Only six per cent of children who are fostered or in care homes currently go on to higher education. And only two per cent of bright children who are on free school meals make it to top Universities.

Justin Sealey and Diarmuid Hester two postgraduate students at the University of Sussex are redressing the balance.

Justin works with the East Sussex Virtual School, which provides advocacy on behalf of children in care with social services and their main school, and which monitors and evaluates the progress of each looked after child.

And Diarmuid works for the Brilliant Club, a charity which turns PhD researchers into tutors and sends them into schools to give high performing pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds a university style education.

Justin said: “I came to university as a second generation scholar – only my mum from my family had been before, and she came to Sussex too!

"I graduated last year in English Literature and I have worked with the University’s Widening Participation team for my whole university career, tutoring, working on revision days and helping run summer schools.

"I was impressed and humbled, I suppose, by the work that the Virtual School does and I wanted to be part of that.”

“When the Virtual School children come on to campus, our main job is to ensure that they have the opportunity to learn about and see first-hand as many different aspects of the University experience as possible.

"Often these young people feel that university is not an option for them, or that it is out of their grasp, so our job is to show them that in fact they are more than capable of coming to university and that there is the infrastructure and the support here to enable them to do so,” said Justin.

“It can be very useful for these young people to work with the tutors, who are closer to them in age, and in a university setting”.

Sometimes the contact has dramatic affect. Justin gave one on one tutoring for one A Level student from the Virtual School.

“He had to retake his GCSE in English before he could get accepted to a university he’d applied to. He made it! He is in his second year at Keele University now,” said Justin.

“One young man on a recent campus visit told me early in the day that he did not want to come to university and that he did not understand why anyone would want to go.

"But after looking around the campus and spending time with the tutors he told me he was really interested in applying and that he now realised university was a lot more fun and exciting than he had first believed,” said Justin.

Diarmuid, who is studying for a PhD in English, agrees that it is all about opening minds.

The University of Sussex is a founding member of the Brilliant Club and takes special responsibility for organising Widening Participation programmes where school children from underrepresented communities visit the campus to get a taste of university life.

“When I first heard about the Brilliant Club I was delighted to see its mission connected in many ways with my own ideas about social justice and equitable access to education,” said Diarmuid.

The Brilliant Club sends tutors into local schools such as Varndean School – but Diarmuid was sent to Millennium Primary, Meridian Primary and Brooklands Primary in Greenwich to teach 8-10 year olds.

“These were smart children. So I gave them a cultural history course – with six university style tutorials about pivotal moments in history such as the nineteenth century Poor Laws or the founding of the NHS.

"They were then asked to produce a 1000 word essay on the change in attitudes and provisions for the poor from the nineteenth century to the post-WWII.

"I told a primary school teacher friend of mine what the Brilliant Club gets Key Stage 2 children to do and he could not believe it,” said Diarmuid.

“The standards were exceptional. The pupils were just fantastic really engaged in class and intrigued by university life in general,” he said.

  • To find out more about the University of Sussex: drop into the University’s pop-up shop at 20 Gardner Street until May 29.