18 2GM Tuesday July 21 2020 | the times
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another on the way. Heath Monk, who
until last month ran the Schools of King
Edwards VI academy trust, believes
strongly that the absence of selective
sixth forms is costing the entire West
Midlands.
The London model works because
dozens of bright children are all in one
place, so the teaching can be tailored to
the highest level and pupils can com-
pete constructively, he says.
His group of 11 grammar, private and
comprehensive schools educates thou-
sands of children. “We have plenty of
bright pupils but they are spread thinly
across a large number of schools, so
sometimes only a handful of Oxbridge
candidates in each,” he said.
Many families in the large Asian pop-
ulation are also tight-knit and the
children want to study locally.
Even those in the West Midlands
who made it to top universities said that
they felt that many young people did
not consider Oxbridge as they felt it was
beyond them.
Sehrish Mahmood, 19, is from
Cradley Heath and studying law at
Cambridge. She said that she would
have struggled to make it to university
without the help of Access Project, a
charity that worked with her school,
Ormiston Forge Academy.
“From my school no one had ever got
into Oxbridge before. If I’m completely
honest I think I was very hesitant to
apply to Cambridge in the beginning.
That came from a lack of understand-
ing and various preconceptions I had
about the university... that there was a
certain type of student that went to
Cambridge and I was probably the
exact opposite.”
Sehrish’s mother was born in
England and her father is from Paki-
stan, and she wears a hijab.
“Even things like my ethnicity, my
postcode, I thought they might look at
it and say no. Now it seems absurd. I got
in, but back then being in Year 12, being
naive, lacking confidence, I thought
there were barriers to even applying.”
Lee Elliott Major, professor of social
mobility at Exeter University, says that
the West Midlands is one of the coun-
try’s largest “opportunity cold-spots”.
“Research on social mobility suggests
the place you grow up in has a genuine
causal impact on your life chances.
Every extra year of childhood spent in
a worse or better neighbourhood can
impact on future life prospects,” he said.
Leading article, page 31h th HeathMonkwhoPoor background affects school success for boys, but not girls
tests among pupils in China found no
link at all between so-called executive
functions and family backgrounds.
It prompted researchers to conclude
that “specific cultural factors” appear to
hold back poor boys in Britain from
performing better at school. These
could include home life, family attitudes
to education or school curriculums.
Academics from the University of
Cambridge analysed results of
computer-based cognitive games
played by 835 children aged between
nine and 16 in Britain and Hong Kong
to measure executive functions such asconcentration and equations to test
their numeracy skills. Their parents
completed surveys about their socio-
economic status and education.
In the first set of tests British boys
from wealthier families tended to
perform better, while those from poor-
er backgrounds did worse. In 30 per
cent of cases a boy’s family status pre-
dicted the concentrative scores, but for
girls any correlation was close to zero.
There was no link at all between the
results of poor boys or girls in Hong
Kong, who outperformed the British
pupils in both sets of the tests despitebeing less affluent. Children in Hong
Kong and Shandong, in China, were
about two years ahead of the British
pupils in their thinking skills and six
years ahead in their numeracy tests.
Michelle Ellefson, a reader in
cognitive science at Cambridge who led
the research, said that the results
showed that the British pupils
performed overall at the level expected
for their age while the children in Hong
Kong and China were far ahead.
Dr Ellefson said: “Schools and maybe
even the way we socialise girls seems to
be levelling the playing field a bit interms of cognitive skills like executive
functions but not yet for boys, so the
thing we need to think about is how we
provide a context for levelling the
playing field for both.”
Claire Hughes, professor of develop-
mental psychology at Cambridge’s
centre for family research, said: “There
is concern in the UK that among
children from less-advantaged back-
grounds, boys in particular often
under-perform academically, and the
possibility has been raised in some
research that features of their home
environment play a role in this.”Greg Hurst Social Affairs Editor
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE; SEHRISH MAHMOOD; ALAMYper year from sponsors and endless
fundraising.
“That money is not going on gold-
plated swimming pools,” he said. “Gov-
ernment funding is predicated on 15
hours a week — that is just not enough
and that’s where the hole is. That is your
problem, and London has an advantage
because there’s a lot more money here
so we can raise it.”
