UK education secretary accused of misleading claim about Oxford entry

Rachel Rees and David Sheppard:

Lucy Powell, the UK’s new education secretary, has been accused of making a misleading claim about her own education, after saying she was the only pupil from her school year to attend Oxford university.

Powell told the BBC last year, while running for the Labour deputy leadership, that she was the “only one” from her year group at Manchester’s Xaverian College “to get into Oxford that year” out of “2,000 people”.

But two former Xaverian pupils told the FT that multiple members of Powell’s year group at the highly regarded state sixth form in central Manchester also got into Oxford that year.

One of the people said at least three others in Powell’s year group, whose members completed their A-levels in 1993, also went from the school to Oxford, and that they had shared a class with her at Xaverian. One student started at Oxford after taking a gap year.