listof uk universities

 

My local comprehensive had not had a student go to Oxford or Cambridge in seven years. So I offered to give its brightest pupils the confidence and support of an expensive education

One day after school in January this year, Isabelle walked to the high street in East Grinstead, West Sussex, where her mother works in a shop selling gifts and clothes. She was with her boyfriend, Alex, who would be meeting her mum for the first time. “It kind of took her by surprise a bit,” Isabelle says, remembering the awkwardness of the moment.

 

When that was over, Isabelle sprang another surprise: a few hours earlier she had received an offer to read Earth sciences at Oxford University. “Mum gave me a big hug,” says Isabelle, who is now 18. “She was absolutely over the moon for me.”

 

That evening, Isabelle made herself pasta for dinner and sat down to think about it. Over the past month she had convinced herself that she wouldn’t get into Oxford, and that she didn’t belong there anyway. She remembered the terrible night after her first interview, sitting in a college room in tears, feeling like an impostor.

 

But now, with an offer letter sitting on the table, she started to have a change of heart. She was going to be the first person in her extended family to go to university, and this was an offer from one of the best universities in the world. “I thought, I’ve got to do it,” she says. Late that night she sent me an email about how she was feeling. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet, to be honest,” she wrote. “But I’m pleased.”

 

Isabelle and I first met in March last year at Sackville school, the West Sussex comprehensive she attended from the age of 11. The school is close to where I grew up, and for the past year and a half I have been mentoring students there, trying to help them get into Oxford, Cambridge, listof uk universities in London and other leading universities. It started as a casual offer of help to my local school and went on to become an all-consuming project – the thing my friends would ask about first when I saw them, and a challenge that has given me more satisfaction than any story I’ve written as a journalist.

 

High-achieving students at state schools like Sackville often lose out in the battle for places at the most selective universities. The application process is supposed to uncover talent and potential, but often seems designed to reward traits such as confidence and polish, handing a significant advantage to applicants whose parents went to university, and whose school knows the subtleties of a good application, often due to decades or even centuries of experience. In the case of many private schools, knowing how to convert great A-levels into places at elite universities is the reason they can charge such high fees.

 

When I first met Isabelle and her schoolmates, I had just moved home to live with my mother, after my father died suddenly in late 2018. Dad had lived in this area all his life, and when I was growing up he volunteered to help dig various local institutions out of financial difficulty, including a school and a community farm. Helping out at Sackville provided a distraction from my grief, and felt like the kind of civic-minded thing he would do. Added to that, three generations of my relatives have gone to Sackville, since my grandparents settled in this corner of West Sussex as Jewish Czech refugees in the 1940s. These included two aunts, a bunch of cousins and, currently, my cousin’s 12-year-old daughter.

 

 No Sackville student had gone to Oxford or Cambridge since 2013, despite plenty of them having good enough grades

If you are passing through East Grinstead on your way to Lewes or Brighton, you might spot Sackville, crouching behind some high hedges just before the town gives way to fields and villages. It is probably what many people picture when they think of a comprehensive: cheerless 1960s buildings, well over a thousand students, and some very average A-level results, literally: the school’s average A-level grade is a C, which is the national average. It performs above average at GCSE and is rated “Good” by Ofsted; but its sixth form isn’t selective, and around four out of every five students have parents who didn’t go to university.

 

In recent years, Sackville’s deputy headteacher, Adrian De Souza, had become frustrated that too few of his best sixth-formers were getting places at leading universities. “We talked about it a lot,” he says. “We had the feeling there was something we weren’t doing.” No Sackville student had gone to Oxford or Cambridge since 2013, despite plenty of them having good enough grades – including some who got interviews but didn’t get places. The proportion of school leavers going to the most sought-after Russell Group universities was also disappointing.

 

De Souza is a preternaturally warm and engaging teacher, who seems to have a running in-joke with every second student we pass in Sackville’s corridors. He felt that, as the resources at his disposal have been squeezed (spending per pupil in England has fallen 8% in real terms since 2009-10), it was becoming harder to compete with the private sector. The six-year Oxbridge dry spell was only a part of the problem, but it was symbolic. De Souza went to Bristol University, and knows that this country’s obsession with Oxbridge borders on the perverse. But he also thinks that what’s possible for students at the local private schools should be possible for his students, too. (Disclaimer: I went to one of these private schools, and to Cambridge University.)