I go to Oxford University. Oxford University is a university that has a lot of students from privileged backgrounds. According to recent figures, 56.8% of UK undergraduates at my university come from state schools, which is actually quite low, considering how the independent sector only educates around 6.5% of the total number of school children in England.
In the past, whilst at university, people tried to play up their wealth and privilege as much as possible because in those days, wealth and privilege meant a higher status at the university. However, the opposite seems to be happening today. This is because due to films such as 'The Riot Club', TV shows like 'Harrow: A Very British School', and the 'Old Boys Club' that seems to dominate UK politics, an 'other-worldly' vibe is ascribed to private and public schools. Therefore, there is a kind of stigma attached to them nowadays, that is not unlike the stigma in the past that came with coming from an 'unknown' school and being a 'poor' student, in a literal sense.
As a result of this, phrases like "Yeah, I went to a private school but it was a really crap one" and "My school was really bad; it only sends about 10 people to Oxford a year" are thrown around a lot. There are many reasons why phrases like that really irk me whenever hear them.
I was the first student in my school's history to get into Oxford, and one of less than twenty people from the school to ever make it into a Russell Group university. It can be very frustrating to hear ex-private school students talk about how hard things were for them in their schools that were and still are always in the top fifty in league tables. "My school only offered three languages at A Level." I was the first student in my school to choose a language for A Level and I had to work out of a 2001 OCR textbook for a few months, even though I was sitting the 2013 AQA exam...the struggle was so real. "The teacher who ran my Oxford mock interview for Law was rubbish; she did History at Cambridge!" The career's adviser at my school strongly encouraged students to only apply to universities that accepted UCAS points, and not grades, as that was all she believed that students from my school could achieve.
I could go on and on about how bad things were for me at school and how the fact that I made it into Oxford without the opportunities that my private and public school educated friends had is a miracle. However, I'd be lying if I don't own up to some of my own privileges, privileges that helped me get to where I am today.
I lived in Nigeria until I was nine years old and I went to a private school. Although the private schools in Nigeria are not the same calibre as those in the UK, I was still part of an elite few, and the excellent quality of my early Nigerian education played a big role in me being able to excel in my UK primary and secondary schools. My parents paid for more than ten years of music lessons and youth theatre, which increased my confidence growing up and all those years of confidence boosting exercises enabled me to give a strong and confident performance in my Oxford interview. All those years spent at the theatre introduced me to numerous plays, operas, ballets and even classic films, and I can hold my own in discussions at formal dinners, when such topics arise in 'small talk' with tutors and peers.
So, from all that, it's evident that things were not all bad for me. What's the point of all this, then, you ask? I think it's important that we all accept our privileges and we should never try to downplay them. It's also very important to check your privilege at all times, and this is something that I'm still trying to get better at myself. There are people out there who have had things much worse than you and they will definitely get annoyed if you try to make light of their situations by turning things back to yourself all the time. Don't put others on a pedestal just because they went to a certain school. This is something that I personally feel very strongly about because as Eleanor Roosevelt once said "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." With this in mind, it is important to remember that nobody is automatically a better person because of the school that they went to, be it a rubbish comprehensive or a 'posh' public school. Treat everyone equally and if you ever hear someone talking about how bad their situation might be/ might have been/ is, resist the urge to say, "Oh, but things were/are so worse for me!" As cringey as it sounds, just listen to them. Listen, instead of making comparisons and maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to start having constructive discussions regarding how to do something about the various privileges that separate people and impede equality.
