Summer school successes

It’s hard to believe the first Sutton Trust summer school took place twenty years ago. In the summer of 1997, 64 teenagers from across the UK came together for a residential at Oxford. Participants spent a week living as an undergraduate. They went to lectures and workshops, had a tutorial and enjoyed social activities such as punting.

We set it up to give teenagers from low and middle income homes the confidence to make high quality applications to top universities. We knew there were thousands of talented state school pupils out there with the potential to study at a top university but who were missing out on places.

From this pilot we now have 2,400 places available at 12 of the top universities. Our new alumni network has allowed us to reconnect with many past students and it has been wonderful to hear stories of how Sutton Trust summer schools set them up for university and a successful career.

Our earliest beneficiaries are now among the country’s high-flyers. They include politicians, doctors, lawyers, financiers, journalists and teachers.  Some of them came to us through Sun Scholars, a scheme we ran with the Sun to give the talented children of readers the opportunity to go on one of our summer schools.

There have been improvements in university access since then; the number of state school students at Oxbridge has increased by 20% over this period. Top universities are better focused on access, and generally are led by people with a strong commitment to improving opportunities for able students from low and middle income homes.

But there are still some groups of young people – particularly white working class boys – who are seriously underrepresented at selective universities. To help inspire those groups, we’ve relaunched our Sun Scholars scheme for 2017.

Las week the newspaper profiled one of the original Sun Scholars, Dr Leigh Fletcher. Leigh was inspired to apply to Cambridge after spending a week there on our summer school.  He’s now a Research Fellow at the University of Leicester and has spent time working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

We have places for 2,400 bright teenagers on our summer schools this year. They’ll run at 12 of our partner universities across the country, including the University of Oxford who we’re delighted to be working with again. Oxford will pilot a summer school to help maximise our engagement with students from educationally disadvantaged regions, like rural and coastal areas.

So if you know a young person who could benefit from our summer schools, we want to hear from them. Who knows what doors it could open?