East End sEnding
oNE WALL is adorned with photographs of alumni who studied at Oxford and Cambridge universities, another bears a list of all former pupils who went into higher education, with the name of the university proudly displayed alongside.
But these aren’t the hallowed halls of Eton or Harrow – it is the reception area of a state school in one of the most deprived areas of London, where child poverty rates are among the highest in the country.
Indeed, a higher than average number of the 2,850 pupils at Brampton Manor Academy in Newham (motto: Success through effort and determination) do not speak English as their first language, have special support needs and come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yet this hasn’t stopped the school boasting a recordbreaking number of admissions to Oxford and Cambridge.
Announcing the news of the offers this week, executive principal Dr Dayo Olukoshi OBE paid tribute to the hard work of the successful candidates.
“We were delighted when last year we sent 20 students to Oxbridge, having seen the number increase gradually from just one offer in 2014,” he says. “For this to have more than doubled again is phenomenal but does not surprise us. Our vision has always been to never put limits on what our students can achieve, and I think these offers reflect just that.”
Brampton Manor opened its sixth form in September 2012 with the specific aim of transforming progression rates to Oxbridge and the elite Russell Group universities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Director of sixth form Sam Dobin believes the secret to success is building up the students’ confidence. “We are passionate about instilling within our students the self-belief that they are good enough, that their talent and potential is far more important than any pre-conceived notion of the ‘type’ of student Oxbridge might be looking for,” he says.
“These young people have often overcome so much to get to this point and now have such exciting futures ahead of them. We couldn’t be prouder of them.”
One such example is Dorcas Shodeinde who has been in care since she was 14 and has an offer to study law at St Catherine’s College, Oxford.
“When I was put in care because of family difficulties all I knew was that statistically care leavers don’t do very well,” she says, referring to the figure of six per cent of school leavers in care who attend university.
“I wanted to prove that it’s not the end of the world and show my fostersister that you can change the outcome of negative experiences.”
Brampton Manor’s success rivals the admission rates of some of the top-performing private schools.
Two thirds of the teenagers, some of whom came to Britain as refugees, will be the first of their family to attend university. Nearly all are from