Book extract two: breathless with amazement

Tag : PE Felt

It's a straight line from Brent to Oxford along the A40 and M40, nogreat distance, an hour or so by car from north-west London. Yetthis excursion by pupils from Brent's Capital City academy to theuniversity spires crosses the deepest ravines of the UK's socialdivide. The yellow limestone buildings of St John's College leftthe Brent pupils almost breathless with amazement. They had seennothing like it and it was nothing like they imagined a universityto be. Nor were those arches and fan vaults much like theuniversities and further education colleges most of them are likelyto attend.
The pupils of Capital City academy have been sent to Oxford to urgethem to aspire, and over one weekend are given a tantalizing tasteof life behind the college gates among those manicured lawns. TheAimhigher programme had chosen the likeliest 16-year-olds in theirGCSE year from this school to spend two days in Oxford. They werestaying in rooms in St John's of such comfort and spaciousness theyfound it hard to believe they could be for their use. They werebriefly sampling a world of privilege most of them barely knewexisted.
Some 72% of Brent school students are from ethnic minorities - andvirtually all these 16-year-olds were black or brown. Race is onlyanother ingredient in the story of social injustice and socialdistance. That black children are disproportionately poor is acultural disaster, but once poor, it is generally their povertythat holds them back. Nearly a third of the school's intake live inbad housing, below the government's decency standard. Aimhigherstarts by targeting year 9-11 pupils with homework clubs, summerschools, revision classes, taster courses and mentoring. Theseuniversity visits for older pupils are designed to persuade them tostrive for A-level and university success.
University 'like prison'
Virtually none of their parents had any further education and manyhad only ever been outside their thin slice of London once before,on a school trip to the Isle of Wight. So it was hardly surprisingthat their idea of higher education was vague. None of the grouphad seen a university before, though one girl mentioned a localBrent college she had walked past. What had they imagineduniversity to be? They said "like a prison", "really hard work, andno social life", "horrible, worse than school and locked in all thetime". It is comforting to imagine that every child these days hasthe same basic opportunities: even in the most deprived areasschools help a few ambitious and determined children plant theirfeet on the ladder upwards. The trouble is, people saycomplacently, families just don't try hard enough and they lack theambition to push their children out of their own social milieu.Parents who failed at school may even encourage their children tobe like them, saying "our family was never any good at school" or"we're not the clever sort".
Unlike the children of graduates, the Brent students had no one totell them tales of student life, no sister or cousin to whisper tothem that university for most young people is a time of loungingaround and enjoyment, interspersed with panicky bursts of academicwork; no one to share the anxieties of upward social mobility andsometimes the deep sense of loss, captured recently in HanifKureishi's novel Something to Tell You (2008) or, a generationback, Raymond Williams's Border Country (1960). In a profoundlyunequal society, moving up a social class can feel as alienating asmoving to Australia. Some parents don't want to let their childrengo, and some children don't wish to emigrate out of their familycircumstance. When that social distance is so wide, of course, itis much harder for young people to cross it. It's not surprisingthat the countries that are most equal, with the least distancefrom top to bottom, tend to be the societies where it is easiestfor the cleaner's child to take a top university place.
Undergraduates had volunteered to show them round, to talk aboutlife and work at Oxford. It was the bedrooms that astonished andpleased them most about their trip. At home the Brent pupils sharedrooms with siblings but here was a room of their own, with theirown bathroom, use of a kitchen and common room. They asked simplequestions: were students ever allowed beyond those great collegewalls? Yes, all day and all night. They asked if they could havevisitors and if their parents could come and see them? Yes, anytime and even have a cheap room to stay in overnight. And was termtime just 24 weeks of the year? Yes, but they could stay on in theholidays if they liked. They could even have people to stay intheir room too, if they signed them in. The opposite sex? Yes! Wow!"Oh no you don't!" said their teacher smartly, for fear they wouldstart experimenting with student life straight away.
Unimagined opportunities
One of their undergraduate guides had just put on a Terry Pratchettplay in the small theatre in St John's. The Brent kids were toldthey could put on any play they liked in one of Oxford's manytheatres, which astounded them. Where could they do their washing?Use of washing machines in the college was £1 a time, whichone of the girls thought a bit steep. There was every sportavailable they could imagine, and every club and activity, underthe Oxford spires. How many wanted to come here? Well over half ofthe teenagers raised their hands eagerly, some punching the airwith excitement. Then talk turned to work as they were told theywould need three As at A-level. "We can do that!" was the responsefrom many. Oxford only considers three hard academic subjects.These undergraduate guides all had maths, further maths, physicsand chemistry, though one had done French for fun. All of them weremedical, IT or engineering students and most had four As, thoughofficially the university never asked for more than three.
