Summer School Success

As the Trust celebrates 20 years of its flagship programme: UK Summer Schools, we look back on the success of this year’s cohort.

The 2017 Sutton Trust Summer School Programme ran at 12 leading UK universities, offering over 2000 places to young people from across the country.  In 2017, there were 11,092 applications for just 2,373 spaces. An additional 1600 applicants were made an alternative offer of provision either by the university or the Trust.

Applications were received from 99.5% of constituencies in the UK, demonstrating the geographic spread of the programme. Of these constituencies, 85% had at least one successful student on the programme, with 95% of constituencies represented on either Summer School or alternative provision. The programme continues to be well-targeted, with 80% of students offered a place and 78% of summer school attendees meeting three or more (out of 5) criteria.

Previous studies have demonstrated that the Summer Schools have an impact on where students go to university. To measure the changes in attitudes and aspirations amongst Summer School attendees, the Trust commissioned a new piece of research comparing baseline to exit surveys. The data from this research has reconfirmed that the programme continues to have a positive impact.

In particular, the findings show that the programme is having a statistically significant impact on participants’ certainty for future plans and attendees confidence in making an application increased by 21.5%. This is especially important since a recent aspirations polling commissioned by the Trust found the proportion of young people who say they are likely to go into higher education has fallen to its lowest level since 2009.

One of the key highlights was the new changes at two of our partner universities. Durham University piloted an assessed project which saw Summer School students complete an undergraduate level assessment. If students passed, they were guaranteed a contextual admissions offer, two grades below the standard tariff. 95% of students submitted a project, and 92% of them passed.

Another new development was at The University of Bristol, who have introduced contextual offers for Sutton Trust Summer School attendees. Students are either guaranteed an offer two grades below the standard tariff or guaranteed an interview for more competitive courses such as medicine. Our recent report, Admissions in Context, shows that if offers were lowered by two grades to disadvantaged students there would be an increase of 50% in the number of FSM-eligible students admitted. We hope other leading universities will follow suit and encourage more young people from areas of low social mobility to apply to leading higher education institutions.

The Trust aims to build on this success in years to come, in our bid to increase the number of young people from areas of low social mobility applying to leading higher education institutions.

Applications for Sutton Trust UK Summer Schools 2018 open in January. You can find more information on our Summer Schools here and register your interest for applying here.