I was a social mobility experiment. Here’s how it changed my life

I blushed, but laughed along.

I’d worn a Reebok tracksuit, two gold chains and white trainers. It’s just how we dressed where I grew up in the working class town of Chatham, in Kent.

It juxtaposed sharply, I quickly learnt, with the sartorial choices of more middle class students.

I was reminded of this when the current Edinburgh University student Shanley Breese recently founded a support group called the Scottish Social Mobility Society, after experiencing “demeaning comments about her accent and clothes from high street brands like Primark.”

While it’s ludicrous that organisations like this are still needed in 2025, they can be transformative. I know – because, 25 years ago, I was a social mobility experiment.

In 1997, a couple of years before I turned 17, The Sutton Trust, a social mobility charity, ran its first-ever summer school for “gifted and talented students from underprivileged backgrounds.” Sixty-four 17-year-olds from schools that the University of Oxford had never heard from before spent a week experiencing undergraduate life there, to encourage applications. That year, 16 got into Oxford.

Something was clicking. It was no longer a place to be viewed as “not for the likes of us”, in our Reebok tracksuits and Primark joggers.

Two years later, I saw the summer school advertised in my dad’s Daily Mail – of all places – and was later exhilarated by the letter offering me a place. Other than my teachers, I’d never knowingly met anyone who’d attended university, especially around my age.

At that point, The Sutton Trust ran summer schools at four top universities: Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and Nottingham. I spent a week at the University of Nottingham.

At that point I still wasn’t sure if I’d fit into this world. I’d failed my eleven plus exams, and had never seen myself as academically gifted; just driven. At the summer school, I remember the excitement of being around people just like me: the ones who were called ‘boffins” at school, who enjoyed learning and who didn’t groan when homework was announced.

I’d gone to school with boys who, when asked what they wanted to be, responded: “footballer”; “do what my dad does”; or “dunno”. I’d felt too hubristic to whisper “journalist” and maybe even “author”. I’m now both those things. The social mobility programme showed me that ambition was OK.

I thrived being around those who sounded and looked like me – those who quoted Jane Austen with cockney glottal stops rather than crisp received pronunciation, while wearing Reebok classics.

I was given helpful insights from working class undergrads who’d been the first in their families (and maybe even schools) to attend university. One said: “it may take a while to fit in. You’ll want to drop out. Stick with it for at least a year to fully adapt.”

It was great advice. I hated my first few weeks, and failed my first-ever essay, getting a crushing 38% (the pass mark was 40%). This place just didn’t feel for the likes of me; everyone else in my seminar passed and seemed to know what the tutor was on about.

Yet by the end, at that same English graduation ball, I remember getting tearful it was all over. I’d graduated with First Class Honours, and didn’t want to leave.

My experience proves the need for deeper social mobility experiments such as the one supported by Alan Rusbridger, former editor of the Guardian, now editor of Prospect. Just like me, he failed his 11-plus. His idea involves pupils taking a foundation year at Oxford before applying. The crucial thing, he says, is “potential, not background.”

To mark a quarter of a century after some of Britain’s first ever major social mobility interventions, back at the time when Tony Blair talked up “education, education, education” and getting more people into universities, I met up with some of my peers from the Sutton Trust summer school, and tracked down other alumni to discover how it had affected their lives.

They talked about clothes, accents, imposter syndrome and the challenge of which cutlery to hold. They talked about the damaging effects of people being underestimated – by others and by themselves – and the enormous waste of potential.

There were sparkling success stories. Wes Streeting, the current health secretary, attended a Sutton Trust summer school at the University of Cambridge the same year I did in Nottingham. “It gave me the self-confidence that I was good enough, could fit in, and they wanted people from my background,” he told me.

In his memoir, he writes, “I hoped this might be my route in. Private schools coached students with mock interviews, and even dedicated Oxbridge tutors – I thought some experience with the Sutton Trust might level the playing field.”

It did. Streeting won a place at Cambridge. “We were given experiences alien to the majority of us from working class backgrounds – like dining in the grand surroundings of college hall for a three-course meal,” he says. He also mentions how he “didn’t know what a lounge suit was” and was conscious of his cockney accent; preoccupations diminished by the summer school.

The Cambridge offer was, Streeting says, his “Chocolate Factory golden ticket” to a life free of the struggles his working class mum faced. “The ‘pinch me’ moment of being there prepared me for the same ‘pinch me’ moment of coming to the Palace of Westminster to work every day as a minister; I feel lucky, yes, but also – importantly – not out of place,” he told me.

I spoke to Michael Akolade-Ayodeji, who grew up in care and was regularly expelled from school. He credits the social mobility access programmes he attended with giving him the gumption to apply to Oxford, becoming the only black person to have been both president of the Oxford Union, and president of its student union. Like Streeting, he says such schemes gave him the ability to fit in.

More recent Sutton Trust alumni gave me insights on how the summer schools continue to influence working class kids to amplify their aspirations. Jerome told me he was “ambitious, but with no steer,” a “black sheep” at his underperforming state school. “The Sutton Trust week was a school of black sheep,” he told me.

It convinced Emily to study a subject at university that she’d never heard of before: anthropology. Bianca told me her week was “the first time I didn’t have to hide who I really am.”

There’s room for improvements. Jamie, who attended the same summer school as me, said it convinced him to study away from home (Liverpool) but financial concerns scuppered this dream.

Such interventions could start younger. It barely matters now, but during my first week at the University of Leicester, a shocked, posh-speaking fellow student asked why I hadn’t gone through clearing. I’d been predicted 3Bs, but got 2As and a B. “You could’ve been at Oxford or a Russell Group uni now,” she said.

Working class kids like me lacked this system-savvy knowledge. I thought clearing was only for people with lower than predicted grades.

There was pushback to the social mobility intervention Rusbridger championed. Critics at Oxford hated this form of “social engineering” complaining that “we can’t teach them” and “they won’t fit in.”

But Rusbridger pushed back: “What some lacked in conventional social polish or confidence, they more than made up for in resilience and life experiences.”

The rise of the working class gifted kid proves the old guard wrong. Things are – slowly – changing.

Gary Nunn is a journalist and author. He is on X