Star pupils from state schools still failing to win Oxbridge places

It found that some fee-paying schools get more than double the number of pupils into the elite universities than their exam results would suggest.

The study could trigger a repeat of the 'Laura Spence affair' - where a state pupil rejected by Oxford was championed by Gordon Brown.

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State sixth-form colleges are the most likely to get top academic results and yet fail to get candidates into either Oxford or Cambridge, the FT/Good Schools Guide survey found.

Greenhead College, Huddersfield, for example, had 107 pupils in the top 6,600 nationwide but only 32 went on to Oxbridge.

The conclusions are the result of research that compared information about which schools were offered the 6,600 available places at Oxbridge last year with official A-level data, analysed by Ralph Lucas of the Good Schools Guide.

Britain' s top 6,600 A-level candidates - defined as those who achieved at least four As in academically challenging subjects - were the focus of the survey.

Greenhead, Wigan and Farnborough, for example, won only 63 Oxbridge places, even though they had 243 top-performing students in the country.

The figures for any one year will be erratic but the poor Oxbridge entry performance of sixth-form colleges was repeated across the country, with only a couple of exceptions.

Mr Lucas put that down to the lack of skilled support compared with the set-up at many academically successful schools.

John Guy, principal of the Sixth Form College, Farnborough, said although it worked hard on its Oxbridge applications it was not as 'obsessed as the Winchesters of this world'.

"We have a major Oxbridge event each year and put our students on buses to look at the universities, and some of them will come back and say, 'Sorry, that's not for us'.

"For Winchester students it probably doesn't look much different from their school."

However, some state schools won more Oxbridge places than their exam results indicated they would.

The Latymer School, a coeducational selective grammar in Edmonton, had 26 pupils in the top 6,600 in the country yet achieved 47 Oxbridge places. The Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe; Henrietta Barnett in north London; Chelmsford County High School, Essex and Colyton Grammar, Devon, also punched above their weight last year.

The disparity between exam performance and Oxbridge entry is not just an independent versus state school issue. Some top fee-paying schools failed to convert excellent exam performance into Oxbridge places.

Rugby School, for example, had 48 pupils with at least four grade As but won only 18 Oxbridge places.

Roedean, Badminton and Hampton also failed to secure a commensurate number of Oxbridge places.

In contrast, the three topperforming independent schools, Winchester College, Westminster and St Paul's, had 183 pupils among the nation's top performers but won 198 Oxbridge places.