As highlighted in our recent Year in Stories, the barriers to educational opportunity are more challenging than ever. The number of children living in poverty has reached a record 5.2 million (36%), meaning that 1 in 3 children are now below the poverty line. With schools increasingly taking on pastoral duties to support students’ basic needs, less time and fewer resources are available for enrichment activities, including those that broaden students’ aspirations and academic confidence.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given this context, the gap between the most and least advantaged students accessing higher education has widened for the first time since records began. This means that less advantaged students are missing out on the life-changing benefits of higher education, including social mobility, career opportunities, confidence, and specialist skills.
At The Brilliant Club, we are working to close this gap through The Scholars Programme. We have used evaluations of The Scholars Programme to demonstrate its impact on university progression, its positive association with GCSE attainment, and how it improves key skills such as critical thinking, metacognition and independent learning. Now, for the first time, we have evidence demonstrating its long-term impact: increased lifetime earning potential of £160,000 for Scholars Programme students.
Our economic evaluation provides a powerful new perspective on the lasting benefits of the programme, reinforcing the need for students from less advantaged backgrounds to have fair access to the support they need to succeed.
Our evaluation combines external UCAS data, which indicates a higher likelihood of progression to competitive universities for Scholars Programme students, with new TASO research demonstrating the economic uplift associated with graduating from these institutions.
While it has long been known that going to university increases earning potential, research published by TASO in 2024 highlights that the financial benefits are even greater when students graduate from a more competitive university.
Building on these insights, our economic evaluation estimates the programme’s economic benefits by combining our observed progression rates to competitive universities with TASO’s research on graduate earnings from competitive universities.*
To read more about how we reached these findings, you can read our methodology note.
By supporting less advantaged students to progress to competitive universities, The Scholars Programme is diversifying the undergraduate population of these institutions and can now be associated with long-term economic benefits for these students. As we continue to expand, the estimated lifetime earning potential of each group of Scholars Programme graduates progressing to competitive universities is expected to grow. With child poverty statistics painting an increasingly bleak picture, the impact the programme can have on equalising societal imbalances has never been more important.
“Having studied at Oxford opens up many doors – it’s like it equalises everything and disregards any deprivation that you’ve gone through in early life. I’m already getting job offers and I feel like I’m in a position now where I’m in a very privileged spot, which is very different to how it was five years ago.” – Hoa, Brilliant Club Ambassador
It costs £300 for one student to participate in The Scholars Programme, potentially unlocking £160,000 of additional lifetime earnings. This is where you come in. To discuss how you can enable more students to participate, please get in touch.
Now is the time to secure The Scholars Programme for your school or Multi-Academy Trust in the 2025/26 academic year. You can make an enquiry here.
We offer our evaluation expertise to other organisations through Brilliant Consulting. Email us if you’d like to discuss your evaluation needs.
*More competitive university definitions: TASO research uses “The 52 most selective higher education providers in the UK (based on the A level UCAS tariff score of entrants)”. The independent UCAS evaluations use UCAS High Tariff.