Award nominations for working class students

Two working class students from the West Midlands who overcame adversity to access university have been shortlisted for awards.

Mia Taylor-Seal from Sandwell and Leo Cavanagh from Cannock were both the first in their families to continue to higher education and, despite their nervousness, have gone on to thrive.

Cavanagh said being nominated for the upReach Student Social Mobility Awards meant "so much", while Taylor-Seal said: "If you told me this a year ago... I think I'd have just laughed at you."

The ceremony will be held on 8 July at Drapers' Hall in London.

Taylor-Seal, 20, grew up in a single-parent household in Tividale, raised by her mum, as well as her nan and granddad, who she described as parental figures.

She said she came from a line of working class people and was proud to be from the Black Country.

Things changed when she went to study history at the University of Exeter, where she became "hyper-aware that some people will try and put you down".

Her accent was mocked or mimicked, she was told that how she said certain words sounded stupid, and her values around money were questioned.

"It feels awful, because it's not just me who it's attacking, it's everyone at home, my family," she told the BBC.

Determined to change things, she created a magazine focused on working class pride and founded a podcast, A Seat at the Table.

Taylor-Seal co-leads her university's branch of the 93% Club, a network of state-educated students.

She also wrote her dissertation on the experiences of working class students in higher education from 1988 to 2002.

"The fact that there was a 40-year gap between me attending education and them in education... it's crazy that we experienced the same thing," she said.

She has been nominated for the Academic Success Award, which was "a shock", because at one point, she considered dropping out of university.

In her second year, she lost her nan and granddad.

Her mum became ill and she started travelling from Exeter back to the Black Country to visit her in hospital.

Working long hours at two jobs to fund her train tickets and enduring long journeys, she struggled to attend lectures while grieving.

On the award, she added: "I can't even verbalise, it's just nice to have somebody actually acknowledge it [the work]."

Her advice for others with a similar background is: "Don't let anyone put you down."

"Take every opportunity there is, and even if you feel like you're not the most qualified one in the room, you never know, you might be exactly what they're looking for.

"It's not where you start, it's where you finish."

Second year student Cavanagh did not think university was a realistic option when he was growing up on a council estate in Walsall with his dad delivering takeaways.

After his parents separated, his mum moved him and his sister to Cannock and began working 50 hours a week at a fast food restaurant to pay the bills.

"The hours were very long, and she had to miss evenings because she had to work nights," he remembered. "We still managed."

His secondary school, Staffordshire University Academy, was rated inadequate when he first joined. He only began to dream big when he was in Year 10.

"My mum had managed to afford to get me a computer, and that really helped with homework," he said. "I wanted to be out, I wanted to explore the world."

Watching Boris Johnson's daily updates during the Covid pandemic sparked a passion for politics, but he was still daunted about applying to university, convincing himself it would be "too competitive" to get in.

Nonetheless, encouraged by his sixth-form teachers, he spent hours researching institutions online that he could not afford to visit in person.

When he won a place at Durham University to read politics and international relations, he still felt weighed down by the feeling, wondering: "Am I going to fit in? Is this really for me?"

Following a gap year working in a food warehouse, he started there in 2024 and felt lucky to move into "very inclusive" Stephenson College. "It has one of the highest intakes of black and Asian and working class students."

"It took a while to fully feel involved in the university, especially because the collegiate system enforces this close-knit bubble," he said.

"It did take me a while to find my place. I was really fortunate to have my college and my friends who made me feel at home."

Cavanagh joined an advisory board at his college to represent working class and LGBTQ+ students and also joined the Durham Union for its speakers and networking opportunities.

Meanwhile, upReach helped him secure an internship at Nationwide during his first summer.

Also supported by the Patchwork Foundation, which encourages young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to participate in democracy, he moved to London on Saturday for a summer civil service internship at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

He advised other working class students to have "self-belief".

Being shortlisted for the Government and Public Sector Award "means so much to me", he said.

"I think it just shows how far I've come."

The Student Social Mobility Awards are organised by upReach, a social mobility charity which helps students access and sustain graduate jobs.

The awards showcase the achievements of undergraduates from lower socio-economic backgrounds from across the UK.

There are about eight categories for students, and there have been more than 1,800 nominations since the award's inception in 2018.

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