Meet the Rotherham steelworker's son whose job is to get students from deprived areas of Yorkshire into Oxbridge

Joe Stanley will become Selwyn College's first ever schools liaison officer based full-time in the north - with a brief to break down barriers for teenagers from areas with low participation in higher education.

Mr Stanley's own journey to Cambridge, where he studied a postgraduate education course, reflects the challenges faced by the pupils he plans to work with. His father was a steelworker who was made redundant while he was still at Wickersley School and his mother was a dinner lady. He is the only member of his extended family to have gone to university, having studied history at Durham before undertaking a PhD on the history of mining in Yorkshire.

He will remain based in his hometown of Rotherham and will travel around areas of West Yorkshire including Kirklees, Bradford, Leeds, Calderdale and Wakefield, working with students, teachers and parents with a particular focus on those studying A Levels at further education colleges.

Selwyn, whose master Roger Mosey grew up in Bradford, now takes 81 per cent of first-years from the state sector and offers significant financial assistance to those from low income backgrounds. The Cambridge college, like many in the university, has been 'paired' with the West Yorkshire region to try and increase applications.

Mr Stanley, who credits his mother dropping him off at a mobile library while she went shopping for his love of reading, first became involved in mentoring when he worked with an organisation that sent him to Rawmarsh School while he was lecturing at Sheffield Hallam University.

"I really enjoyed working with kids from the same background as me, for whom university seemed an alien concept. I then joined the Higher Education Progression Partnership South Yorkshire, going into postcode areas where students were missing out on higher education and talking to them about university life, finance, getting out of their comfort zone and confidence building. When the job at Selwyn came up I was very fortunate to get it.

"I want to work with Huddersfield New College and Kirklees College in particular, as a lot of students at FE colleges don't know as much about higher education. It's all about barriers - often a combination of race, social class and gender.

"For girls, it tends to be a lack of confidence in their ability, while for white working-class boys there is a perception that they need to go out and earn rather than study. For BAME students, they often lack role models.

"First and foremost we talk about money. There often isn't a lot of understanding about the loans system or the support available; Cambridge is very generous, and students whose household income is less than £20,000 are eligible for £3,500 per year to help with living costs."

Mr Stanley was on free school meals as a teenager and also remembers the feeling of alienation when he first arrived at Durham, where he lacked experience of academic study.

"It was hard to adjust - I didn't know how to write essays, how seminars worked, how to reference. I did comparatively poorly in my first term because of this, but one lecturer told me to come and see him and he was an inspiration. He taught me how to write and gave me coaching, which is the most important thing anyone has ever done for me.

"There is so much pressure on teachers, they don't have the time to help kids craft UCAS statements; at these schools it's just about getting the pass grades. I'm really looking forward to meeting students and parents and showing them that if you're talented, Cambridge is the place for them."

Selwyn College master Roger Mosey, an author and broadcaster educated at Bradford Grammar School, added: “Selwyn and Cambridge have transformed their student body in recent years, with a massive increase in diversity and a rise in the number of students coming from tougher economic backgrounds. An important part of our commitment is seeking to attract students from all across the United Kingdom, and - as someone from Yorkshire myself - we are very keen to boost our efforts to recruit more applicants from the north of England, where we feel there is an under-representation amongst our student body.”

The college also acknowledged that the pandemic-related travel difficulties had made it harder to forge links between state schools and Cambridge, leading to its northern intake remaining 'static'.