Why does no one speak up for poor white boys?

David Cameron can be a frustrating figure at times. He wrote an article for the Sunday Times this week in which he drew attention to the under-representation of disadvantaged students in Britain’s universities, which he was quite right to do. But he is wrong about the ethnicity of those students and wrong about where the problem lies. It’s working-class white boys who fare the worst, not black boys, and when it comes to broadening access, the track record of our tertiary education sector is pretty good. It’s state schools that could be doing more.

First, a few facts. If you broaden the definition of non-white Britons to encompass all ethnic minorities, including British Asians, they’re significantly more likely to go to university than white Britons, according to an Institute of Fiscal Studies report published last year. That report found that Chinese pupils in the lowest socio-economic quintile are 10 per cent more likely to go to university than white British pupils in the highest quintile. The weakest performers are not black pupils, but white Britons in the lowest quintile. They’re 10 per cent less likely to participate in higher education than any other ethnic group.

Overall, 20 per cent of British students at UK universities are BME (black or minority ethnic), which is significantly higher than the percentage of the population that’s BME — 13 per cent, according to the 2011 Census. The figure for Russell Group universities is marginally lower — 18 per cent — and Oxford lower still, at around 14 per cent. But that figure is the same as the Russell Group average if you strip out London universities. True, black students are under–represented at Oxford and the success rate of black applicants is below average, but that’s largely because so few apply — only 281 last year, out of 11,729 applicants in total.