State/private school university admissions

Ah, just seen its a zombie thread. What a pain!

@PatienceVirtue I've only skim read the thread, so somebody may have already made this point, but Oxbridge don't give contextual offers. They do use contextual data to help decide who to give offers to, but all the offers will be the same - a students at comp x will need to get the same grades as a student at private y. (This is different to some other universities, which will offer lower grade targets to students from certain backgrounds).

Secondly, each university may have their official targets set out on their websites. Oxford's are here and say nothing about state/private: www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-statistics/undergraduate/additional-info/access-agreement-target-categories

However, individual admissions tutors are likely to have their own systems and biases that aren't published. The Higher Education forum on Mumsnet sometimes has posts from former admissions tutors giving insight into this.

AHH why would you resurrect a zombie thread instead of starting you're own??? @Newtothismumsworld

The private to Camden route is as old as time. The hint is in the name, contextual the context of the school matters, not whether their state or independent.

Hello there ,,my daughter got an offer from Camden School for Girls .. but she cannot decide which either CSG or North Bridge House which is a private school and pretty similar ranking ……
can anyone advise me ? Who knows about CSG ? NBH??

Politician in 'my policy is fab' shocker! Honestly, Xenia, when have you ever given anyone from the Labour party any credence!

Of course more children from poorer backgrounds are going to university - approx 50% of young people now go to HE, rather than the 15% from a few decades ago that you mention. Many of these are the institutions that you describe as 'particularly poor' up thread, so make of that what you will.

Also, when loans were brought in,HE was still divided along university/polytechnics lines - so even if admission numbers didn't change, of course more young people go to university!

Young people will need to earn over £25k per year if they want to be able to actually live in London in particular. I'm happy to disagree with you about the benefits of entering adult life with a huge debt (fact check - I think it's crap).

Everything in society is 'unfair'. Society has become increasingly 'unfair' in recent decades as the wealth differentials between people increase, and the basics of life in a developed country ie reasonable housing are out of the reach of so many people.

Contextual offers are an attempt to reduce some of the barriers to entering HE, especially in sought after institutions.

I think the thing that I have the most problem with in all this is people who have multiple advantages in life complaining about things being 'unfair' when there is any attempt made to reduce the effects of that advantage, even if the effects are minimal and don't particularly impact on them.

Thehorse, I heard the Labour politician who brought in student loans on that issue on radio 4 recently and he said despite what people say that more not fewer children from from less well off backgrounds are getting in now there are loans. That is the opposite of what is being said on the thread so may be someone can go to check the data on it.

in theory it should not put people off -you get about £8k loan if you are from a poor background plus fees and only £4k loan - not enough for rent -if your parents are better off even if your parents contribute not a penny so in a sense more of those less well off can go than even in the days of full grants when only 15%of people got to go at all. Given you never pay a penny back unless you earn over £25k which any student can check in about 2 minutes it perhaps ought not to be off putting particularly for those who get these full loans which I think ar up to £11k a year in London for your maintenance alone.

I don't have a major beef with the current system but I can see unfairness creeping into it if we are not careful and as I say my 5 children got in where they were happy (one - my older son got his place in clearing at Reading as he missed his grades (yes in private education as people do every year from state and private schools ) for Exeter).

I looked at Dame Alice Owen school on Bristol's list (state school) and it is not disadvantaged - not bottom 40% www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/study/undergraduate/documents/English-aspiring-state-schools-2020-21-cycle.pdf which seems fair enough.

*Universities should be able to make contextual offers based on things that are known to be structural disadvantages ie being poor, being female, being in the care system, having a learning disability,

@XelaM I thought there was a study published in December 2018 that 8 schools dominate Oxbridge (all independent schools)

Oxford makes admissions statistics by school publicly available, so you can look schools up and see how many Oxford applicants they had and how many received offers.
The offer rate for applicants from these schools is similar to, and in several cases lower than, that for a number of selective state schools. Some independent schools, like Eton, have huge sixth forms and are very selective in the first place. The offer rate for Adams' Grammar School (state) was 44%, for example, while that for Eton was 25%. But Eton had a lot more applicants.

@crosspelican there were a couple of misunderstandings in your comment - sorry, don't want to nitpick but these might matter to some :

(how many state schools offer Philosophy, Politics or Economics?).

None of those is a 'facilitating subject' and you don't need to have studied any of them to apply. It wouldn't be an advantage to have studied them. The entrance test is for aptitude, not knowledge.
The PPE course assumes you have not studied them before. In fact, you're probably more likely to find philosophy on offer at A-level at a state sixth form than a private one as the private schools do focus more on traditional subjects.

a state school is less likely to offer Latin and Greek at A Level (whereas I bet nearly all independents do), and you need top marks in at least Latin OR Greek to apply.

