This weeks The Life Scientific interview on Radio 4 by Jim Al-Khalili focused on the human genome project. The interviewee was Ewan Birney who spoke about his work on deciphering the genome and the race to work out the right number of genes that make us human. Ewan explained why he started a sweepstake to get fellow scientists to estimate the final number and why their guesses were wildly wrong. It was a fascinating programme and I would certainly recommend it, one fascinating fact was that there are more genes in an onion than a human being. However my reflection here is on a brief detail in the story of Ewan who now aged 40 has already experienced an amazing life.

In describing his early years Ewan explained that when he left school as the top of the year in Biology he was offered an amazing chance which had a profound effect on him. One of the fathers of the human genome project, James Watson was a regular visitor to his school and each year invited the boy (it is an all boys school) who came top in Biology to live with him and his wife in America for a year, working with him and participating in the research. This prize is one that many Biologists in the UK would love to compete for and it is fantastic that James Watson has so much confidence in our nations ability to develop scientific minds that it is here that he comes each year. However the school in question is one that already offers its students a number of life chances that few other schools can compete with, needless to say it is a private school and one that our PM and many members of his cabinet are very familiar with.

It is vital that we have an education service that works for all of our children and ensures that we can provide the best possible chances for both boys and girls, based on who they are, not which school they attend. We should not be frightened of providing opportunities  for those who could achieve great things in many different fields. The prize that James Watson offers is of course incredibly precious and it would be hard to match it, but many of us could be encouraged to do what we can to mentor young people in a range of ways. I much prefer the James Watson approach to that of Alan Sugar with his very public rejection of those who don’t meet his standards on reflection. Perhaps in the light of the challenges faced last week by James Caan, the Governments social mobility tsar, he could focus on something positive we could do to help the next generation and take his inspiration from James Watson, rather than being too focused on what parents who send their children to such schools might do to those who don’t come top in Biology! Maybe those students planning to pursue a career in politics could be mentored by people such as my friend Andy Winter in his work with BHT or David Standing in his work with Sussex Central YMCA. That might lead to a very different set of policies in due course.