The East End sixth formers winning places at Ivy League universities

How does a state sixth form college in inner city London manage to get its pupils accepted at Princeton, Harvard and other top US universities, all on full scholarships? Nicola Woolcock meets its inspirational head – and the students for whom Oxbridge was just not enough

From left: 18-year-old pupils Xuan Nguyen and Umar Azad, both heading to Harvard, Catherine Lowe, who will attend MIT, and Lennox Keeble, who is going to Princeton, with, centre, head teacher Mouhssin Ismail
From left: 18-year-old pupils Xuan Nguyen and Umar Azad, both heading to Harvard, Catherine Lowe, who will attend MIT, and Lennox Keeble, who is going to Princeton, with, centre, head teacher Mouhssin Ismail
JUDE EDGINTON
Nicola Woolcock
The Times

Mouhssin Ismail was used to working long hours as a City lawyer, so when he gave up his job to become a teacher, he thought little of turning up before 7am to open his school.

Except there was always a teenager loitering outside the locked gate, patiently waiting to start his studies. So he started coming in earlier. It made no difference. For two years, the 41-year-old head teacher tried and failed to be the first to arrive at Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre, a selective state school in a deprived part of London.

Eventually, he accepted that this pupil – Lennox Keeble – was always going to beat him. Come September, Keeble will no longer be there and Ismail will alone make the early