Settle a private v state argument for me?

In the same way they take much higher proportions of grammar school kids.

It'd really be quite bizarre if they didn't take higher proportions of GS and also selective private school kids. They've been preselected for at least some academic ability so of course more of them are likely to have the ability for a tough academic uni course. The difference now is that unis are trying to ensure that the playing field is made a bit less unequal across the board, that it's not so much "unto them that have, more will be given" in terms of educational opportunities, and trying to dispel the pernicious 'people like us' attitudes.

minimal support for personal statements

What 'support' is needed though? There's guidance online, and it's a personal statement. The only real advice DDs (excellent state) school gave was to describe why they're passionate about the subject/what it may lead to without using the word 'passionate'.

They are looking for unicorns, applicants need something that’s sets them apart. I know someone with a daughter at Cambridge. She comes from a state comprehensive but she self taught herself an A level course as it wasn’t offered by her school and she got an A for the exam. This impressed them with her attitude as well as ability. Get something thing that sets them apart from their peers and it’s much easier.

From my limited experience of state (two sixth forms, one significantly better in terms of results than the other). The thing which seemed to be missing was good quality support to get into university: no guidance on subjects, minimal support for personal statements.

There was also a lack of aspiration combined with a slightly bizarre inverted snobbery. Students were expected to aim for the local (mainly vocational) university or Oxford/Cambridge. Nothing in between was discussed.

Private schools seem to offer a lot more support and have far greater input into uni applications. They also seem to offer a lot more aspirational teaching. Our local sixth form mainly taught to the grades necessary for the local uni.

Surely it’s not a question of “fooling admissions” - because they will see where they did GCSEs; more fooling the press/government? Oxford and Cambridge have been historically criticised for not taking enough state school pupils. So if people swap to state for A-Level Oxbridge can take the students who they feel are the best and then say “we are taking more stage school students”. In the same way they take much higher proportions of grammar school kids.

Of course they’ll know. But at the same time, they’re under pressure to fill quotas so they may not care.

Yes it’s anecdotal. Also incoherent - it’s possible your relative is both gifted and has mental health issues or perhaps some kind of neurodiversity that merits the treatment she is getting from her state school. And if she needs additional support why shouldn’t she receive it? Many many students are privately educated precisely because their parents want them to have the kind of pastoral and other support that is often lacking in state schools. A much higher percentage of privately educated students get extra time in exams.

But anyway countering a generalisation with a different but equally flawed generalisation doesn’t really make much sense. It’s all a lot more nuanced than that.

Amidlifecrisis - I was countering the equally ridiculous assertion that 'private school pupils are all spoonfed' which is trotted out all the time on MN.

It may well be true for small private schools where the USP is a 'nurturing environment' or similar. But it's not true in large selective independents - quite the opposite in fact. These schools are tough environments (some may say brutal).

Anecdotal I know, but a relative is currently at a good comp and is told constantly that she is 'gifted' because she's capable of all 8s / 9s without too much effort. She also enabled by admiring teachers to get away with all kinds of behaviour because of this 'giftedness' eg. she refused to go in to do a mock exam recently because she couldn't get her hair to go right in the morning. She can wear her own version of the uniform because she claimed this was affecting her 'mental health.' This kind if thing all the time. If she was at a very selective grammar or independent where she was more or less average, I doubt she'd be doing any of this because the school wouldn't be pandering to it. Nor would she be told she's gifted all the time, which I don't think is always very helpful because at uni they won't be making special arrangements.

There’s 2 points at which universities could be discriminatory about state vs private.

the first is contextual offers (or in the case of places with standard offers a contextual view on your grades/predictions). If you go private to gcse then really poor state for a levels your GCSEs will be judged in the context of your private school - so someone who got 8 9s at the state school will be much more likely to be looked on favourably in the assessment process than someone who came in with the same grades from private.

this is absolutely how it should be - did you do better than your peers in the same educational environment. You can’t game this part to make up for not actually being good enough.

the issue comes when it comes to how can the unis make their state school percentages look better - that’s where moving from private to equally good state (grammar/college) does carry an advantage even if your grades/predictions don’t change… you are much more likely to get that offer if you can be labelled as a state pupil than private. (There was a telegraph article quoted above with these stats).

this is wrong - 2 identical candidates should not be judged based on whether it gets the state percentage up or not.

and fwiw I’d much rather the stats were grouped as “private and hugely selective state” vs “non selective “…that would be much more meaningful… filling universities with state pupils who have had the equivalent of private education throughout or parents who can afford to buy near the best schools does very little for social mobility.

We are looking at going the other way with DD as in our city, not all schools (including DD's) have sixth forms. We have looked at one of the private schools, as she'd have to go somewhere to do A-levels and the local FE college doesn't have a great rep.

I went to a sixth form college (for the same reason) and we had quite a lot of kids who left the (fairly average) private school in the town to come to the sixth form college for A-levels. As others have said, it offered a wide range of subjects with teachers who only taught there, so specialised in A-levels. About 15 of our cohort went to Oxbridge, but I think all of those were state educated throughout. This was in the mid 90s.

The Unis know, of course they do. But they don't care. They just want to show that their stats reflect they r taking more state school educated kids. 6th form only will do for the stats...

I went to have a look but they are currently "reviewing" it. So maybe it will be less ridiculous for next year.