No you don't. Oxford offers a Classics entry route specifically for people who've studied neither one. It was introduced to widen access and is strongly promoted. My old college has recently appointed a member of staff specifically to encourage applicants for Classics from state schools via this route.

@thehorseandhisboy

Well it seems than that we agree.

*strawberries8 the situation can't be 'solved' per se.

The HE system has become much LESS meritocratic with the introduction of tuition fees and cutting of maintenance grants.

Access to selective education has always been based on income and even more so since the partial nature of the 11+.

Universities should be able to make contextual offers based on things that are known to be structural disadvantages ie being poor, being female, being in the care system, having a learning disability, having English as an additional language etc etc.

I was disagreeing with Xenia's viewpoint that a child who is privately educated but beaten every night is structurally disadvantaged.

@thehorseandhisboy I really do not see how you think the problem can be solved. Being in care, a young carer, from a low income family etc. are things which can actually be verified and checked and so this is a reasonable basis for contextual offers.

Do you believe universities should ask whether students have been (abused by their parents/ neglected / had minimal time with their parents as their parents were working) and if the student says yes, give them a contextual offer?

I think you can easily see how a system like that could be abused. It just wouldn’t be viable to base contextual offers on things like that which would not be able to be proved or verified at all.

However a lot of people are focusing on offers and not actual university places. There are many situations in which a student misses their grade on results day and can contact the university and tell them about anything going on during their exams/ study period which may have effected their results and the university can consider accepting them anyway.

I honestly believe that this is the only feasible way to deal with issues that @Xenia was talking about.

If I’m being honest I personally do not care at all if less middle class student people go to private schools because their parents don’t like the fact that the school gives generous bursaries to disadvantaged students.

strawberries quite.

I don't think those experiences are desirable at all (having lived through both). But somehow when socioeconomic background is included in contextual data, this somehow gets seen as 'unfair' to children who don't have the same disadvantages but might have abusive but rich parents aka Xenia's worldview.

@Abraid2 what I said still stands in my opinion. Of course there are going to be a middle ground who struggle to pay private school fees but they can easily solve that issues by sending their children to state school.

Why should middle class people who want to send their children to private school for an educational advantaged be given contextual offers for university? They are not educationally or economically disadvantaged.

And before you say ‘the children have less holidays/cars/electronics because their parents are paying fees’ then we are right back to my initial point - their parents chose to do this and sending them to state school would solve that issue instantly.

Of course they are free to do this. But schools don’t always want to lose the ‘solid’ middle. So they may be wary of offering too many, too generous bursaries. A school made up of extremely rich and below-average-income children with nobody in the middle is a bit of a strange place.

@Abraid2 sending your children to private school is a choice. People who send their children to private school and pay fees know they are subsiding other children’s education just like childless people who pay taxes are subsidising other people’s children’s education.

If they feel it is unfair that children whose families cannot afford fees get bursary’s and (possibly) contextual offers then they are completely free to enrol their children into state school like the large majority of parents in this country do.

@thehorseandhisboy I don’t think it is making these traits ‘desirable’. I think if you ask most people if they would exchange being with their family to being in the care system in order to get a contextual university offer they would obviously refuse.

It’s not making the traits desirable, it is levelling the playing field for those who are in these circumstances.

care leavers are less likely to progress to higher education than non care leavers, contextual offers help to close this gap as it is obviously unfair that people should have less academic opportunities due to family circumstances.

Xenia if all five of your children have got into the university to which they applied, then why on earth are you concerned about whether the children of women who didn't go back to work when their child was a week old have an 'advantage'?

strawberries the point about children receiving bursaries is they come from a low socioeconomic background. This has multiple disadvantages which cannot be compensated for by excellent schooling. Indeed, the bursary is there to try to close the gap, not that it ever can.

It does genuinely upset me when factors like poverty, being in the care system somehow become seen as desirable in the context of securing educational advantage when, in my experience, the reality of both is pretty shit.

Very few children, that should say.

Very children get a large bursary these days. And to be honest the parents who are only just managing fees would object to subsidising other children AND then having theSe other children advantaged when it comes to university applications. Why would they do that? You’d end up with a polarised school: oligarchs and disadvantaged. Nobody in the middle.

I am very much in two minds about those in private schools on bursary’s. in one way, they are there on academic merit and have parents who can’t afford the fees and probably achieved better than their peers paying fees.

However unlike a state school child they are receiving a private education and therefore they shouldn’t be treated as state school kids for university admissions.

IMO there should be an extra box which asks whether a child has a bursary/scholarship for their private school, how much of the fees they have to pay and this could be considered in admissions too.

@PatienceVirtue
Well I can agree with you about the faith schools and grammar schools. It’s something which is again segmented by wealth in that whoever can afford 11+ tuition and to move closer to schools to be in catchment are more likely to get their children in.

But there are definitely many faith schools in perhaps less affluent areas of London that I know op whereby students get a less well rounded education due to religious biases too.