The Journey This Far

Daniel Ogoloma is a postgraduate student at Harris Manchester College.

I’d resisted tweeting for 4 days, six hours and 27 minutes. It was agony. I wanted to tell everyone. Every person I had ever known. Everyone I met.

This was earth-shattering news and my journey in life was about to change completely. I’d just been given a set of keys to help shape the world: and if I get it right, the new future will not just be for me, but for a whole generation.

14th January 2020, I was offered an unconditional offer to study at Oxford University. Apart from my unbridled excitement and pride at making it to one of the world’s most revered, elite, powerful centres of reason, inquiry and philosophical openness, you might ask, why does this matter so much?

It matters so much because getting there has been like getting through the eye of the needle: and as the old proverb illustrated, it has huge ramifications for all of us.

So, I have the privilege of joining the hall of fame of those who have studied at oxford - 28 British prime ministers (More conservative), 30 international leaders, 55 Nobel prize winners, and 120 Olympic medal winners.

But much more importantly, so might lots of other students, currently targeted in the contentious diversity policy of many universities in the UK. And, that new diverse intake could precedent a new “pioneer generation” of bright young things who were never in the past able to grasp the opportunity of such an elite education.

Diversity becomes more and more important to future economic success and is no longer a discussion about fairness. The world has become a much greater more diverse place and universities are at the cutting edge of that new era. Not only can the universities develop their own brands and power by harnessing real cognitive diversity, but they can be a seed for a stronger, more robust society and help it adapt, grow and dare I believe it - nations and societies benefit too.

But we are on the starting blocks. Bright State educated children fare a little better now, but still account for only 40% of admissions. And only one in 10 students actually at Oxford identify themselves as working class.

As we all wrestle with the rights and wrongs of diversity and inclusion policies in education, at work and in society at large, there are a few of us who are determined to show why the UKs future depends on it.

For the past five years, I have worked and worked and worked to change the lives of hundreds of Londoners. I’d never call myself a “poster boy” but the voluntary work and paid roles I’ve had all share one thing in common: I spent time mentoring, mobilising and propelling young people - mainly in Brixton and Croydon - to seize opportunities and to help them better their lives. Not many kids living in these areas get to dream about being truly included in modern Britain. Levelling up isn’t going to happen that easily, Mr Khan.

But hope is a powerful thing and maybe that’s why over 70,000 people checked out my tweet @dcogoloma. Maybe that is why I haven’t – yet – had a single person respond in any crass negative or racist way?

Bytheway,mypersonalstoryisnotaragstorichesstory. Yes,I’veearned some decent money, driven nice cars, and always dine at nice restaurants in London. But I’ve happily swapped all of that for a bicycle and the great Arlosh canteen.

My story is a “New generation” story. A generation that’s full of bright, hopeful and ambitious talent that lacks opportunities - until now - to display them.
This is as much about providing opportunity for bright, black kids as it is northerners as it is state school children, as it is any child not born to fit into the usual golden straitjacket. Encouraging diversity is all well and good, being practical is better.

Maybe Dominic Cummings, despite some hiccoughs, was the Pied Piper who can switch the superbright ‘misfits’ into being superbright pioneers?
I spent a fair bit of time in my youth surrounded by superbright misfits who didn’t, and couldn’t squeeze themselves into the mould. And too many of them chose to be clever in gangland and the criminal world, too many excluded from society start to undermine it.

My childhood way out was always reading. Read and you will learn. Learn and be bright, and you might stand a chance. All that time absorbed in the words of today’s and yesterday’s great names gave me a kind of mission. That I could show the world that I could make it too, and that I could also help others to do exactly that.

So, picture me, at age 12, with burning hope and ambition and little means of realising any of it. Was education the key? I did not know because no one went to university in the community. One or two I did know about, amounted to anything but inspiring. I did vow though, if I was going to go to university that it would be the best.

At first, I had no role models. I also followed the news avidly and trawled through the biographies of well-known successful people.

“if they can do it, why not me?” I’d think.

I’m the fifth child of ambitious Nigerian parents. My mum and dad split up when I was 9 and a childminder alongside my brother and sisters pretty much brought me up. My mother was serving in the home office travelling and working very hard abroad for nearly all of my youth. She wanted the best for me, of course, but the practicalities were real – she had to work incessantly to keep us going.

I also had the backing of teachers and community leaders. They liked my determination, much easier to deal with than the desperation around them. So too, much later, my bosses, who believed in me and helped me, while my mother, so often away, just carried on, determinedly, paying what she could for her kids to flourish against the odds.

It could all have been very different - many of my friends and the kids in my neighbourhood were drifting in and out of gangland and crime. If you were bright on our community there were not many paths to good school qualifications, academic achievements and well-paid jobs. With those options denied, it is much easier and pretty tempting, now more than ever, to get rich and successful another way.

My route was not easy or tempting. But the endless work always paid off. One day, I’d ordered a few new books and the librarian came over to me with them. On the top was the new biography of an American businessman with blonde hair and a burgeoning real estate empire, Donald Trump. I recall The Simpsons had made his cartoon character into the President of America. Very funny. Under it, another self-made man Alan Sugar.

How come they seemed to have everything and I didn’t? Of course, neither of them got to Oxford, but I wasn’t thinking about that as my solution yet. I turned to my homework and I never stopped dreaming.

Despite my faith always being in the books growing up, I found Christ and that changed things for me drastically. However, I always wondered how faith could be mixed with politics, I researched and its always been a heated discussion amongst medieval scholars. But like Jacob Rees Mogg, I agree, the authority of God must always be enthroned above that of the state. In parliament on the 11th November he stated: “The reassurance that those of us who have faith may be certain of—is that the highest authority is unquestionably immortal, invisible and only wise, and even outside the control of the House of Commons”.

I might be wrong in thinking that the success of the next generation is all about how we educate them...but I think, actually, I hope, that my Oxford tutors who interviewed me, recognised how my driving ambition and determination to understand humans, culture and life chances could be channelled in that capacity.

My name is Daniel Ogoloma and with my absolute determination and ambition, I hope I prove I am worth it in this world. If I can play my small part in a future that understands more about different cultures and beliefs, I will have made more than my own dreams come true.