Two years ago Oxford University started a trailblazing summer school to attract pupils from families who do not traditionally apply to degree courses, write Madeleine Pennell.

The idea quickly spread to Cambridge, Bristol and Nottingham universities and now they have inspired a government initiative to target students from inner city working class backgrounds.

Under this scheme universities can bid for a slice of £4m to run week-long summer schools next July for sixth formers from inner London, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham.

Government officials contacted the Sutton Trust which funds and runs Oxford's summer schools for advice while they were planning the scheme and the publicly funded schools will run along similar lines. The main difference is that the Government scheme targets students from inner cities and the Sutton Trust courses are open to any state school or college pupil from any area.

Oxford University started running the first summer schools in the country in 1997.

The idea came from successful businessman and former Corpus Christi graduate Peter Lampl, whose charity, the Sutton Trust, seeks to provide educational opportunities for bright young people.

Oxford only has about 10,000 applications for 3,400 undergraduate places - a paltry number compared to most other universities.

Warwick University for example has about 30,000 applications for fewer than 3,000 places. Oxford is desperate to brush away its "Brideshead Revisited" image of being full of upper middle class sloanes and wants to reach untapped pockets of bright pupils from families who do not traditionally go to university.

Places at the schools are free to the students who stay in college rooms for the week and take part in academic activities including home work designed to give pupils a flavour of life at the university and raise their aspirations.

Tutors give their time for free to take tutorials and lectures.

Social activities including treasure hunts, video nights and discos are also arranged. The schools are very successful. For the past several years more state school pupils have applied to Oxford than those from the independent sector and this October has been no exception.

Of those applying to the university for places in 2000, 47 per cent were from state schools and 37 per cent were from the independent sector.

Earlier this year the university made more conditional offers of places to state school pupils than their independent counterparts.

To boost this trend even further, Oxford University is going to apply for some of the Government money and hopes to run a summer school for up to 75 pupils next summer. Both types of course will run alongside each other, but could follow a slightly different format.

The university will be working directly with local education authorities in the six target cities to encourage students to attend the schools.

Jane Minto, admissions officer said: "It is extremely encouraging for the university and it is very much the sort of thing we like to do to encourage more people to apply. Some people have a misconception about Oxford and we are very keen to reach out to young people wherever they are.

"If we are able to allow people to come and spend time at Oxford we are delighted to be able to do that."

Story date: Thursday 02 December

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.