The University of Oxford is to throw open its doors to teachers from state schools for special open days designed to encourage more applications from pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

John Hood, the university's Vice Chancellor, hopes the initiative will help to break down ignorance and prejudice among teachers in the state sector, amid concerns that some may be steering bright pupils away from Oxbridge for fear that they may not fit in.

The move follows research from the Sutton Trust educational charity, which recently found that half of state school teachers would never, or only rarely, encourage their most able pupils to apply to Oxbridge.

Dr Hood announced the initiative to coincide with the launch of the university's biggest ever fundraising campaign, which aims to build an endowment to fund more support for poor students.

Speaking to The Times ahead of the fundraising launch, Dr Hood said, it was important to destroy the myth of Oxford being a place only for the elite.

"We have a project group tasked with thinking about how we can be more active and more clever at helping teachers better understand the opportunities their pupils will have at Oxford and universities like Oxford.

"It would appear that many teachers perhaps haven't had the opportunity in the past to understand well how accessible this university is to their most talented pupils.

"Teachers are incredibly busy people. They work in demanding jobs and there is a multitude of demands on them. So I think it's just a case of ensuring equipped with the understanding and tools to advise their students well," he said.

Although applications to Oxford from state schools have gone up by 51 per cent over the last ten years, compared with a 24 per cent rise in applicants from the independent sector, progress has recently stalled. Last year the number of sixth-formers from state schools admitted to Oxford fell from 47.1 last year to 46.8 per cent (of all those, including international students, who gained places) even though they make up more than 90 per cent of the UK school population

In an attempt to redress this balance the government has set universities aspirational targets for the proportions of poorer pupils admitted. But with progress painfully slow, ministers have accused some universities of operating a "social bias" against working-class pupils.

Dr Hood said it was time the government stopped criticising the efforts of Oxford and other leading universities to encourage more applications from the state sector. Universities were already heavily engaged with state schools in a vast number of outreach schemes, but they there was only so much they could do individually to attract students from deprived backgrounds dispersed among more than 3,000 state schools.

He suggested the creation of a national scheme of student mentors, modelled on the Perach programme in Israel, where about 15 per cent of the students spend four hours a week with a secondary school pupil helping them with their academic work and personal development and raising their aspirations to a university education.

"It's a brilliantly run programme and the measured results of it are impressive and have been impressive year in and year out," Dr Hood said.

"We have to find things that will make a big difference nationally," he added. "Oxford would certainly be prepared to be part of a prototype with other universities to explore this in the UK."

Dr Hood also suggested that Oxford would be keen to be part of an expansion of the Teach First scheme, which enables high-achieving graduates who had not previously considered teaching to teach in some of England's most challenging schools for two years.

One Oxford college, St Hugh's, is already offering a one-off £1,000 bursary to its graduates who take part in the scheme.

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