Oxford vice-chancellor sent children to private school for ‘best education’

The outgoing vice-chancellor of Oxford has said that she sent her children to private school to give them the “best education”.

Dame Louise Richardson was asked in an interview whether it was now better for parents to send their children to state school if they hoped for them to attend Oxbridge.

She replied: “The vast majority of people don’t have that choice . . . My advice to parents is just to get the best education they can for their children, and to encourage their passion for their subject. And if they get into Oxford or Cambridge, that’s wonderful, but there are many other great universities in the country.”

Asked if they should avoid state schools, Dame Louise said: “Having been state-educated myself my entire career, I did send my children to private schools because I wanted them to have the best education they could get.”

It comes amid a row over the declining rate of privately educated children gaining places at Oxford and Cambridge.

Wishes students were ‘more resilient’

The Irish social scientist and expert in terrorism, who was speaking to the Financial Times, also said that she wished her “students were more resilient about not feeling undone by nasty remarks thrown at them” and that she worried academics were too afraid to take public stances because of social media.

That follows multiple rows about “de-platforming” and cancel culture at universities, in particular, over attempts by student activists to block gender-critical speakers from addressing events.

Last week, The Telegraph revealed that the Government was watering down its planned free-speech law intended to prevent universities from cancelling controversial speakers.

The new law is set to enable academics and students to sue institutions for breaching their free-speech rights, but new amendments from the Government will insist that it be only as a last resort.

Stand ‘against cancellation’

In the same interview, Dame Louise also spoke of the need to stand against the “cancellation” of benefactors.

Oxford has faced down calls to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the Victorian imperialist, while it has not removed the name of the Sackler family, who made a fortune from the opioid-based medication ravaging the US, from one of its libraries, despite many other institutions making similar moves.

Asked why not, Dame Louise said: “Pick a building! The Earl of Clarendon! What did he do?! Are we going to go rifling through his life, and say oops we didn’t like something he did?” She was referring to the name of the building in which she was talking.

The vice-chancellor will leave Oxford this month, having been in post since January 2016. She played an important role in Oxford licensing its Covid-19 vaccine technology to the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

She warned that the current funding model for universities was inadequate and that the university lost money on every student, with tuition fees providing only five per cent of Oxford’s income.