Any suggestion that Russell Group universities pay only lip service to widening access is just wrong. At Queen Mary, 92 per cent of our home undergraduate students are from state schools, 49 per cent are the first in their family to enter higher education and 35 per cent are from households where the annual taxable income is less than £20k. These students go on to succeed in their chosen careers – which is why Queen Mary was named the country’s top university for social mobility in a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies in partnership with the Sutton Trust Education in 2021. Our research is excellent, as would be expected from a member of the Russell Group: we ranked 7th in the UK for the quality of our research in the Research Excellence Framework 2021.
Our success in widening access has not happened by accident – it is the result of a deep, University-wide commitment, and enduring, close relationships with schools. We are proud to sponsor two multi-academy trusts and work very closely with both of them. It is fantastic to see schools in both these trusts improving their results, and their Ofsted classifications, over the last few years. We continue to work very hard with these schools and it is through these relationships we can work with primary school students – on a wider scale, such work would not be practical.
