Meet the new 93 per cent club at Exeter uni providing inclusivity for students from state-school backgrounds

We know there are issues with the education system, and whilst we can’t necessarily fix them, we can still help people through levelling out the playing field in higher education. We want to do this by helping state school students navigate university life through providing professional development opportunities, creating a deeply inclusive and supportive community where everyone is welcome regardless of background, as well as providing outreach to local schools.”

We want to work with businesses to provide sector specific up-skilling workshops to our members in various underrepresented sectors. We also hope to involve Exeter Alumni and other professionals to provide webinars, contacts and resources for our members. Within this, we also want to provide general professional development workshops such as CV and cover letter workshops to equip students with all the skills they need for post-university life.

Outreach

We want to work with UK organisations/charities and local schools to support state-school students with applying to university. We’ll be supporting a social mobility charity voted for by our committee every term and we will be announcing our Term One charity very soon so look out for this!

Community

We want to create an inclusive community and powerful network where students can feel welcome regardless of their backgrounds. We’re planning to create inclusive, Covid-safe socials, as well as a family system for our members to feel welcome and have a sort of, ‘home-base’ at university where they can feel safe, supported and welcome.”

Are you part of the Student’s Guild?

“We’re intending to apply for affiliation with the Student Guild after freshers week when applications reopen. Until then we’re doing as much groundwork as possible to prepare for the coming year.

We’re planning to work with the University Centre of Social Mobility and we’re already working with Lee Elliot-Major OBE, who is a Professor of Social Mobility at the University, and was previously Chief Executive of The Sutton Trust. We’ve also contacted the Careers Zone in relation to professional development events, so we hope to be working with them too!”

Do you think the 93% Club is particularly important at Exeter?

“While social mobility undoubtedly needs to be recognised at all universities around the UK, we do feel that it’s particularly important to Exeter. This is both backed up by statistics, as well as our own experiences coming to Exeter.

While in the UK, 93 per cent of students are state educated, the 7 per cent of the UK that are privately educated account for 35.3 per cent of our student body.

Having said this, we’re not looking to exclude or diminish those privately educated, but rather increase social mobility, create equal opportunities for students from all socio-economic backgrounds and make university life inclusive to everyone regardless of where they have come from.

Imposter syndrome was felt, and still is felt by many of our committee so we want to create an honest discussion about social mobility and inclusivity within the Exeter student body and work to improve the experiences of students from state school backgrounds!”

How can Exeter students apply for the 93% Club?

“Official membership will open once we are affiliated, but we’re welcoming future members to register their interest and join our Facebook Members Group to keep up to date with our events for the year.

This can be done here: https://forms.gle/dFHvHZndSfWs7C1S7.

By joining the group, future members will be able to keep up to date with our future social, outreach and professional development events. We will be running virtual socials during Freshers Week and we’d love people to join and meet us. We also intend to make membership free!”