The University of Oxford, one of the world’s most prestigious educational institutions, will be rolling out a family guide translated for the first time into South Asian languages such as Bengali, Urdu and Hindi to reach out to a wider base of prospective students from under-represented communities in the UK.
The new outreach will begin in January 2020, with the new translated guides set to broaden reach and make the information more accessible to low-income households, which includes Bangladeshi communities across Britain.
“The decision to extend familial outreach beyond parents and prospective students is based on research which found that extended family can play a crucial role in youngsters’ decision making. Schools do not always offer the ‘depth’ of information about Oxford admissions that teenagers are looking for, so the new information campaign targeted at families is another way to inform prospective students,” explained Dr Samina Khan, Oxford’s Director of Undergraduate Admissions.
“With certain ethnic minorities, parents and the community are very big influencers. A teenager’s parents may not have attended university, but a member of their extended family circle may have, and will therefore be able to offer valuable advice and support,” she explained.
The latest drive comes amid a gradual hike in the number of British Bangladeshi students applying to Oxford University over the years, marking 1.6 percent of the total proportion in 2018 compared to just 0.8 percent in 2014.
Khan added: “In recent years Oxford University has prioritised building a more inclusive university environment and attracting more individuals from under-represented backgrounds through a number of target access and outreach measures. It is approach that is paying off over time, with Oxford now attracting more black and minority ethnic (BME) students than ever before (18.3 percent), and students from state schools now representing more than 62 percent of the undergraduate student body.
“We hope through these guides we can promote the wide range of degree courses on offer from the University, in addition to the very competitive courses like medicine, engineering and law.”
Besides the new guides, the university will also be hosting a series of events, open days and residential programmes aimed at prospective students and their families to run throughout the course of 2020, with a special focus on under-represented groups among Britain's South Asian communities.