Top universities fail working class

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The decline in students from poorer backgrounds starting courses at Britain's top institutions came despite an increase in working-class undergraduates across the country.

But students' leaders said the improvements were too slow and warned that the figures did not yet show the impact of top-up tuition fees on applications.

The latest data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency follows a major Government push to increase the number of students from lower social classes going to university.

These students were defined as having parents who are self-employed or working in technical or routine occupations.

At Cambridge, 12.4% of young full-time students starting their first degrees two years ago were from these lower social classes. But by last year, the figure had fallen to 11.8%. There was an even sharper fall at Oxford, from 12.3% in 2004-05 to 11.4% last year.

Geoff Parks, Cambridge's director of admissions, said the drop was "disappointing".

But he added: "We do have concerns about the reliability of this data, given that it is based on students declaring their own social class. Our bursary spend for 2005/06 was in line with expectations and with previous years indicating that there was no drop in admissions from lower-income families."

A spokeswoman for Oxford said the university had been working hard for years to increase the number of students from poorer backgrounds but there was still work to do.

Nationally, the figures showed the proportion of students from state schools entering university or college rose from 86.7% in 2004/05 to 87.4% for 2005/06. The proportion of students from lower social classes increased from 28.2% to 29.3%.