OXFORD University has apologised after accidentally leaking the names of nearly 500 students who receive financial support.

Administrators accidentally emailed all 483 recipients of the Mortiz-Heyman bursary so that their names were visible to each other.

The email was quickly followed by another, apologising to all involved: "This morning you will have received an email from MH-internships@ careers.ox.ac.uk… which did not follow normal email procedures.

“Consequently all the email addresses were left visible. I am so sorry that this occurred and can assure you that this will not happen again.”

The Moritz-Heyman bursary is awarded to up to 175 new students each year, largely based on their financial circumstances such as household income.

One second-year scholar told student newspaper Cherwell they were 'astounded' to about the leak.

They said: “This was private information that had been entrusted to them and although I personally don’t feel any repercussions, I’m angered as a point of principle.

“It was hopefully momentary, but still significant, lapse of competency among the team running the scholarship and a mistake that shouldn’t be taken too lightly”.

In response to the leak, a spokesperson from the University told Cherwell: “We take data security very seriously and the incident has been reported to the University’s data security team.

“The students involved received an apology as soon as we became aware of the error, and we have also updated our processes as a result of this incident.”