Chris Campbell via e-mail
[FOI #5049 email]
21 January 2009
Dear Mr Campbell,
Freedom of Information Request - RFI20081480 Thank you for your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”) received on 20
December 2008 seeking the following information:
Question 1:
a) How many applications have you received in the past two years and how many of those who applied
(including unsuccessful) were Oxford or Cambridge graduates?
b) How many were 'Imperial College, London' graduates and how many were 'University College, London'
graduates?
Question 2:
Please supply the ranks/grades and job titles of those BBC employees who are Oxford or Cambridge
graduates.
The BBC has not previously monitored information relating to the educational background of our staff.
However, we have recently begun to collect this information for job applicants. Over the past 2 years,
BBC HR Direct Recruitment has received 320,893 applications. Of this number, please find below the
number of applications made by graduates of the universities requested:
No of
% of Total
University Attended
Applications Applications
Oxford 1,598
0.5
Cambridge 1,494
0.5
Imperial College London
338
0.1
University College London
1,302
0.4
Total 4,732
1.5
For staff who joined prior to 2007, this information would only be available from individuals’ application
forms held by BBC HR Direct Recruitment, which are kept for three years from the date of application and
then destroyed. It is likely, therefore, that the educational details for many staff currently employed would
no longer be held. In the case of individuals for whom the information you requested is still held, we
anticipate that it would take BBC staff more than two and a half days to retrieve the information from
individuals’ application forms. This is because in order to deal with your request, we would need to
manually locate, retrieve & examine the application forms of all the individuals who joined prior to 2007 for
whom application forms are still held. Under section 12 of the Act, we are allowed to refuse to handle the
request if it would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit has been set by the Regulations (SI
2004/3244) as being £450 (equivalent to two and a half days work, at an hourly rate of £25).
In response to part 2 of your request, the recruitment system does not allow us to easily cross-match the
role/grade to the applicants identified as Oxford/Cambridge graduates. As this information would only be
available by searching each individual vacancy, we anticipate that it would take BBC staff more than two and
a half days to retrieve the information related to individual vacancies over the past 2 years.
Under section 12 of the Act, we are allowed to refuse to handle the request if it would exceed the
appropriate limit. The appropriate limit has been set by the Regulations (SI 2004/3244) as being £450
(equivalent to two and a half days work, at an hourly rate of £25).
I hope this response satisfies your request.
Your Appeal Rights:
If you are not satisfied with this response you have the right to an internal review by a BBC senior
manager. Please contact us at the following address: BBC Freedom of Information, Room 2252, White
City, 201 Wood Lane, London W12 7TS, explaining what you would like us to review and including your
reference number: If you are not satisfied with the internal review, you can appeal to the Information
Commissioner. The contact details are: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane,
Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, telephone 01625 545 700 or
see http://www.ico.gov.uk/
Yours sincerely
Mary Geoghegan
BBC People
