Jenni Russell mentions the Sutton Trust’s programmes and Justine Greening’s speech at the Carnegie-Sutton Trust Summit in a comment piece in the Times. 

Greening is right to say that such candidates are more impressive. Britain’s acute problem with social immobility, and the seething resentment and disappointment that results, will never be remedied unless disadvantaged people are given credit for the obstacles they face.

State-school students with the same grades end up outperforming their fee-paying peers at university. That doesn’t pay off in the job market though. Employers know perfectly well that if they take on a B-grade Etonian they are buying much more than grades. They are recruiting poise, networks, manners, cultural hinterlands — or at least the appearance of them — and an acute understanding of how English power structures work.

One Oxford college, Lady Margaret Hall, has introduced a residential foundation year to give a dozen bright, underprivileged students the academic, cultural and social education they need to compete. Seven of the first year are now Oxford undergraduates. The Sutton Trust runs support schemes and university visits for hundreds of talented young people from 11 up. The Social Mobility Foundation offers internships, mentors and workshops for disadvantaged teenagers wanting to enter the professions. All of these organisations understand that the paths to success require much more than the state’s traditional, misleadingly limited focus on the acquiring of grades.

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