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Roughly speaking, the proportion of suitable applicants to Oxford and Cambridge who receive an offer to those who do not, is approximately 1:8.
This is the first thing I explain to aspiring Year 12 students who have decided to take the first tentative steps on the Oxbridge journey. I go on to explain, much to their dismay, that all eight candidates in that ratio will have (again, roughly speaking) outstanding GCSE results, very high predicted grades and an excellent personal statement packed full of interests, activities and well-articulated descriptions of their academic passion.
They will have prepared well for any required admissions tests and they will, most likely, have been prepped up for the rigour of the interview, if fortunate to get that far.
Reading, I believe, is the secret ingredient.
What, then, is it that makes the difference? How does a student become the one in the one-in-eight?
If you have read this far, you are likely to go on to read the whole piece; it is only short, after all. You may have questioned the provenance and veracity of my statistics. You may have added more to my list of things that Oxbridge candidates should do to be successful. You may have contemplated your own conclusion to the question posed at the end of the paragraph.
In all such ways, you are reading and thinking critically. Why? Because you can. And why can you? Well, because you read. And there it is: reading, I contend, can be – and usually is – the difference between being a high-achieving, well-rounded applicant and the successful recipient of an Oxbridge offer.
Read. A Lot. Those three words, punctuated as they are, form a single slide on the presentation I deliver to the aforementioned Year 12s, every October. It is, I believe, the secret ingredient.
Reading should be a core part of the culture and curriculum of any serious school.
Whether a mathematician, a medic, an economist, a lawyer or a linguist, reading matters more than many students realise and schools must incorporate this into any guidance that they offer their students when considering applications to the most selective universities. Reading lists, regularly updated, and guidance on how much to read on a weekly basis and over the school holiday periods, should be embedded into every department. Reading should, in short, be a core part of the culture and curriculum of any serious school.
What students have to understand is that an A or A* predicted grade represents a basic minimum standard for such applications. Evidence of a genuine passion and deep understanding of a chosen subject can only come from what is discovered beyond the confines of the curriculum and the best resource, as far as I can see, is academic literature.
All of the interview skills in the world will come to nought if those skills cannot be backed up with the ability to articulate, in detail, academic ideas, theories, questions and concepts which can only be sourced by reading.
Political podcasts will never be a substitute for reading a challenging book.
The breadth of vocabulary and clarity of thinking that reading develops can be improved in other ways but, as much as listening to articulate centrists discussing politics on podcasts can be informative and interesting, it will never be a substitute for reading a challenging book on political philosophy. And I am sure that Rory Stewart would agree.
It is known that the likelihood of a student from a family with “books on the shelf” at home accessing university is far higher than those for whom reading is not valued by the family. But the challenge for school leaders is to control what they can control and, for this purpose, it is to ensure that reading is core to the culture of the school.
Where sixth form students are concerned, this must include the academic reading lists mentioned above but these must be modelled by the teachers who should be championing the works on the list and discussing their contents with students. Assembly talks not just on the importance of reading but on specific books, help to reinforce these messages and access to literature can be improved not just with a well-stocked library but by ensuring access to online academic libraries and publications, subscriptions to which need to be a necessary part of the school budget.
The challenge for school leaders is to control what they can control.
By being reading mentors to younger students, sixth formers not only have the opportunity to develop that culture for the next generation but become more mindful of the need to set the bar high. Because, as Barack Obama pointed out, “not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers”.
It is easy to lose yourself in a good list of reasons why reading matters. Ultimately, however, there is only one reason that counts: it is thoroughly enjoyable. A student who reads is interesting, knowledgeable and serious about the subject(s) that they want to study for three years or more. They are intellectually curious, not just academically successful. And when looking at what differentiates the one successfully applicant from the eight who don’t make the cut, ultimately those are the qualities that count.
My students can always ask me what I am reading and what I have recently read.
None of this is easy. Speaking recently on the BBC’s Today programme, Professor Sir Jonathan Bate, no less than Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, lamented that current students seem to lack the attention span and self-discipline to read long books.
This may be true; and the problem may well be the proliferation of social media, easy-to-access explainers on Youtube and the ability to “Google”, rather than research an answer, as he suggests.
All the more reason for schools to take the lead on this and to do so by example, not just by direction. And so, I conclude my annual Oxbridge Oktoberfest to Year 12 by challenging them: they can always ask me what I am reading and what I have recently read; and I will ask them, at any point in the year, the same question.
If I can’t answer them, they are free to ignore my advice; if they can’t answer me, they cannot complain when they don’t get an Oxbridge offer.
Source: schoolmanagementplus.com