AIBU to feel contextual offers are unfair after my son's results?

It sounds as if neither the school, he nor you prepared him sensibly for this at all. Why on earth would he put an insurance he had no intention of taking up?
What’s the plan if he doesn’t make the grades for next year?
He’s had an extremely privileged education but it sounds as if practical advice of the real world has been lacking within it. Best he learns that now.

Oh dear. Why make the choice to send your child to private school if it was going to set them up for such a life of discrimination? Presumably because you felt it would in fact give your child an advantage in life. Which is does. That’s what is unfair in our society.

Please do some reading about the educational disadvantage gap, OP, and the proportion of those in the highest paid/status jobs who went to private and state schools respectively. I get you are sad your son didn’t get into Oxford. However, your views are breathtakingly myopic.

Except for the ones who went to Edinburgh, like William!

Agreed!

There’s a Trump-esque cadence to both the writing style and inability to process clearly stated facts ….

Let him take a year out, have some fun and mature a bit while reapplying with those grades - this might include thinking a bit more about the course and where his skills lie.

I'm slightly baffled by this being the first rejection he's received? No sports teams, auditions, or anything?

Also, as someone who's daughter has just finished at Oxford, private school students are doing just fine. 93% of students are state educated and 66% of Oxford students are.

You both went to Edinburgh. You have parents who paid for three kids at private school and you work in the Civil Service
. You are the definition of privileged. There are great hugely intelligent people at Durham and other similar ranked unis. And in my experience these students tend to outstrip the Oxbridge lot in the workplace as they have brains and people skills. Realise there are loads of people at Oxbridge who also have both and more but in my experience also a lot of people very narrowly focused on their subject and subject to the exclusion of anything else.
Yes - your son is probably not going to get to hang put with total geniuses at second tier unis but it doesn’t sound like he is that category either.
Also believe unis are wise to the sixth form
switch. Seriously check your privilege.

This is unhinged. Is Oxford even the be all end al anymore? There are so many good universities and Durham being on me of them.

Exactly, spot on.

Also and sorry if I’m slow on the uptake but what relevance are contextual offers anyway? Your son didn’t meet his offer conditions. It’s not like he did but his place was snaffled away by a contextual student

He might have had an offer that required an A star in the subject he got A in. Or didn’t have an offer at all.

I'm an academic. As others have said, a grammar school applicant would be very unlikely to get a contextual offer unless there were multiple other factors at play (eg being care experienced, having done their GSCEs at a much poorer performing school, free school meals). Universities can make whatever offers they like to candidates so yes, your DS's friend may have got in with a lower offer, but it's unlikely to have been a contextual offer.

You may not be millionaires but if you are paying the fees at private school you do not have "normal jobs". You may have "normal" jobs for Edinburgh graduates, but that's quite different - and, indeed, quite different from most students who get contextual offers.

I don't think anyone thinks you went to Oxford.

There must be more valuable ways to spend a year than doing resits for the off chance of getting into Oxford. I hope that’s not a waste of a year.

He doesn’t sound all that clever really, does he?

It’s like Alan Bennett’s The History Boys never existed.

Very obviously her DS either didn’t get an interview or didn’t get an offer - despite going on to achieve 3 A *s. As is the case with many many incredibly able children. Going to Oxbridge isn’t a right you know?

You do realise he might not get an interview / offer this time round? He’d have to do the whole process again. Including any entry test if it’s a subject that requires one.

maybe you’d be better to make him realise that paid for education or not he’s not quite clever enough for Oxford.

OP, Kindly , you are in denial

He will not get into Oxford with resit results. The chances are so remote it is far more likely he will waste a whole year.

I think you all need to unpick why you are all so focussed on Oxford at the expense of other excellent universities.

I think this country likes to discriminate against children whose parents just want the best of the best for their children

Wow.

It sounds like your son has had every opportunity for his A levels along with the motivation to do his best and get to Oxford and yet he hasn’t made the grades. Maybe he just isn’t an A student in this subject. What happens if he doesn’t get the next year either?

As disappointing as this may be for your son. Perhaps he is meant to be on a different path!

Oxbridge do not make EE offers anymore.

They used to do this in the 90s.

I went to Durham, it’s a perfectly fine university and I had an amazing time there. I didn’t apply for Oxbridge despite being the top student at my grammar school because I thought it would be full of stuck-up, entitled private school snobs. This thread has not disabused me of that view.

Contextual offers are perfectly fair. Your son has had every privilege money can buy, so he would have been expected to get the best grades. Sadly in the end he wasn’t quite good enough.

YABU.

My understanding is some top universities don’t accept resits. I’d take careful advice from the university and school.
Grammar schools don’t get contextual offers. My DD’s friend got one on postcode, he lived in a deprived town and commuted by train to the grammar sixth form. But it was where he lived nothing to do with school.
It’s a privilege to have another year paid in school fees to resit.
It’s a gamble as he may not get another offer from the universities he had offers from this year.
Hopefully chance to reflect and grow up a bit. Madness to put an Insurance university he hated.

He doesn't need to resit. He did very well (ok, he didn't get into Oxford) but honestly, so flippin' what? Why are you letting one sodding university dictate the outcome of someone's life?!

He needs to concentrate on his future, and the bigger picture. What does he want to do career wise?