Council hand money to Brilliant Club charity to get disadvantaged Doncaster children to top universities

Doncaster has awarded a university and charity pots of cash to develop a group of children from disadvantaged backgrounds to attend prestigious further education establishments.

The Opportunity Area Partnership Board has given £32,000 to Sheffield Hallam University and £29,000 to charity Brilliant Club to carry out the project.

Brilliant Club will be delivering support to disadvantaged primary schools with children with

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the potential to go to Russell Group Universities to help those children ‘maximise their potential’, bosses said.

Russell Group Universities include places such as Oxford, Cambridge, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, York, Edinburgh and King’s College London.

Sheffield Hallam University will be delivering mentoring to newly and recently qualified teachers at ‘challenging schools’ as part of the arrangement.

The grants were awarded based on business cases submitted to the Opportunity Area Partnership Board.

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A decision to directly award the grants is based on the organisation’s ‘track record of delivery, the bespoke nature of the programme, an evidence based approach and opportunity to facilitate market development in these areas’, Doncaster education chiefs said.

Documents seen by councillors did not say how many students were involved or which ‘challenging schools’ newly qualified teachers were being mentored at.

The Brilliant Club is a UK non-profit organisation that aims to widen access to university for students from underrepresented groups.

It was founded in 2011 by Jonathan Sobczyk and Simon Coyle, with partner organisations including The Sutton Trust, Teach First, Challenge Partners and Goldman Sachs.

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The charities website says there is an ‘entrenched link’ between a pupil’s background and their access to higher education.

The UCAS Multiple Equality Measure shows that one in four of the most advantaged group of English 18 year olds enter highly-selective universities compared to only 1 in 50 pupils from the most disadvantaged.