Wednesday's attack was the most deadly school-shooting in Germany since 2002, when a former schoolpupil in the eastern city of Erfurt killed 14 teachers, two pupils and a police officer.
That notion was a key factor in the Laura Spence affair, he said - when Oxford was accused by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, of being elitist after Laura, a comprehensive schoolpupil, failed to get a place to study medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford.
The university had been criticised in the wake of the rejection of a state schoolpupil, Laura Spence, who subsequently was offered a scholarship for Harvard University in the United States.