Me and my mate Dave in 1987. I like to think my beret has a hint of Che Guevara about it. But others think Curiosity Killed the Cat, a band whose lead singer, Ben Volpeliere, wore a similar-looking cap. For a fleeting moment during the 1980s hats (and hooped earrings and eyeliner) were the IN look – even if like me you came from a place like Feltham, West London, famed for its youth prison.
Three and a half decades later Dave’s photo now features in the class ceiling exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton. Organised by the university’s social mobility network, the exhibition celebrates working-class lives. I’m honoured to be featured but seeing the image has made me reflect on how class-ridden our elite universities remain.
When Dave took the pic, I was a university hopeful, retaking A-levels at Richmond Tertiary College, living on my own in a room on social security payments and working shifts at the local petrol station. I was a first-gen student as the Americans like to call it; the first in my family to stay in education beyond 16. That autumn I would leave for Sheffield University. My life would change forever.
Please don’t mistake this for another ‘poor kid done well’ tale. My journey is a bittersweet one. I’m a classic social climber, becoming the country’s first professor of social mobility at Exeter University and a former CEO of the Sutton Trust. The problem you see is that I fear that individual tales of upward mobility like mine only help to ensure that the class inequities in our education system remain unchallenged and unchanged. They also suggest a very narrow view of what success entails.
