Oxford Law

The uneven playing fields of English education

Encaenia in the Sheldonian by Thomas Uwins (19th C.). Smithsonian.

Choosing the law

In 1981, at exactly this time of year, I went up to Oxford to read law. I’d like to say I decided on law because it offered good general intellectual training and the chance of a career. 

But mostly it was because I didn’t have a strong enough record in any of the subjects I’d taken at school. Applying to read law levelled the playing field because at least none of the applicants would have studied it before. And coming from a state (government) school, trying to improve the odds was important.

Students from independent schools (fee-paying private schools, some of which are confusingly called public schools¹) had a much better chance in those days of getting into top universities in England, especially Oxford or Cambridge.

Choosing a college

My choice of college, Hertford, was also an attempt to level the playing field.

At Oxford, you apply to a college, not the university, and through the college you join the university, which grants your degree. The college was responsible for pastoral matters and for arranging tutorials, the key mode of teaching for a subject like law or history. 

Although its origins date back to the 13th century, Hertford was known as a poor college, financially speaking, which meant it couldn’t boast a deer park, extensive wine cellar, or magnificent chapel.

Photo of the Bridge of Sighs at Hertford, taken by me.

Admittedly, it does have the Bridge of Sighs—hardly an architectural wonder but a well-known university landmark. And the college’s location next to the Bodleian library in the very centre of the city would have been a good enough reason to study there.

However, the main reason I chose to apply to Hertford was because of the Tanner Scheme. 

The Tanner Scheme: levelling the playing field

Before this scheme and in all other colleges, the way the admissions process was constructed overwhelmingly favoured applicants from independent schools. Applicants had to sit a special Oxford entrance exam, which usually required the candidate to take an extra term in the sixth form (the final two years of high school). State schools couldn’t easily accommodate that extra term at school, nor could their students generally afford any private tutoring to prepare for it. 

Exclusive to Hertford, the Tanner Scheme bypassed this special entrance exam by introducing an early interview at the start of the final year at school. This, if it went well, would lead to an offer that would be conditional on performance in the public exams taken by everyone in school at 18 in England, known as A-levels. Sometimes the grades required would be so low as to make the offers effectively unconditional.

The scheme was a success. A greater proportion of state school students began to enter the college. Hertford leaped up in the annual rankings of the colleges of the university. This wasn’t popular with everyone, however; at one point the university threatened to throw the college out of the university on the grounds that it was poaching the best students. 

High Street, Oxford 1799, by Thomas Malton. Royal Academy of Arts

Scraping in

I was a long way from being one of the best students, but that’s how I entered. The college made me an offer on the basis of a rather gruelling interview I’d done soon after I turned 17, where I’d been asked to discuss issues raised in a text on English constitutional law that I’d only seen an hour before. And although the following summer my A-level results didn’t quite match what they had requested, the college took me anyway, for which I felt grateful. 

The untidiest room in England

Having scraped my way in, I began my study of law with some trepidation. Hertford had a very good reputation in law, and this was in large part due to the excellence of the teachers, especially the formidably intelligent Roy Stuart, who was also Dean of the college. A remarkable man, Roy seems to belong to a long-past age of eccentric dons (as teachers are known in Oxford). 

In the words of his obituary in the Times (he died in 2005 at the age of 68), 

“In one of the untidiest rooms in England, Roy would lead his tutorial pupils towards an understanding of the principles of criminal law, contract and jurisprudence with a mixture of wit, empathy and intellectual rigour, stirred with a measure of cynicism.”

From behind an immense and impenetrable semicircle of handwritten papers and student essays that effectively re-carpeted the room, he would hunch in his armchair and make scathing remarks about other lawyers, with his greatest scorn saved for the Law Lords, the judges in the highest court in the land in those days, whom he apparently regarded as bewigged buffoons who understood nothing of the law.

A rigorous education  

I remember that he claimed to be one of only two people in the country who understood the 1968 Theft Act (I forget who the other person was—but it certainly wasn’t me). We’d never imagined theft would turn out to be complicated, but Roy soon put us straight on that. He would tease out the most elaborate and unforeseen issues from cases of theft and burglary as well as assault and manslaughter. These cases also suggested extensive hinterlands of depravity among the criminal classes and bottomless incompetence on the part of the police (and occasionally the other way around). Who knew that those countless rows of bound and published cases in the law library contained such juicy stuff?

“Issues” was in fact a favourite word of Roy’s. Our early essay attempts would come back with every paragraph decorated at least once with that word, scrawled in red ink and accompanied by an interrogation mark. We were being trained to think and write logically and analytically.

Hertford College in a puddle

Hertford College vs Boris Johnson

In those days, there wasn’t a lot of effort put into developing the learner’s study methods. I recall the first meeting of us with Roy as term officially began. We were given an essay topic, a deadline, and a list of cases to consult. The only gesture towards learner support was his laconic, “The law library is that way,” accompanied by a vague gesture of his hand. “See you next week,” he helpfully added. I don't recall him encouraging us to attend any university lectures on his subject. He probably didn’t trust any of his colleagues to get the law right. We were basically on our own. 

The method seemed to work. Hertford’s star in law continued to rise, and in 2019, when the English Supreme Court ruled that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament was unlawful, no fewer than three lawyers who’d studied under Roy were involved in successfully pursuing this landmark case. 

Roy’s teaching wasn’t always scintillating, however—once, during a tutorial, one of our number fell asleep during one of Roy’s lengthy perorations on the incompetence or stupidity (or possibly both) of a Law Lord. The sound of her snoring was difficult to ignore. Roy looked embarrassed, and I and the other conscious tutee exchanged uneasy glances, but no effort was made to wake the sleeping scholar.

A battle far from over

As for the Tanner Scheme, it was sadly closed down by the university when it “standardised” admissions into the university across all colleges in 1984. Since then, while it’s fair to say that the university has become gradually less biased towards the wealthy, the battle is still not won.

According to a recent article, about a third of the students entering Oxford as undergraduates in 2023 were from independent schools, which is far higher than the percentage of the population who attend such schools, suggesting a continued skewing of admissions in their favour.²

Looking back, I was lucky that the short-lived Tanner Scheme gave me the chance to get into the university. I was also lucky to have a brilliant tutor like Roy—at least, that is, until I abandoned the study of law for English. But that’s a story for another time. I’d like to end instead with my favourite Roy Stuart anecdote.

Policeman and Tramp by Philip William May (19th C.). Art Institute of Chicago.

The long arm of the law

I remember that Roy, who was, I should say, never the most elegantly dressed of men, shook gently with suppressed giggles as he told us this story.

One dark winter evening, as Roy shuffled in battered old slippers slowly down Broad Street, in the very heart of Oxford and not far from the college, he was stopped by a policeman³ who tried to arrest him for vagrancy.⁴ After a brief discussion and the eventual production, possibly, of some form of official ID, Roy was able to persuade the policeman that he was, in fact, the main law tutor and Dean at Hertford College. The policeman proceeded to apologise. But as he turned to leave, he said to Roy (who at this point in the telling proceeded to imitate the bobby’s fairly rough Thames Valley accent),

“But you’ve got to admit it, sir, you was looking pretty scruffy.”

1. In the UK, people frequently refer to such schools by one or more of these three names. I'll stick to “independent schools.” There's information about public schools here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)

2. Overall, around 6% to 7% of students in England attend independent schools. This percentage rises in later school years, partly because many international students enrol in independent schools for their final two years, affecting the overall figures.

3. The expression PC Plod is explained here.

4. The 1824 Vagrancy Act, never fully repealed, outlaws sleeping rough or begging in England and Wales.