"Not PE, not drama A-level?" asked one Brent boy, who planned totake both these at a sixth-form college. Not general studieseither, and probably not sociology or psychology, they were told,which left many of the Brent pupils crestfallen. Their kindlymentors offered a dose of realism. "It is hard work. Although weare very free, we have to work hard too. But you can work when youlike." They didn't want to dampen the Brent pupils' enthusiasm butthey felt they should warn them. "I'm afraid no subject here is adoss." What about English, a girl asked, hoping to have foundsomething less relentlessly tough. The young university admissionstutor hosting this event shook her head. "English is no dosseither. You have to do an author a week from the year 1100 to thepresent day. That means you have to read a book a day, at leastseven books a week. It means working seven hours a day." One or twoof the most intense and studious Brent pupils nodded that theycould do it: they were already studying hard to get near the threeAs at A-level standard. But others gasped at such hard work, andshook their heads solemnly.
Privately, Peter Boursnell, a deputy head who coordinated Aimhigherfor all Brent schools, was not overly optimistic that many or,perhaps, any of these pupils would make it. Their teacher, though,would have no defeatism. "You can do it!" she said to them over andover again. Christalina was their head of year, a remarkable youngblack woman, elegant, witty and plainly admired by her pupils. Shehad that rare teacherly gift, giving them passionate loyalty,concern and a measure of intimacy, yet a firmness that ensuredtheir respect.
Did the Brent students know that over half the students at Oxfordand Cambridge come from private schools? They had no idea and itshocked them. Privately educated pupils would be getting a lot ofspecial teaching in small classes to train them for Oxbridge, buttheir teacher remained positive. "If you were at an interview, whatcould you say you all have that children from private schools don'thave?" That stumped them for a moment. "We're streetwise?" askedone doubtfully, pulling his woolly hat down over his large ears. Asthey struggled to find her meaning they gazed at the St John'sundergraduates, so different from themselves. Yet only one of thestudent guides had been privately educated, at Ampleforth, theCatholic boarding school. One was a Muslim from Edinburgh studyingmedicine. Most were white and came from high-flying state schoolsin good neighbourhoods that regularly sent pupils to Oxbridge.Already these undergraduates had acquired the academic aura; howsharply their woolly-bearded seriousness, their kindly earnestnessand bright whiteness contrasted with the mostly black Brent kids inurban fashions with sharply razored, sculpted and combedhairstyles. Here on display was the great fissure in class, race,style, attitude, background, life-experience and confidence thatAimhigher is trying to bridge. "Come on," their teacher urged them."Think. Well, I can tell you what you should say. Just think whatyou all have to do to get three As at A-level compared withprivate-school kids. How many of you have nowhere quiet to work?"Two-thirds raised their hands. "How many of you have only learnedto speak English in the last few years?" Amazingly, nearly halfraised their hands. "How many of you had very little schoolexperience before you came to our school?" About a quarter. "Do youhave people at home to push and help you, people to pay for extralessons? No! So you will have got your A-levels because of your ownefforts in spite of difficulties that those private-school kidsnever even thought of."
Untapped potential
She urged them on, motivating and encouraging. "When you get touniversity you will all have plenty of untapped potential, butmaybe those pupils crammed to the eyeballs in private schools maynever get any better. You will have proved you can work hard inhard circumstances with no spoon-feeding. You know what it is towork despite a lot of distraction and lots of temptations." Shedidn't need to spell it out loud, as the Aimhigher coordinatormurmured that gangs with money and drugs lurk in theirneighbourhoods to trip, intimidate and tempt at every turn. Stayingon for A-levels was itself a triumph: many had seen older siblingstake disastrously wrong turns.
Their teacher's determination cheered the pupils. They left thegleaming spires with a vision of university as a place of pleasure- a new thought and perhaps the most important one at this stage intheir lives. Would any of them make it back to Oxford after theirA-levels? Their teacher thought two of them were in with a chanceas they were exceptionally clever. But it would depend onadmissions tutors appreciating how much they had overcome in howshort a time. Several were Afghan refugees, who in the course ofthe two days, had talked movingly of American gunships firing ontheir towns and villages. One boy was African-Caribbean, UK-bornand in care for years. In year 9 he barely attended school and wasshunted from pillar to post, but once settled in year 10 he hadbecome pupil of the year and was now destined to do well, despiteeverything. Would an Oxbridge tutor ever hear these stories - andget to assess how their potential stacked up against the attainmentof a young person who had no obstacles to overcome?
The Brent students will likely find themselves in a rust-stainedconcrete former polytechnic not far from home in London, to savemoney. A seductive glimpse of Oxford might leave them feeling theyfailed, when to make it to university at all would be successagainst extreme odds. By the end of the visit, sobered, they couldsee that gaining a place at Oxford would be like climbing Everestwithout oxygen or crampons. But they came away exhilarated, all ofthem vowing to try harder, to work hard, to get the best possiblemarks at GCSE and then at A-level.
· This is an extract from Polly Toynbee and David Walker's new book,Unjust Rewards, published on August 1 by Granta books, price£12.99. To order a copy for £11.99 with free UKp&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875