The same is true across town at the
London Academy of Excellence (LAE)
in Stratford, sponsored by a consortium
of private schools, including Eton and
Brighton College, as well as HSBC and
energetic fundraising by the parent
body. It tops up by £1,500 per pupil. Like
Harris Westminster, it prioritises child-ren on free school meals and has an
impressive academic record, with 37
Oxbridge offers this year.
It is a model that Brighton College
wants to establish in other deprived
areas, and Richard Cairns, Brighton’s
head, says that he has written recently
to the prime minister to discuss this.
“We imagine that it could be an
important focus for communities in the
red wall constituencies, providing
springboards of opportunity for de-
prived youngsters,” he said. They would
need to be funded in full, he added.
Birmingham as the second city
would be an obvious choice. It has no
highly selective standalone sixth forms,
compared with four in London andDaniel Adesanya says Harris Westminster transformed his opportunities; Sehrish
Mahmood, from the West Midlands, is the first from her school at CambridgeAll being well, Daniel Adesanya will be
heading to Cambridge to read political
science this autumn. He is one of 44
pupils from Harris Westminster school
to secure an Oxbridge offer this year.
He is pretty certain he would not
have secured an offer from Cambridge
had he stayed at his secondary school. It
has a pretty good record on A levels but
lacked the extra punch to get pupils like
him over the line, the 18-year-old from
Peckham said.
Harris Westminster is a high-
ly selective sixth form, which
has about 300 students in each
year group, targets disadvan-
taged youngsters, and is a joint
venture between the private
Westminster School and the
Harris Federation, a
London academy trust.
So what makes the dif-
ference?
“Harris does a lot
in advancing students
towards those
Oxbridge levels aca-
demically, but also
on the aspiration to
go there,” he said.
“Teachers are always
suggesting ways for
us to push into areas
beyond the syllabus.
My philosophy
teacher is always
bringing up other phi-
losophers and their
views, so that gets you
engaged, you go off and
read about them and that
leads on to other ideas. The
teachers are very passionate
about their subject and are
just able to capture my imag-
ination.”
Preparation starts early.
Poor boys from Britain are much more
likely to have poorer concentration
skills in class than their counterparts in
China, a study has shown.
Boys from less wealthy families or
whose parents had lower levels of
education were less able to ignore dis-
tractions or switch tasks than boys from
more affluent backgrounds.
The researchers found a much
weaker correlation between concen-
tration in class and socio-economic
status among girls, however. Similar
Tale of two
cities divided
by chance of
a top degree
The entrance exam and interview for
Harris, he says, were “a lot more daunt-
ing” than for Cambridge. He had to
analyse a Shakespeare sonnet, and
write an essay on an economic disaster.
The interview was a run through the
key philosophical schools of thought.
“I was definitely scared. I think going
through that process kind of settled my
nerves for Cambridge.”
Selection matters and teaching mat-
ters but location matters too. Last
month Boris Johnson said that he
wanted to “end the current injustice
that means a pupil from a London state
school is now 50 per cent more likely to
go to a top university than a pupil from
the West Midlands.” He added: “That is
not only unjust, it is such a waste of
human talent.” New official figures
show that 15 per cent of pupils from
London got into a university in the
leading Russell Group in 2017-18,
compared with 10 per cent in the
West Midlands, the worst region
on this measure.
When it comes to Oxford and
Cambridge, 5.7 per cent of places
between 2017 and 2019
went to students from
the West Midlands,
who make up 9.3 per
cent of school leavers.
Londoners took 26.
per cent of places
while making up 13
per cent of school
leavers.
James Hand-
scombe, Mr Adesa-
nya’s head teacher,
agrees that good
teaching and se-
lecting pupils who
will thrive on chal-
lenge are crucial, but
he says that there is
one far more impor-
tant factor: money.
Most A level stu-
dents get 15 hours of
lessons a week. His
pupils get 23. Gov-
ernment funding
is topped up
with an extra
£1,000 per headThere are reasons why
London’s state pupils far
outstrip Birmingham’s,
Rosemary Bennett and
Neil Johnston write