An Exclusive with Christine Kinnear, Founder of the Insight2Uni Mentoring Program
Christine Kinnear is the founder of the Insight2Uni mentoring program designed to offer black-heritage students the support and guidance needed to bridge the opportunity gaps between them and their peers. The 10-month structured program combines purposeful mentoring, positive representation, and a supportive network to ensure that these students are aware of their options and are adequately prepared to achieve the grades and top-tier university offers that they are fully capable of achieving. Insight2Uni partners with universities across the UK to find the most representative and qualified mentors for its participants. Many Russell Group universities including Manchester, Leeds, and Durham University partner with Kinnear’s exceptional initiative.
As a proud mentor of the program from Durham University, I sat down with Christine Kinnear to discuss the motivations behind creating such a revolutionary program that could shape the future of black-heritage students and their academic journeys.
What do you believe are the main contributing factors to the lower percentage of black-heritage students attending top universities in the UK?
I think that if you look at it from an objective point of view, one of the reasons is going to be lower [grade] attainment at schools of black-heritage students; that plays a huge part of their ability to even consider Russell Group and other top universities. On top of that, when you look more on the subjective side, you do have students who are still really concerned about how they are going to fit into these spaces. I know that the figures in terms of attendance are going up, but through the work that I do, I still encounter students who say to me, ‘I’m one of maybe three people in my lecture theatre’. You’ve got students who are coming from urban settings which are very diverse, and then they have to consider what it is like to go into a predominantly white space. So in this case, you have students who have got the grades, but who are opting not to apply.
Do you think that there is a particular reason that there is lower grade attainment for black-heritage students in the UK?
That’s complex, but it’s all completely fixable as well. Black-heritage students are almost twice as likely to have been brought up in poverty than their white peers. This puts enormous pressure on them within their family setting; maybe they’ve taken on extra caring responsibilities so their parents can work, or maybe they’re having to work themselves, so they’re not in a position to be as studious. And then if you’re a child who’s being brought up in poverty, there's a chance that you’re living in an area where the school is challenged by poverty as well; so you’re going to a school where the teachers don’t have the same resources as those in more affluent areas and they can’t support you with the enrichment activities that go towards building up a stronger, more holistic student that’s going to have a higher chance of applying themselves and getting into top universities.
Also, if we’re going to talk about the elephant in the room, we still have an education system where there is a lower expectation of black heritage students. I’m always surprised…well, not surprised, but disappointed, when I speak to students who come onto the programs and say, ‘my teacher told me not to apply to this course because they didn’t think that I’d get onto it’. Consequently, you have a situation where you have students who are more than capable of getting into top universities, but because that isn’t the expectation put on them from within their school setting, they’re not pushed in the same way as another child with the similar level of ability would be, and they’re falling through the cracks.
Why do you believe that black-heritage students apply disproportionately for some of the most oversubscribed degree courses, resulting in lower intake rates?
I believe that you tend to be what you see around you. So within the broader black community we see, for example, doctors that look like us and that are from a similar background, and so therefore that pathway feels attainable. You compound that with familial expectations, and consequently, you have these students going for these courses that are highly competitive and that creates a bottleneck in the application process. So, I think that if we are going to break that cycle, it is really important that we get other representation of what black professionals can be, so that students can grow up with a much wider understanding of the options available to them. I also think that the advice being given to these students is too narrow. There’s still this idea that, for example, if you want to become a lawyer, you have to study Law, and unless you have somebody who is going to take the time out to take that myth away from you, you’re just going to think that’s a very logical thing to do and you’ll go down that path. Consequently, you end up with students applying to highly competitive courses at the most competitive universities, solely because they are devoid of that knowledge that there are other routes into professions. But I also feel like, as a society, we are pulled towards professions that feel safe and those professions are oversubscribed.
When do you believe that the education and grade disparities between black-heritage and white students commence, resulting in the lower percentage of them attending top universities?
