Lawyer who quit job to lead inner-city school where 95% of pupils go to top universities
A HEAD teacher who gave up his City lawyer salary to lead an inner-city school is set to send 95 per cent of his pupils to the best universities in Britain.
Mouhssin Ismail left a promising career at global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright to become a teacher in his old neighbourhood of Newham in east London in 2009.
Following a meteoric rise through the ranks, he is now in charge of Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre, where in his first year of results 190 of its 200 students have been offered places at elite Russell Group universities.
Of those, nine have been offered places at either Oxford or Cambridge and one student has been given an unconditional offer to study at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US.
The sixth-form college serves one of the poorest areas of the country, with a large percentage of its students coming from immigrant backgrounds.
Mr Ismail said he will be very nervous come results day tomorrow. ‘All they have to do now is get the results,’ he said. ‘It sounds easy but, believe me, there has been a lot of hard work. Whatever happens, I am immensely proud of what they have achieved.
‘For many of these students, the idea of going to Oxford or Cambridge or Bath, Manchester or Bristol would have been inconceivable two years ago. Now it is within touching distance.’
He attributes the college’s success to being able to offer students the same opportunities they would get at top independent schools, such as work placements in leading firms, weekly Oxbridge tutorials with graduates and contacts across a range of professions.
Mr Ismail said: ‘We prepare our students the way they would be prepared at top private schools.
‘They go to mock interviews and visit Oxbridge colleges.
‘You can’t start preparation two weeks before the Oxbridge interview, you need to be given training and support.
‘If you are a middle-class state school kid, you may get that at home. But a large number of our children will be the first in their families to go to university, so they are at an even greater disadvantage.’
Mr Ismail said the university courses being offered to his students are ‘life-changing opportunities’ that were not available to the East End community in which he grew up.
Some of his friends in the City earn almost treble what he gets as a head teacher but he says he loves his job.
‘I am making a very real difference to the lives of the type of young people I grew up with,’ he said. ‘I don’t regret leaving in the slightest. It was the best decision I ever made.’