Ten years of raising aspirations

In July, almost 250 students from state schools around the country gathered in Oxford for the Sutton Trust Summer School and helped to mark a special anniversary for the organisation that runs it.

It was a fantastic experience and one which I will never forget. Thank you so much for this brilliant opportunity.

Sutton Trust Summer School students

The Sutton Trust was founded in 1997 by Sir Peter Lampl to provide educational opportunities for able young people from nonprivileged backgrounds: the Oxford Summer School was its first project.

Sir Peter himself read Chemistry at Corpus Christi College, where he is an Honorary Fellow. He is also a member of the University’s Chancellor’s Court of Benefactors. He was knighted in the 2003 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to higher education. He says: ‘When I started to look at this in the mid-1990s, the message I was getting was that kids from ordinary backgrounds weren’t applying to universities like Oxford, and that those that did oft en weren’t at the standard to get in. So we researched and designed that first summer school and it was a terrific week. You could feel the buzz among the students. Most of them applied to Oxford and 16 got a place.’

Sutton Trust Summer School students get plenty of practical experience during sessions in the science labs.

The Oxford Summer School is open to Year 12 and first-year college students at maintained schools or colleges in the UK. Priority is given to students who will be the first generation in their families to attend university, have parents in non-professional occupations and attend schools with little or no history of sending pupils to university. Sir Peter says: ‘We’ve funded research into why students apply to university and why they don’t. There are a number of different factors, but a lot of it is about aspirations. Too many students don’t feel that they are good enough to get in and don’t think they could cope even if they did. The summer schools are changing that.’

The Sutton Trust now runs summer schools at a number of universities in addition to Oxford with, in all, almost 1,000 students taking part each year. It has also developed out-of-school programmes for children in inner cities, is involved in a number of innovative projects linking state and independent schools and has worked with Oxford to design and run a professional development week for teachers.

Students attend the summer school for a week to study a course of interest to them while getting a taste of university life. Subjects offered in 2007 were chemistry, classics, French, German, law, medicine, physics, English, history, mathematics and music. The courses are taught by Oxford tutors and students attend lectures and seminars and work towards a mini-tutorial at the end of the week. There is also a series of visits and events to demonstrate the active social life that students can enjoy in higher education. Current Oxford students are on hand to act as mentors, to live in the colleges with the summer school delegates, accompany them throughout the programme and support their academic work during the week.

The Sutton Trust meets all the students’ costs, so they need only bring pocket money for any personal spending. The impact the experience makes on the state school students is striking. Eleanor Mills, who covered the 2007 Sutton Trust Summer School for the Sunday Times, wrote: ‘It felt a privilege just to watch the bright young faces, chatting confidently, feeling on the cusp of great things, realizing they’ve got what it takes.’ One student told her: ‘Oxford just seemed completely out of reach before I came here, but now I am going to apply.’ And experience shows that many do. The first Sutton Trust Summer School at Oxford welcomed 64 students. In the ten years since then, more than 2,300 students have attended. Of those, a little over half, 1,227 students, have made applications to Oxford and 542 of them were made an offer. Evaluation by the National Foundation for Educational Research has demonstrated that attending a Sutton Trust Summer School significantly increases the chances of an individual being offered a place at that university. Sir Peter Lampl says of the figures: ‘I think they are outstanding. The success rate on applications is very good and we would like to go further. I’d like to see the numbers we take on the Oxford Summer School get into four figures. We can certainly find the kids.’

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Fellows of the British Academy

Nine Oxford academics were elected Fellows of the British Academy:
Dr Toby Barnard, Lecturer in History and Fellow of Hertford College;
John Barton, Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture and Fellow of Oriel College;
Harvey Brown, Professor of Philosophy of Physics and Fellow of Wolfson College;
Andrew Burrows, Norton Rose Professor of Commercial Law and Fellow of St Hugh’s College;
Catriona Kelly, Professor of Russian, Co-director of the European Humanities Research Centre and Fellow of New College;
Richard McCabe, Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College;
Nicholas Purcell, Lecturer in Ancient History and Fellow of St John’s College;
Kevin Roberts, Sir John Hicks Professor of Economics and Fellow of Nuffield College;
Peyton Young, James Meade Professor of Economics and Fellow of Nuffield College.