My DC go to a fairly bog standard comprehensive. For example, their GCSE results are below the national average. No one from there gets contextual offers unless they hit other indicators.

I don’t know, sounds like your DC has quite a blinkered view or oddly unrepresentative experience if he thinks that the state school cohort are the only ones expecting special treatment at university.

Theres a real mix of students at Oxbridge and if some struggle more than others it’s highly unlikely to be because of where they were educated. I’m sure your DS knows nothing about what is going on in their personal lives but the fact he’s assumed it’s because they think they’re something special doesn’t really reflect well on him.

Not if they go to bristol they don't. There contextual offer list is ridiculous

Several people joined my state school 6th form from private schools. The school generally got better results at a level than gcse, partially because half the students had left. Also, due to size differences it offered a broader range of a levels compared to the private school/

I did some research on uni admission for a national charity 15 years ago.

It was the case even then that both Oxford and Cambridge compared the individuals’s GCSE and A level results against the average for the institution attended. So if you got say 3A stars, 3As and 3Bs from poorly performing comp where the average was a handful of Cs you’d be highly regarded, whereas the same results from a top private school would probably mean you wouldn’t even be interviewed.

The suggestion that you can “trick” admissions teams at Oxbridge is ridiculous.

What you're talking about here contextual offers which is where some students from disadvantaged backgrounds and/or going to schools with historically poor results or very poor record of student moving into higher education are getting (slightly) lower offers.

Not children getting advantaged just because they go to any state school. The student referenced in the OP will not see any difference to the way they are treated if they move to a highly regarded state sixth form.

This MN chant that 'private school pupils are spoonfed' is quite disingenuous in the majority of cases. I would argue that the opposite is true.

It may well be. However, if in the specific case the op knows about where the state sixth form teacher is encountering kids from privates who struggle, that suggests that there are some private schools in her area where this does apply.

Can’t resist commenting on this… DH’s employer has moved to ‘school/university blind’ recruitment.

The result of this change is that far more candidates are gettings job there who went to Oxbridge or private school. Because if employers don’t positively discriminate, those candidates are better at passing a tough selection process than people who haven’t been through that type of fast-paced high standard education.

This MN chant that 'private school pupils are spoonfed' is quite disingenuous in the majority of cases. I would argue that the opposite is true. Pupils in large super-competitive schools such as the very academic London independents (or those elsewhere in the U.K.), like those in the super-selective grammars, are well used to competition. They are used to high-expectations and standards as the norm. They are more than used to not being regarded as outstanding or special and they expect teachers to have no truck with under-performance, 'specialness' or excuses. The shift to high-performing unis is not a shock for such students, it's just more of the same trajectory. The pace is normal for them. They are very used to being around other students more able and confident than them. I'm sorry to say it's the ones who have always been they 'big fish in small ponds' eg. constantly being told they were 'gifted' or 'beyond expectations' in non-selective schools who tend to struggle.

I don't know about boarding schools particularly but, say what you like, those kids can hardly be accused of being 'spoon fed.' They've been practically living on their own since 13 or 11 - maybe even 7! That's a whole other level of resilience. Of course they are less likely to struggle at uni (socially, academically or organisationally) - it's just more if the same.

On top of this, there are international students from all over the world who have to manage to adapt to a whole new country. Again, a whole other level of resilience.

Imposter syndrome can be a real thing and it's generally this that causes students to struggle. This can be exacerbated by the tendency in the U.K. state system to overly pander to their 'top' students because when you're used to identifying as 'the best' on a cohort, the shift to being average can be hard for them to come to terms with. In DC experience, nearly all the ones who have needed counselling, essay extensions or other support strategies ('spoon feeding' if you want to call it that) in his college would fit this description and have struggled with the expectations and 'norms' of a more competitive uni environment.

They do positively discriminate in favour of state school children. I was at a very rough state school, and Cambridge was clear to me that they were giving me a low grades offer to get in (CCC instead of the AAA grades they would have required from a private school candidate) because they were, to use their words, “positively discriminating in favour of applicants from your type of school.” They did it then and they do it now.

That said, I find the obsession with Oxbridge hilarious, I didn’t enjoy it and wish I’d gone elsewhere. Far too much stress and overwork for a degree and career that could have easily been achieved by attending a more fun university.

Having been to a shit secondary school myself, I’m now a huge fan of private education. It’s insane to me that any parent would contemplate deliberately moving their child from private school to a state school with (to quote the poster above) violence or drug problems. If a private school kid had turned up at my secondary for sixth form, they’d have got beaten up. 👀

As to your question OP, I haven’t a clue, but I do know that in our area over the last few years the highly academic selective private schools are not seeing a drop in Oxbridge offers, but the nonselective private schools are seeing a drop.

YANBU, she's being idiotic to try to game the system now it's a bit less favourable to kids who've been privately schooled. (They're not being discriminated against!)

However
Friend of a friend teaches at this 6th form and says that the majority of private pupils who go there struggle with working independently, they’re used to being spoon fed.

If that's the case then that would be a good reason for your friend to send her kids there - so they can get over any reliance on spoon feeding before uni. It rather suggests your local private schools aren't great if that's what they're doing.

There is little incentive for the local state schools to set up their own sixth forms and they are likely to remain 11-16 - if you're a headteacher in south Cambridge there's not much point setting up a sixth form to compete with Hills Road, for example

There are some local (state school) sixth forms there all the same. Some students just prefer smaller.