While my Oxford peers  go skiing, I stay behind to clean their rooms

Chloe Pomfret’s life as an Oxford student is not one of May balls and dining societies. Instead, in the holidays, the 21-year-old cleans the rooms at her college to earn enough to cover her rent.

The story of Pomfret, who grew up in supported accommodation in Manchester after her grandfather, with whom she had been living, died, shines a spotlight on the acute wealth divide at the university.

She says there are clear signs of classism and gives an example where she was the victim: “I joined the Oxford Union and ran for election and was given the nickname ‘council estate Chloe’. I resigned. That was the first obvious sign of classism that really hurt.”

Pomfret says cost-of-living pressures mean some students are struggling to enjoy the full Oxford experience. “You can absolutely see the differences,” she says. “You can see it in the Varsity ski trip, in winter vacation between Oxford and Cambridge, which is so expensive that the students who go are the wealthier ones. Commemoration balls cost up to £250. Some students are lucky if they go to one ball in three years. Others go to several each year.”

Pomfret, who is at St Catherine’s College, has successfully asked for university rules that ban undergraduates from paid work in term time to be waived in her case so she can earn enough to pay her food and living costs.

And she is backing a report, by Oxford University Student Union, which reveals that the choice of a college can make a difference of thousands of pounds to the cost of a three-year degree and can even affect academic performance.

At Oxford it is tradition that servants known as scouts, paid by the college, clean students’ bedrooms and serve dinner in formal dining halls. Pomfret says some of those rooms are now being cleaned in the holidays — when they are let out for conference bookings — by students. In term time, students strapped for cash are serving dinner to their fellow undergraduates and paid by the hour.

“I have cleaned college rooms in vacations, during conference periods. I have cleaned toilets. Some of the rooms I have cleaned were the rooms of my friends [who live in them in term time]. It is quite humiliating,” she said.

Students with special dispensation are allowed to work 7½ hours weekly in term time. Without the extra money she would not manage, she says, but it means she has less time to study.

Pomfret was thrilled to win a place at Oxford. “Education is my way out,” she says. Her college — one of the largest and most modern in the city — is a friendly place where students from all backgrounds get along and are polite, she says. However, she has realised the vast disparities in wealth evident at Oxford where about a third of UK undergraduates were privately educated.

In February she tweeted: “I love the contrast between me spending vacations working as a scout cleaning toilets for my college to afford next term’s rent vs the rich Oxford students spending vacation on their interrailing trip fully funded by the bank of mummy and daddy.”

Last week in response to a message about the Pembroke College commemoration ball, which invited students to “dust off your cloaks, fasten your white bow ties and adorn your finest attire”, she posted: “You wonder why Oxford is so inaccessible for working-class students … £446 for one college ball.”

When she arrived, Pomfret attended a social event run by a group called Class Act, where she met other state school pupils including care leavers and those who were the first in their family to go to university. “I met a lot of friends through those welcome drinks and realised I was not alone at Oxford, there were other working-class students here,” she said.

Now she co-chairs the group and is working on a scheme to offer cash-strapped students starting this autumn a free “sub fusc” — the traditional black gowns all Oxford students have to wear in a ceremony when they join the university. The gowns cost more than £30, Pomfret says, and have to be bought before the first part of the student loan is received. She is asking for old gowns to be donated so they can be passed on to new students.

Pomfret says the university is listening and students are banding together. “When you see students have got your back … it’s nice to know your work is not going unnoticed.”

The Oxford Union said: “We are extremely concerned to hear of the alleged [council estate Chloe] remarks. The society seeks to be an open, diverse, accessible and inclusive society in which all who meet the criteria for membership feel welcome. We have disciplinary procedures that allow us to address such matters when they are brought to our attention.”

Oxford has 43 colleges. While some, like Christ Church, are fabulously wealthy, others, such as Mansfield, where 93 per cent of undergraduates admitted have in recent years been from state schools, are less well endowed. Magdalen earned £25 million from its investments in a single year, according to the report. In contrast, poorer colleges such as Mansfield, Lady Margaret Hall, or Harris Manchester make roughly £1 million from their investments.

Students apply to a named college but one in three do not get their choice. Research for the report suggests that poorer students could be up to £9,000 better off in terms of rent subsidies alone over three years if they are at Christ Church, which offers a 50 per rent reduction to its poorer students, compared with Mansfield. In 2022-23 Christ Church students would have paid £2,527, half the annual rent of £5,054. At Mansfield, one of the colleges with the highest rent, students paid £5,514.

The report calls for the setting up of an endowment fund shared between the colleges that would support students across the university.

It has been drawn up by Danial Hussain, the son of a single-parent British-Pakistani family from Bradford, and the first president of the Oxford University Student Union to have been enrolled on a foundation year for disadvantaged students there. The one-year course is intended to give the skills and confidence to go on to a degree course.

Hussain, who is studying philosophy, politics and economics at Lady Margaret Hall, has previously suggested classism workshops for new students there. He says the report does not look at the social background of students but is based on research into the differences in financial support offered by colleges.

“Why should students at one college pay 32 per cent more than students at another? It simply isn’t fair. Ultimately what we want to do is create an equal experience for all Oxford students, regardless of which college they are placed in,” he said. “A central endowment fund, which levels the playing field and which will financially support all colleges to improve their facilities and make long-term investments, is the answer.”

Oxford college heads have supported the move and sources said the university was keen to resolve the issue.

A university spokesman said: “After listening to our students, the vice-chancellor has in the last year also increased the funding available to those affected by the cost of living. The collegiate system is very much part of this strength but we are aware there can also be different levels of supplemental support provision between colleges due to the differing historical endowment levels between them. We are actively engaged with students and colleges to determine how we might further support our ambition to even out the experience.”