Oxford University: 'We can't take many more working-class students without dropping our standards'

Admissions chiefs said there was 'a finite pool' of candidates who are qualified for places at Oxford and most already apply.

Mike Nicholson, director of admissions, warned that on its own Oxford would be unable to change dramatically the social make-up of students.

Elite: Oxford has places for 3,000 a year but only wants the best

The Government and schools needed to play their part by raising achievement of under-privileged pupils at A-level, especially in traditional disciplines such as science and languages, he said.

Private schools continued to turn out high numbers of pupils with A grades in the traditional disciplines of science and languages, he said.

The warning implies that Oxford is unable to take many more working-class students without compromising academic standards.

Mr Nicholson's intervention follows a warning from Cambridge that ministers are meddling in university affairs and expecting them to pursue a 'social justice' agenda instead of concentrating on their core purposes of education and research.

The claims by Cambridge's vicechancellor Alison Richard triggered a clash with Universities Secretary John Denham, who

said he disagreed profoundly and urged 'highly selective' institutions to work harder to attract poor students.

Mr Nicholson was speaking as he began a tour of party conferences to debate university admissions.

'There are a lot of things we can do but there are also limitations,' he said. 'We are fairly clear that there is at the moment a finite pool that we can draw upon.

'We think we are doing a good job of getting the message out, but even if 12,000 students apply with three As, we only have places for 3,000 of them.

'Our mission is to try and find the best students - the best being not just about academic record but the potential for success at university.'

Mr Nicholson said there were only about 28,000 teenagers who score three A grades in their A-levels each year. Oxford receives applications from about 11,000 with a similar number applying to Cambridge.

This leaves only a few thousand who do not apply to either Oxford or Cambridge. Many will simply not be interested in an Oxbridge education or want to study courses such as dentistry that are not taught at either university, Mr Nicholson said.

'Are all students necessarily interested in the way we teach subjects and the tutorial system? That is what we can't measure,' he said.

Independent schools teach more than a fifth of all sixth-formers and achieve a disproportionately high number of top grades, Mr Nicholson said.

About 40 per cent of candidates scoring A grades in subjects such as modern languages and sciences are from independent schools. For classics the figure is even higher.

Mr Nicholson emphasised that Oxford wanted to increase 'the potential pool of candidates' applying and was engaged in a wide range of outreach activities.

'Equally as a university on our own we are not going to change everything dramatically,' he added.

He called for a joint effort to help working class pupils score better grades from universities and the Department for Schools.

Ministers' drive to boost the number of working-class students at elite universities has proved controversial. There are fears institutions will be reduced to crude social engineering to meet their Government-imposed targets.