Graeme Paton reports on the Sutton Trust’s teacher summer schools and polling which finds over 40% of teachers rarely encourage bright pupils to apply to Oxbridge.

A study by the Sutton Trust found that more than four-in-10 teachers “rarely or never” advise academically-gifted children to apply to the ancient universities.

The majority of teachers also dramatically underestimate pupils’ chances of being admitted from the state system, it emerged, with a quarter wrongly believing at least eight-in-10 Oxbridge students are from private schools.

The disclosure was made as the charity – which campaigns for improved levels of social mobility – revealed it was staging a series of summer schools for teachers designed to “dispel the myths” surrounding entry to Oxbridge and other leading universities.

Some 2,500 teachers from schools with a poor record of sending children to sought-after institutions will be attracted to the programme over five years…

…James Turner, director of programmes at the Sutton Trust, said: “We all know how important teachers are in guiding their students’ choices about where to go to university.

“As our polling shows, too few state school teachers consider Oxbridge as a realistic possibility for their brightest pupils. They might not think the students will get in to the universities, or fit in once there, or they may lack the specialist knowledge to prepare their students for the application process. We hope our teacher summer schools will begin to change that.”

…The Sutton Trust programme, which is backed by HSBC and was piloted last summer, will see 200 teachers attend residential courses at Cambridge, St Andrews and Durham universities. It will focus on supporting students through the applications process and master classes in teachers’ specialist subjects.

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