In the run-up to the recent Makerfield by-election, I saw comments to the effect that Andy Burnham couldn’t be the ‘man of the people’ he claimed to be, because he had been educated at Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge. A remark like that implies that all the outreach work the University and all its constituent colleges do is pointless. That whether you came from a millionaire’s family and went to Eton, or were in care from an early age, coming from a dysfunctional family and going to the local comprehensive, you are equally a toff as soon as you set foot through an Oxbridge door. It is, of course, nonsense.
The role of any college is to give those whom they admit the best opportunity to achieve their potential. Those who came from Eton have many advantages that the comprehensive kid lacks (even knowing which cutlery to use for which course at formal dinners can be a strain for the latter; the former may not even notice it could be a challenge). An undergraduate in Oxbridge does not lose their background because they have entered a new world. There are of course many kids who go to Cambridge who carry with them a great deal of entitlement, which they then take on with them into later life. In Oxford, MPs from the Bullingdon Club seem to exemplify this issue. But that doesn’t mean you can write off every individual who went to Fitzwilliam or any of the other 30 Cambridge Colleges. That is merely simplistic, media laziness to promote such an attitude.
Do those people who automatically scoff at those who went to Oxbridge regardless of their background, have a pecking order of which universities allow you still to claim you have a disadvantaged background? Does UCL sit above or below this line? What about St Andrews? Fiona Hill, currently Chancellor of Durham University, is an interesting example of an alumna from this ancient Scottish University. She has written movingly about it in her 2021 book There is Nothing for you here: finding opportunity in the 21st century. She went to St Andrews University from a disadvantaged family background in a run-down former mining village outside Bishop Auckland, to a place where she said she felt very out of her depth. Of her background she said
‘Having aspirations wasn’t normal – or perhaps it just seemed pointless when you were unlikely to escape poverty or ever leave County Durham.’
As she put it, when she arrived she was surrounded by hordes of students who seemed to know what they were doing.
‘They were coasting along. They seemed to know everything. They exuded confidence. I was filled with self-doubt every time they spoke in class. They knew things I didn’t even know I should know. They sounded intelligent. I sounded hesitant.’
She did not have an easy time at St Andrews. In one case, a much posher student (who had attended the private and expensive Cheltenham Ladies College, no doubt another place which encourages a sense of entitlement) accused her of unfair tactics to get a good mark:
‘Did you sleep with [the tutor]? How could you have done so well? You’re just a common northerner.’
As this shows, bias comes in many forms, and it’s usually unpleasant. It is hard to imagine that any of Hill’s contemporaries went on to have more successful careers than she herself achieved: she became an official at the U.S. National Security Council when she was a presidential advisor to Donald Trump in his first term, specializing in Russian and European affairs. This same excelling over his contemporaries is likely to be true of Andy Burnham at Fitzwilliam, although it seems unlikely anyone accused him of sleeping with his tutor in order to get on, given common attitudes to double standards between men and women.
Too often, people want to put other people in boxes. It’s just another form of stereotyping, but like all such it is lazy and based on simplistic assumptions. A ‘common northerner’ could not be imagined by some to be competent in Hill’s case. For Burnham, that he studied at Cambridge eradicates his Liverpool roots. I know nothing about his upbringing, but he certainly – as Manchester Mayor – has made it clear he does not only represent the so-called metro-elite, even if inevitably he is seen as now belonging to it.
As I write, the likelihood of Burnham becoming Prime Minister shortly seems to be rising fast. Given my own interests and activities around education and skills, I will be watching with interest to see whether nationally he expresses as much interest in FE as he has within Manchester. Will this be done with actual funding or just warm words? What difference will it make to Alan Milburn’s recommendations around NEETs? Although they did not overlap in the Cabinet, they certainly overlapped as MPs. Time will tell how much control he might give to devolved regions to sort out their education system to fit the local economy, as he had wanted to do when he talked about an MBacc, wanting to create a qualification that he felt would serve local needs more than the national (and now out-dated) EBacc.
We need diversity in perspectives in Government as everywhere else. It is important that not all judges or MPs, for instance, have identical backgrounds, and I’m not denying that an Oxbridge education is typically a good one and is likely to convey advantages on their graduates, sometimes simply because employers take an Oxbridge degree as a crude form of credentialing. But one’s roots matter too, roots in terms of geography as well as ‘class’ or financial circumstances. All of these factors will impact on perspectives and need to be recognized as separate aspects of an individual. We live, as they say, in interesting times but please, media folk, can we avoid lazy stereotyping!
