 25% of total Welsh applications by 2024 / 25.

To find out more, please go to the Oxford Cymru website for more information.

We are partnered with the London areas of Lambeth and Wandsworth, providing access and outreach programmes across the boroughs to widen participation, develop skills, and increase access to Oxford.

A Lambeth school visit, 2019

We prioritise our access activities for non-selective state schools in our areas. Prospective applicants, independent schools and schools from other regions are of course welcome to contact us to arrange a College tour. If you are a prospective mature applicant, do get in touch as we’d love to help and advise you!

Oxford for UK provides an initial point of contact. If you have existing contact with a college or department you are welcome to stay in touch with them.

In order to build the longer-term, community-focused support we can offer to students and prospective applicants, we have teamed up with schools in our regions to operate a ‘hub school’ system. Hub schools act as a central point from which we can deliver academic sessions and guidance workshops to pupils from a variety of schools. We have so far established hubs within three areas:

Blaenau Gwent, South Wales

In September 2018, in collaboration with Nick Smith MP for Blaenau Gwent, we established Jesus College’s first Hub school. Coleg Gwent is in one of Europe’s poorest regions. Our Access Fellow regularly visits the Hub, working with students to encourage and equip more of them to make competitive applications to Oxford.

Newport, South Wales

In June 2019 we launched our hub of Newport schools and sixth form colleges. This is a coordinated approach with the local authority and with the support of the local Seren hub (EAS Consortium).

Camberwell, Lambeth

In late 2019 we teamed up with St Gabriel’s College to create our first London hub. The aim is to expand engagement with Lambeth schools, where we will focus on raising student aspirations, widening access to Oxford and helping students develop the skills required for post-16 education choices and progression.

Our long-term goal – dependent on funding and human resource – is to create further collaborations elsewhere in our regions.