The Sutton Trust is an educational charity in the United Kingdom which aims to provide educational opportunities to young people from non-privileged backgrounds. The charity was set up by the millionaire philanthropist Sir Peter Lampl.
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It currently runs summer school programmes at four British universities: Bristol, Nottingham, St Andrews and Cambridge.
With other co-sponsors, it has also established an extended version of the summer school scheme at other leading research universities, including: Birmingham and Manchester. In 2006 meanwhile it launched with the College of Law the 'Pathways to Law' scheme providing help for law students from non-privileged backgrounds.
The Sutton 13 are a list of UK universities identified by the Sutton Trust as "research-led universities" and "those ranked the highest in an average of published university league tables", for the purposes of monitoring social mobility[1]: (alphabetical order)
University of Birmingham, University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, Durham University, University of Edinburgh, Imperial College, London School of Economics, University of Nottingham, University of Oxford, University of St Andrews, University College London, University of Warwick and University of York[2].
Major pre-university projects have included:
An Open Access scheme at the Belvedere School in Liverpool which enabled able children to attend a fee-paying day school, regardless of their financial circumstances.
Into University - a centre based in North Kensington offering out-of-school study and support for children aged 7 upwards.
'Room to Play' -- a drop-in centre based in a shopping centre offering support for 'hard to reach' parents during the early years of their child’s development.
According to the Trust's 2006 annual report, the Trust and co-sponsors have committed £21.8 million to its activities since being established in 1997. See http://www.suttontrust.com/ for more details.
The Trust also funds an extensive research programme looking into the issue of educational inequalities.
Social mobility
A highly influential project funded by the Trust revealed in 2005 that social mobility in Britain is at a very low level and has fallen in recent decades.[3] In other words, it has become harder for a young person from a poor background to climb the social ladder and make it to the top. The researchers from the London School of Economics found that one reason for this trend was that the expansion of higher education in the UK has disproportionately benefited those from better off backgrounds. A follow-up report by the LSE group in 2008 concluded that social mobility had levelled off, with children born in 2000 facing the same mobility prospects as those children born 30 years earlier. The Trust and the Carnegie Corporation of New York organised a joint UK-US summit on social mobility in New York in June 2008.
Educational backgrounds
The Trust has published a series of surveys documenting the school and university backgrounds of leading people in professions in the UK. These have shown that over half of leaders were educated at fee-paying schools, which make up 7% of schools (at age 11).
Annual surveys
The Trust commissions polls of pupils and teachers. These show that a high proportion (70% plus) of 11-16 year olds aspire to go onto higher education, but only one in three actually do so. The surveys also found that nearly half (45%) of teachers in state schools either rarely or never encourage their academically-gifted pupils to apply to Oxford or Cambridge.
In 2006, the charity published a report showing that the number of 'top jobs' going to pupils from fee-paying schools had increased since the Labour Government came to power in 1997.[4] In 2007, another report was published highlighting the high proportion of Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates who came from "a small cadre of elite 'feeder' [mostly fee-paying] schools"[5]
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