Proportion sank below 54% despite government drive to get wider mix of students into elite institutions

The proportion of state school pupils at Oxford University fell last year, despite ministers spending hundreds of millions of pounds to boost the educational diversity of pupils in elite institutions.

Some 53.9% of UK undergraduates who started at Oxford last autumn were from state schools and colleges, 1.5 percentage points fewer than the previous year. This means the proportion of privately educated students rose from 44.6% in 2008 to 46.1% last year.

It comes after a government drive to encourage Oxford, Cambridge and other leading universities to take students from a wider mix of backgrounds. This year the government agency that distributes funds to universities and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which is in charge of universities, gave institutions £231m to widen access.

Oxford revealed that 56.4% of the offers it made for this autumn have gone to UK state school students. The figures are provisional on students obtaining at least three A grades in A-level exams, in most cases.

Applications for the university have shot up by 12% to more than 17,000. About five applicants will be competing for each place this summer.

Mike Nicholson, Oxford's director of undergraduate admissions, said the university's outreach work was paying off. He said: "We are now in a position where our offers to state school students is roughly in line with the latest government figures showing what proportion of students achieving three As at A-level came from state schools.

"We have also bettered our internal target of achieving 62% of applications from state school students a year ahead of schedule. While Oxford is continuing to attract record numbers of excellent applicants from state schools, there is still room for more work to be done, and the university will continue to engage with potential applicants, their teachers and advisers, and parents to ensure all those with the potential to excel at Oxford apply."

In a speech last week to private school headteachers, Lord Patten, the Oxford chancellor, said the university should resist "social engineering". "I would always strongly resist the suggestion that at a university like Oxford – not that there are many – we should abandon a meritocratic test imaginatively applied in favour of social engineering," he said. "That would help neither the young people involved nor the quality of the institution."

Oxford is not going to take into account the new A* grade at A-level being awarded for the first time this summer. The university said it would wait at least two years before it makes offers of A*s.

In 2000 Gordon Brown called Oxford's decision to reject comprehensive school pupil Laura Spence "an absolute scandal". She was refused a place at Magdalen College despite gaining five A grades in her A-levels and became the centre of a political storm over elitism.

The figures for Cambridge University's state school students will be released next month. In 2007-08 the number of state school pupils rose to 59%, compared with 55% the year before.