a headteacher who has helped students in the most deprived areas of the capital win places at top universities is set to open two new colleges for working class Londoners.
Newham Colliegate Sixth Form (NCS) headteacher Mouhssin Ismail and the City of London Corporation plan to open facilities in Hackney and Islington.
The centres will seek to replicate the success of Mr Ismail’s east London college, which has helped dozens of students win places at Oxbridge as well as scholarships at MIT, Harvard and Princeton.
NCS serves one of the areas with the highest rates of child poverty in the country, but 95 per cent of students leave for the Russell Group universities.
Mr Ismail, a former city lawyer, said: “If we are serious about social mobility, we need to do things differently and provide talented young people with opportunities they simply don’t get in their normal state school.
“Beacons of excellence within the state sector such as the NCS are levelling the playing field but only for students in Newham. What about the rest of the country?
“We have students applying to us from all over London and into Essex. There is a huge appetite amongst highly aspirational working-class families for their children to have the same access to the top universities, which their peers from independent schools enjoy.”
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