Some 15,000 students comprise the department, of which roughly 5,000 study for an Oxford University award or credit-bearing course.

The 19th century saw an awakening social awareness to the needs of working-class people generally, and Oxford University signalled an educational responsibility to the general community by sending lecturers into towns and cities across Victorian England, bringing university education to a diverse adult audience.

[3] The University of Oxford Standing Committee of the Delegacy of Local Examinations was established in 1878.

[4] The first of the early "Oxford Extension Lectures" was delivered at the King Edward VI School in Birmingham, in September 1878 by the Reverend Arthur Johnson.

[5] By 1893, Oxford University Extension Centres were bringing adult education to much of England and a few cities in Wales.