U N I VE R S ITY OF WE ST LON DON
We’ve given them a stepping stone to something they never dreamed of SPOTLIGHT ON PETER JOHN AND UNIVERSITY OF WEST LONDON
THE UNIVERSITY OF WEST LONDON IS ONE OF THE UK HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR’S LEADING SOCIAL MOBILITY DRIVERS. HERE VICE CHANCELLOR PETER JOHN SHARES HIS OWN CAREER STORY THAT HAS HELPED TO SHAPE HIS APPROACH TODAY.
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Q
// What was your aim when you were growing up in Wales? Did you ever expect that you’d end up being a vice chancellor?
A
// Absolutely not. I came from a very poor family in south Wales. We lived in a prefab, we didn’t have a house and I had a very, very seriously ill brother. He was three years older than me and died when he was eight. Literacy wasn’t the big thing in our family, it was just survival and, because he was dying, they had to bring a teacher into the house under the 1945 Education Act. So I sat on the table when he was being taught to read and I learned to read by the time I was three. Then I was pushed off to nursery because we couldn’t look after a dying child at home, and from that I got the 11
plus, [went to] Grammar School, and so on. My main aim at that age was just to carry on as best I could, because all the attention was put on my brother every minute of the day, because he could die quite easily. So I was left to do with things on my own, I suppose.
Q// Do you feel like this made you somebody who was self-reliant, because you’d always had to make sure you took your own decisions? A//Of course. In South Wales at the time, it was a pretty dark period back in the 50s and 60s, and I was made self-reliant, and I had no expectations on me to exceed, which was a good thing. [There were] no expectations at all because I was the only one that had ever done anything and was