I think it starts from the point at which they start school. If you belong to any black group, you’re going to start at a lower point than your white peers. However, the disparity is not so big that it is not recoverable. I used to be Chair of Governance at a primary school, and we were acutely aware of this, so we made conscious efforts to ensure that the gap didn’t get any bigger and that we, in fact, closed it over the six years that the students had in primary school. But the general trend is that these students will come in at a lower level, and then they hit up against an education system that is under-serving them, and that gap gets bigger and bigger at every key educational stage. By the time they’re finishing their GCSEs, that gap has doubled over the child’s educational lifetime. So I think that there is something really fundamental about our education system that is still letting down black heritage students. Until very recently, if you were a black Caribbean boy, you were six times more likely to be excluded from school. Now, nobody can tell me that those children are six times more naughty than their peers. So there’s also a different educational and behavioural expectation of certain groups of students and what would be tolerated in one group or seen as a cry for help in one group, is treated as misbehaviour in another, and then you have them marginalised in the education system.
Did you ever feel that, as an incoming, black-heritage university student, you could not attend a top university, and if so, why?
I did. I actually had an offer to Sheffield and I turned it down. The reason I did this is, when I was doing my A-Levels and went to visit universities, I just didn’t see anybody like me on campus, and I mean, not a single black soul. I went all over the country, and I do remember convincing myself that I could not go to one of those spaces because I would find it too isolating and too scary. So I ended up turning down a perfectly good offer from a great university, and I ended up going to what was a polytechnic at the time, which on paper seems like a mad thing to do, but emotionally, it felt like a good and right thing to do; it felt like a rational decision to make.
What was the moment that you knew that With Insight Education was going to become a reality? I remember a blog post that you shared about your daughter’s worries about attending Oxford or Cambridge; would you say that that was the turning point for you?
That was definitely the huge penny drop moment; that was the moment where I thought, ‘this makes me so angry and so sad that I can’t move past this’. And this really caught me because of my own prior experience as I explained before, and because I had always explained my experience as having occurred because I came from a family of immigrants who weren’t familiar with the education system here and I didn’t really have anyone in my network who had gone to a top university, so I believed that if all of those factors had been different, I would have made a different choice. With my daughter, that’s not at all true, and she is still internalising that message, and that made it clear to me that at a very fundamental level, despite all the encouragement and nice words that students like her are receiving, there is still a bigger narrative that they are receiving through what they see, and that is that there are spaces where they are not welcome and where they will not thrive. And that for me was really shocking, and took me out of the comfort zone that I created for myself where we could simply offer my daughter encouragement and she would be alright.
How has the Insight2Uni mentorship programme made a difference?
The program absolutely has made a difference. We’ve had over 500 people on that program now and 87% of our students have ended up at top universities; we have alumni at, for example, Oxbridge and Durham, where some mentees are now mentors, which is fantastic. We have students who come back and say to us, ‘there is absolutely no way I would have received this offer if I hadn't had the support of my mentor on this program’. So we really do know that it makes a difference, not only to that young person on the program, but that then has a ripple effect to their community, their friends, and back into their school, as we can go back into their school and showcase the student that went to a top university; sometimes we even have them come back into the school and speak. And you can see all of these little lightbulbs going off in the heads of these younger students who see that someone from their school has done it, and if that student could, then they can. It lifts them, and makes what might feel like an improbability feel like an attainable goal for them.
Finally, what is your hope for Insight2Uni? Do you see the mentoring platform becoming a catalyst for change and an initiative that can potentially break down the barriers that are holding black heritage students back?
I do; my big hope for Insight is to create real generational change. I want mentees to come through the program, become mentors, and lift as they climb; to look back and support other students. I want our mentors to go into work spaces and in doing so, change the dynamic of these workspaces, because you’ve now got these highly qualified black-heritage students going into professional spaces. I want them to share the experience of going to top universities with the younger peers in their family, and in time, their own family and change the outlook of these younger people. I think there’s real power in the intergenerational capability of the program, and that is what I’m driving for. I always say that my dream is to be in a position where this charity doesn’t need to exist because it becomes so normalised for black-heritage students to go to good universities and get into professions and inspire, generate, and provide opportunities for other people as well.
Kinnear finished the interview on a positive note, stating that in her five years running the program, there is an ‘improving picture’. However, she also identified that the narrative has recently shifted more towards overall social mobility, and that approaches to bridge the gaps between different societal groups have become more general. She highlights that an intersectional approach is imperative, as ignoring the racial equity aspect of social mobility will lead to a reversal of the progress that has been and is currently being made. She also states that schools and universities have a fundamental role to play in breaking the barriers that restrain black heritage students, by ensuring that they actively change the harmful narratives surrounding these students, offer encouragement and support, and provide equitable opportunities in the form of contextual offers and financial assistance.
Interviewed by Chloe Uzoukwu