State school A-level students like me face an almighty scrap to get into Oxbridge – it doesn't have to be that way

Gifted students simply aren’t getting the same opportunities to apply to the most prestigious universities. It is infuriating. Talented people are running up against needless obstacles at under-resourced schools

The Labour Party’s proposal for reforms to A-levels could be a game changer for many, but it is only one step on the road to helping comprehensive school students like me find their way to Oxbridge.

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner has proposed that predicted grades should no longer be used to secure university places. The argument goes that the system is rigged. Put simply, poorer kids tend to have their grades underestimated more often, according to the Sutton Trust.

Fixing this is important but it is not the be all and end all of our access woes.

I come from a small school in Mid Wales, which for much of my education was in special measures. I am the only person I know of who has gained admission to Oxford from my High School, and the difficulties in university applications went far beyond the problem of grade underestimation.

For ages, I had wanted to study mathematics at university. For the months leading up to my GCSE exams, a maths teacher had resigned, meaning that my maths teacher had to switch between my class and the bottom set class, a class which was very demanding of their time.

I had fellow students asking me how to do maths questions when we were without a teacher, and I taught myself additional maths at home, without the resources to do so at school. When it came to choosing A-levels, I was told that the only feasible way to study further maths – a qualification which is almost essential for most maths degrees – would be to take a four-hour round journey to study at a college which offered this option. There was no choice.

Things changed when I moved to a different college for sixth-form. Although still a comprehensive school, my new college in Hereford was significantly better equipped to deal with Oxbridge applications. We received a lot more help, including visits to Oxford and Cambridge, and guidance with personal-statement writing and interviews.

I don’t think I would be at Oxford today without that 4-hour-round trip. My twin, however, never received the same support. Due to his autism, he decided it would be better to stay in our old school where he had friends, and didn’t have to cope with the long journey.

He applied to Cambridge to read natural sciences, but the school never informed him of the earlier entrance deadline, and despite his insistence that there was one, the day of early applications passed, and his opportunity drifted away before he had even applied.

Horror stories like these are all-too common at comprehensive state schools. One friend who studied in a town in the Welsh valleys camped outside the office of her UCAS officer for hours on the day of early applications, after she had realised that her tutor references had not yet been submitted, and they were not on track to be done so on time.

Eventually, she managed to ensure her references were written and now studies at Oxford. However, the fact is that close-call situations such as these are all too common in comprehensive schools, and Oxford has not done enough to prevent them from occurring.

Gifted students simply aren’t getting the same opportunities to apply to the most prestigious universities. It is infuriating. Talented people are running up against needless obstacles at under-resourced schools instead of having their path to higher education made as smooth as possible.

Specifically, these are problems faced by comprehensive schools rather than selective state schools, which tend to have more resources, shared between fewer students. When Oxford vice chancellor Louise Richardson blamed the problem of admissions on state schools, her blame missed the target, but only just.

The crisis in state school admissions to Oxbridge is not the fault of individual schools, but rather the school system, which allows for an unfair distribution of resources – of teachers, and of grade predictions. The Labour Party has said it wants to fix one of the issues, for which I applaud it. My only hope now is that it will look beyond this, at the other issues faced by comprehensive school students in applying to universities.