I can be “that” teacher in my school

Prepare yourself to wince: “The worst reaction I had was from the head teacher of another school who apparently said ‘who does he think he is? He’s doing A level Fine Art, he can’t apply for medicine at Cambridge’. This anecdote was shared with a selection of teachers at a Sutton Trust Summer school. The speaker was a recent graduate who had just completed a History of Art degree at Cambridge. He had done this course as a sandwich between his Medicine degrees and, this autumn, he will be embarking on the clinical phase of his medical training.  What made my blood run cold was the thought of what would have happened had that young man been in the care of the negative head teacher: would he still have applied?

My intentions when I had  come to observe the Law summer school run by the Sutton Trust for year 12 students was to improve my understanding of how to support applications from students in my school.  However, what I learnt was the CAMbassadors (current Cambridge students who help run the summer schools) had attended Sutton Trust events themselves in the summer of their year 12.  Their stories had common themes: they were from state schools where only 1 or 2 students had attended Oxbridge in the past few years; they had felt that Oxbridge wasn’t ‘for them’ and then a teacher had changed that aspiration and supported their application. That teacher had demystified the application process; that teacher had taken them to a Sutton Trust applicants’ day in their local area; that teacher had helped them apply for the Summer school; that teacher had helped them with their personal statement and their interview preparation.

That’s why it is so vital that the Sutton Summer schools invite teachers from a variety of state schools to give us the knowledge required to be that teacher in our schools and to train our colleagues so we can all identify potential in students and encourage them. The programme is interesting and varied, giving teachers the opportunity to have valuable conversations with admissions tutors and lecturers; we also got to observe the different activities in which the Summer school students were engaged. However, it also gives teachers the chance to speak to one another and to hear about experiences in other schools and contexts.  The messages from across the country were broadly similar: that their students were often unaware of their own talents and abilities and that some parents and carers were nervous of encouraging their children to apply to universities that were far from home.  These fears are very understandable and real: it’s a tough world out there and the alteration to degree funding mechanisms can cause real concern to people across the economic spectrum. It takes a special partnership between schools, universities, students and families to understand the barriers to progression and to have a full and frank discussion about the students’ best course of action.

Teachers: if you are in a position to spend two days of your precious summer holidays at a Sutton Trust summer school I would urge you to apply.  The activities are interesting and varied and it’s great to meet bright and switched on students, both from year 12 and from university.  However, the greatest value to me was the knowledge that I can aspire to be ‘that’ teacher in my school: to make a conscious effort to scan for the excellent and the exceptional and to work in partnership with the student, their parents and carers and the Sutton Trust to promote that aspiration. Somewhere, not so long ago, there was a Head teacher who opined that a student who was studying Fine Art alongside Maths, Further Maths, Chemistry and Biology shouldn’t apply to Cambridge. After a couple of days on a Sutton Trust summer school I dearly hope that I can never be that sort of teacher myself.