Northern even in the north: Experiencing the North-South divide at university

“Oh, but that’s like, even further north than here!” was practically the catchphrase of my Freshers’ Week in Manchester, when I told people I come from a town called Whitley Bay, near Newcastle. The idea that simply being from the North might be surprising is perhaps odd (in Manchester, of all places), but it’s one that seems to be very prevalent.

And, it by no means only applies to Manchester. My younger sibling recently went to the University of Nottingham, and within the first two days I got a text telling me that every single one of their flatmates is from Surrey.  This is how university is all-too-often experienced by students from the North. At Durham University, for example, where just 7.8% of graduates actually come from the North-East, northern students described facing toxic attitudes on account of being from the North.

Despite possible appearances, this article is not setting out to be a rant against Southerners at university. One of my favourite things about university is meeting people from all over the country, and, indeed, from all over the world. But sometimes the feeling of pleasant surprise upon hearing another northern accent is just tiring. Midway through a conversation being interrupted by “say cookbook, say bookshelf, say water, say grass”, is exhausting; I don’t see why the way I speak is so funny.

Sometimes the jokes, and the comments, are quite good. Some of my friends have a habit of singing songs from Billy Elliot at me, and that gets me every time. But getting called “Geordie scum” by a stranger on a night out? Less funny. And these examples come from my own life, as someone without a particularly strong regional accent. A friend of mine from Halifax (just a one hour drive from Manchester) told me he struggles even to make himself understood when he speaks. His accent is by no means incomprehensible – but people don’t try to understand, instead relying on him to sound, essentially, less Northern.

Sometimes the jokes, and the comments, are quite good. Some of my friends have a habit of singing songs from Billy Elliot at me, and that gets me every time. But getting called “Geordie scum” by a stranger on a night out?

The effect of all this is ending up feeling like an outsider – which, in Manchester, firmly on the northern side of most people’s idea of the line between north and south, feels ridiculous. Higher Education seems to encapsulate the wider problem of the north-south divide, as a sort of snapshot of the unevenness that still exists in this country. Having my accent mimicked and joked about reminds me that I will have to change the way I speak before many employers even consider me. Being told jokes about how “work-shy” Northerners are (yes, this has really happened!) reminds me that I have had to leave my city for education and work. 

This attitude is all the more re-enforced by the London-centrism of the governing party. At the recent Conservative Party Conference, Rishi Sunak confirmed that Manchester will not be included on the new HS2 rail link. This new transport link is supposed to connect to the North – if the North doesn’t even include Manchester, what does it include? Even this definition of the North doesn’t extend much beyond Leeds. Growing up in Newcastle means listening to policy debates on what to do about ‘the North’ and knowing that whatever they decide won’t affect you. So much of the North is entirely forgotten, even in discussions of North versus South inequality. 

Again, I’m not trying to claim that the north-south divide is the be-all and end-all. Of course poverty and inequality exist in the South. None of the problems I’ve mentioned are by any means specific to the North. But when people claim that the difference between the North and the South is not important, they’re wrong. The north-south divide exacerbates other sources of inequality; a 2018 report showed that a child from a low income family in London is three times more likely to go to university than a child from Hartlepool. 

Children from London and the South-East are a massive 57% more likely to go to university than children from the North. This can be traced back to funding: in terms of pounds of funding per pupil, it was found on average that £900 less was allocated per pupil at a northern primary school versus those in London, and at the secondary level this rose further, to £1,200. 

The UK Government website states that the government allocated money for all state-funded schools using a formula that ensures funding is fair; why, then did The Child of the North All-Party Parliamentary group (APPG) find in 2023 that on average pupils in London receive 9.7% more funding than those in the North? How has the gulf in university attendance figures become so gaping? The APPG also found inequalities in other factors that influence educational performance, stating that children in the North have higher school absences, including physical and mental health absences, and that schools in the North support much higher numbers of children in poverty, vulnerable children, children who have suffered neglect or abuse, and children in local authority care. These issues have been further exacerbated by the pandemic.

It is therefore abundantly clear why the inequalities present in the university system are so prevalent. And the more prestigious the university, the worse this problem becomes. In 2011, the BBC found that at Bristol, Cambridge, Imperial, King’s College, Oxford, Southampton and Warwick, students from outside London and the South East are the lesser group, despite making up about 75% of the population at large. Surely, with these kinds of statistics, which have been labelled “shocking, but unfortunately unsurprising” by MPs and religious leaders, more frameworks should be put in place to protect and help vulnerable children in the north of England?

Being at university as a Northerner is like watching the cycle continue, and it is so frustrating. Northerners should not have to feel like the odd ones out at universities, especially at universities in northern cities. The mocking of northern students, which too often extends into bullying, epitomises the inequalities that keep Northerners a minority in higher education. Issues of funding and unequal access to education, with knock-on effects for employment and social mobility, are made blatantly clear by spending any time at all in a modern British university. Something has to change, or the gaps in this country will become harder and harder to bridge. The North has to be considered in policy discussions. As the Rt Revd Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham, has said, “no child’s chances in life should be curtailed by their postcode.”