Breathless with amazement

'Here on display was the great fissure in class, race, style, attitude, background, life-experience and confidence.' Polly Toynbee and David Walker accompany Brent school students on a visit to Oxford It's a straight line from Brent to Oxford along the A40 and M40, no great distance, an hour or so by car from north-west London. Yet this excursion by pupils from Brent's Capital City academy to the university spires crosses the deepest ravines of the UK's social divide. The yellow limestone buildings of St John's College left the Brent pupils almost breathless with amazement. They had seen nothing like it and it was nothing like they imagined a university to be. Nor were those arches and fan vaults much like the universities and further education colleges most of them are likely to attend. The pupils of Capital City academy... [read full story]