how - I can understand your frustration about the students who don’t have the obstacles that this boy may have. Sometimes though, it can just take one person to turn things around. In my case, I was the first ever in my family to go to uni and this was down to a particular teacher who forced me to apply! My parents had absolutely no concept of education whatsoever and no money anyway. It’s easy to look at “privileged” people and assume they had everything handed to them on a plate, but in my experience, appearances can so often be deceptive. For instance, DH came here as a young child with refugee parents in crisis. Until the age of 10 he lived in various temporary accommodations. His parents divorced due to his father’s serious mental health problems, which were probably a result of having been tortured and forced to leave his home country with 24 hours notice, all assets frozen and he was forced onto a plane at gunpoint. His father spent years in psychiatric institutions and never recovered. Meanwhile, his mother, an Iranian woman with poor English and no marketable skills, managed to get DH a part-bursary to a local independent in the Luton area. She worked 3 jobs to pay the rest of the fees. DH went to a “mid-range” uni, but ended up with a first and the faculty prize. He managed to somehow get into options trading and learned the job on his feet while being treated like shit in his early 20s while also completing an MBA. In his late 20s he founded a company with a few uni friends which they sold ten years later for over a billion.
I guess what I’m saying is, whether you get to this uni or that, it’s what you do after uni that counts. Also when you look at people who appear “privileged”, it really is so often the case that you only have to go back a generation to realise that where they have actually come from was anything but privileged.
Today, I’ve had 6 16 year olds here - one who zi was chatting to is at the school in a full bursary. This year she went on a school trip to China free. She will get all 9s at GCSE. She’s of Ethiopian heritage and her mum is a single mum. She wants to be a brain surgeon. She told me she wants to study at Edinburgh for this and I have no doubt she will achieve all this and more. She’s quite amazing actually.
Then there is a boy who could appear to be in the super-privileged elite because his family live in Covent Garden and he’s off to summer school at Harvard. He will get all 9s, but he’s one of the most lovely, genuine humble kids you could meet. His parents are Syrian immigrants who studied in the US which explains why they want this for their kids.
There was a girl of Ukrainian heritage whose family were forced to flee in her lifetime; a boy of Chinese background who is also on a full bursary, is a maths and musical genius, and his whole family of 5 live in two rooms. Then there’s a Venezuelan girl who lives in a Knightsbridge mansion! So there’s no typical “privileged London independent school type” as far as I can see. These kids have been friends for years and I can honestly say that none of them judge each other for their vastly different backgrounds. They just really get on and take each other as they come.