Encouraging Social Mobility for Students in the North East: JCR Access and Outreach Rep on his Free Mentorship Programme

In 2025, JCR Access and Outreach Rep Lennon Airey co-founded a free mentorship organisation for students in the North East. Below he shares his motivations for starting StateElevate, the organisation’s successes so far, and his hopes for the future. 

Last year, my best friend and I co-founded StateElevate, a charity that supports state-school students from the North East of England with their applications to top universities across the country. Since starting out in September 2025, we have supported over 200 students, encouraging them to harness their skills and aspirations, and transforming ambition into opportunity. 

It has been a year of growth for StateElevate. At the start of the project, we had 50 volunteer undergraduate mentors and were mentoring 65 students from four schools across the North East, free of charge. Ten of these students received offers from Oxford and Cambridge,some of them coming from schools that had never sent students to either university before. We were incredibly proud of these numbers, and it was especially satisfying to see the joy in the students whom we had mentored. Their growth and eventual successes were the reason we created StateElevate in the first place.

This year, 150 students from 10 schools will be partnered with one of our 100 undergraduate mentors in a range of subjects. Broken down, that is 40 applications to Oxford and Cambridge, 29 applications for Durham, 14 applications to Kings College London, 9 to Imperial College London and numerous others for the most competitive universities. A record 45 students will be applying for medicine or dentistry, a statistic that no doubt makes our medicine lead, Callum Kendray, question his decision to get involved with us! We will provide each mentee with consistent personal statement feedback, collaborative zoom calls, as well as admissions test funding and support. 

This support, however, isn't just about academics. It is about investing time into students, with no financial cost. It is about building connections between students in the North East of England and high-achieving professionals and undergraduate students. It is about instilling students with confidence and making sure that the structural confidence barrier is broken for good. In short, Grace and I turned our own challenges in applying for top universities into StateElevate, wanting to ensure that success is determined by aspiration and ambition, not background. 

A 2.5%acceptance rate simply isn’t good enough for a region with the heritage, pride and passion of the North East, nor is a 2.2%application rate. This needs to change, and I hope that StateElevate can play a small part in transforming the mindset of students so that they believe in their capabilities and talent and aspire to fulfil their full potential. 

Alongside our mentorship programme, in the past year Grace and I have attended conferences, open days and spoken to countless audiences, spreading our message that where a student comes from should never determine their destination. It was great to communicate with parents, students and teachers alike, bringing together a holistic network of people for our mentees. Our biggest achievement was being featured on ITV Tyne Tees, the Sunderland Echo and the Northern Echo, which allowed us to communicate our vision to a broader audience in the North East. 

As the mentorship process got underway, I hosted events with James Langan, a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, and Sir Laurie Bristow, former British Ambassador to Russia and Afghanistan, in a series of online webinars for both mentors and students. Both guests spoke about imposter syndrome and their journeys into national security careers from modest upbringings. 

At the same time, we launched a GoFundMe and raised a significant amount of money from local North East businesses and senior professionals in the social mobility space. Paul Leamy in particular, a senior partner at Temple Bright LLP, donated a ringfenced sum of money to be given specifically to Law students, which has been reinvested through our new Leamy Grant, now overseen by Ella Conduit. 

Lewis Atkinson MP and Lennon Airey

Hilary Term saw lots of work done to lay the foundations for our subsequent expansion. Between the 50 zoom calls with schools and students, liaising with our mentors, turning our donations into meaningful support for next year’s intake and data protection and safeguarding strategies, it was a challenging time for both Grace and I as we balanced our university workloads with growing StateElevate. 

Yet, in addition to our expansion and growth, I lobbied Lewis Atkinson, MP for Sunderland Central, to give StateElevate a mention in Parliament, and we have meetings scheduled with the Secretary of State for Education, alongside leading figures in the North East Combined Authority, including Mayor Kim McGuinness. 

We have also launched our ‘Past the Postcode’ podcast, a series of interviews with individuals in the social mobility space, including Sam MacAlister and Sir Ernest Ryder. Our upcoming events will feature speakers including Sammy Wright, Fiona Hill, David Blunkett and Cherie Blair. These episodes can be found on Spotify and are a deep dive into the journeys of people who overcame adversity to fulfil their aspirations. 

Amidst all of these developments, I have never lost sight of why I started StateElevate and who I am personally fighting for: working-class, state-school students in the North East of England who, despite their talents, don’t get enough attention in our current education system. 

When I came to Oxford, I had no idea that I would start my own organisation, but I am glad that I have. The difference it makes to so many students make all the late nights and extra workload worth it.

In my hust to become Access and Outreach Representative on the JCR committee, I made it clear that access and outreach must be for everyone, not in target or in focus, but in participation. Perhaps my proudest achievement of StateElevate is that more than two-thirds of our mentors come from private schools, testament to the importance of bringing everyone together on a shared mission to ensure that success is determined by ambition and skill, not background.

As the mentorship process begins, we are already looking ahead and hope to double our capacity for next year.  We are always interested in hearing from undergraduates about our programmes. When the time comes next year, it would be amazing to see more undergraduates volunteering with us so we can finally end the link between where a student comes from and what they can go on to achieve.

When Lennon was in Year 12, he took part in OxNet, Pembroke’s Access and Outreach programme. “It changed my mindset on Oxford altogether,” he shared. “I am extremely keen to pay back those who believed in my potential during my journey to Oxford through extending the ladder to students in the North East.”