The Sunday Times today reports proof of what many have long suspected: that if you give bright disadvantaged kids the same support that pupils get at private schools and they beat their privately-educated rivals at top universities.
Get three decent A-levels at a private school and you’ve a 65 per cent chance of going to a Russell Group elite university. But state school kids helped by the Social Mobility Foundation have a 70 per cent change, according to a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (pdf).
We at The Spectator are great supporters of the Social Mobility Foundation (I recent joined its advisory board). It identifies some of the brightest and most determined young people in Britain; we have hired two SMF alumni so far. Amongst other things, the SMF sets young people up with mentors, gives them mock aptitude tests and interviews and advises them when they’re applying to universities; the same stuff that public schools do.
The IFS report finds that the effect of being mentored by the SMF is equivalent to having three A* A-levels rather than three A grades, and it makes them up to a quarter more likely to enter one of Britain’s top-tier universities.
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