Super IB scores vs avg Oxbridge offers - Why?

IB is imprtant for applying to foreign University, I was told. Some students from Whitgif have applied to Harvard ( one offer last year) and other European universities. Whitguft is string on languages so possibly gthis another reason why the applications to Oxbridge are less.

private schooling still confers a significant advantage for getting into Oxbridge.

on the latest available numbers (for Oxford only), private schools get 20-odd percent of AAA at A level (a reasonable proxy for being Oxbridge standard) but 30-odd percent of Oxford places, so despite all the usual squeals of dumbing down, positive discrimination, etc, something in the admissions process still appears to discriminate (narrowly) in favour of private - see www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-statistics/undergraduate-students/current/school-type

and going private obviously improves a student's grades

The 3 Whitgift schools have a disproportionately high number of pupils chosing to stay in London to study - in some cases trying to live at home whilst doing so. A number of those would not have considered moving away to study at Oxbridge regardless of how academically brilliant they are.

It's more complex than just how easy it is to get an A star though. I went to a state school and got straight As. I went to Oxford, and I did perfectly fine. But there's no way I was the best candidate on my course. Not because I wasn't 'clever' or hard working, but because I didn't have the genuine academic drive and the true passion for my subject that some of my fellow students did. IMO that's what an Oxford don is actually looking for - that's why they interview, rather than just looking at grades. My subject/college was pretty heavily private school dominated, and there were definitely others who were stronger and more deserving candidates than I was - even though they may have been worse than me on paper. I'm not going as far as to say that I didn't deserve my place - but I do think it's much more complicated than saying 'a state school student with an A must be the better candidate because they've worked harder to get it'.

@cloudtree I agree with @GratS
I would say a pupil getting an A at a comp should get a place over an A from Eton. It is going to be significantly more difficult to obtain an A* at a comp than from Eton. I guess if parents who send their children to private schools (of which I am one) think this is unfair they can always send their child to the local comp instead. I think my children have a much better chance of achieving those higher grades at private schools than our local comp.

At our school, the top IB scorers are going on the places like UCL or to international universities. One or two go to Oxbridge. One top scorer who got the top 45 points is now at a London university. Interestingly (I never noticed until I looked for this post) most are not going on to do science.

Can we safely conclude then that there is no particular difference in perception between these schools from Oxbridge's perspective?

Oxford and Cambridge are separate institutions and the things they take account in admissions are quite well publicised. Their "perception" of Whitgift vs Sevenoaks is really not an issue.
If anything, they might be more interested in the excellent candidate from a school that gets a smaller proportion of offers in a typical year.

Choose the school that feels like the best fit for your 11 year old. All of the kinds of schools you are looking at will be perfectly capable of helping them prepare for higher education when the time comes.

I agree with you @cloudtree

Best way into Oxbridge is via superselective grammar schools. If that is what you want OP. Top independent schools offer so much extra curricular and broaden the child but very generally speaking they tend to spend less time on academics alone. But they come out more rounded as a group, more confident. You are paying for an experience not just academics. The schools will tell you the same.
Those rich kids leaving the U.K. and not contributing to the economy in the future is a loss for U.K. society as a whole. US and top European unis are more than happy to have them. There is a strong bias in some Oxbridge colleges against eg Eton types at the moment. It is fact. Many of the top have stopped applying for this reason. Why go to Oxbridge if you are eg fluent in French and can do Science Po in Paris or engineering at MIT. In addition, the IB is broad and so the fit with US unis is better anyway with not having to narrow too early.
Interestingly though some of the Oxbridge courses are widening too though eg new engineering course at Cambridge with a more tech focus, can’t remember what it is called.

@cloudtree
Much harder to get those top grades at a school in the middle of a council estate so of course it should go to the pupil who has had more stacked against them. Otherwise why do people choose private education? To give their children 'the best'. You aren't going to find many people agree with you I'm afraid.

Not everyone wants to go to oxbridge! Plenty of youngsters in south london with high grades want to go to big city universities up north, they don't want oldie worldie quaint - they want clubs and fun. I know, I was one. None of my whitgift friends chose oxbridge, they all wanted cooler places like Manchester and ideally to upset their parents if possible

Which would seem perfectly fair wouldn't you agree? And on balance the council estate pupil is probably brighter

No I wouldn’t agree. You can’t get higher than an a* so no way of proving the assertion that the council estate pupil is brighter. They’ve both got top marks. No child should be automatically punished for the fact that their parents chose to pay for their schooling.

Of course I would agree that an A* pupil from a council estate should get the place over an A pupil at Eton.

Well it counts against them in that if there is one place and there are two children of equal merit with the same predicted grades and one went to my old school on a council estate but the other went to Eton, the Eton applicant is unlikely to get the place.

It’s all “lies, damn lies and statistics” anyway.

If Oxbridge is your key metric the you need to know whether the school encourages vets and medics to apply there (dd’s actively discourages).

As others have said, a “better” metric might be Oxbridge, top 10 USA (that’s not Ivy League definition), plus medicine plus vet.

But it’s not the best place for a LOT of subjects!

As others have said, many of the brightest are now looking to the top US colleges, partly because of the fact that their attendance at an independent school counts against them. Head girl a couple of years ago at my DCs school was predicted (and got) 3A*s and no medicine offers. The system is messed up. Ten years ago, applying to the US would be very unusual, now there are a good number applying each year.

I agree with previous posters that students are looking more at the courses they want to study and choosing the “best” universities for that, as opposed to selecting Oxbridge and then working back on choice of course.

LSE, Imperial, Harvard, Yale, MIT are just as impressive leaver destinations. If students were leaving to do Madonna Studies at Smallville College of Madeup Degrees then you’d have a point. But they’re not. Schools that show students going on to a wide range of universities to study a wide range of subjects are IMO far better schools as they are working to the strengths of each individual child as opposed to trying to create a “product”.

Your analysis is not something that I would even think to look into.

are you searching for a school for 11+ based only on their Oxbridge offers? Seriously?

You can't look at Oxbridge offers in isolation. You need to look at the cohort overall. Where are the rest of the students ending up? If your bright, non-Oxbridge student is ending up at Harvard, for example, then that's likely to be a positive choice, not a 'failed to get in' or 'didn't bother applying'. Oxbridge is not the be all and end all, and a good school higher ed department is going to be spending quite a bit of time persuading students not to apply there - not because they won't get in, but because it might not be the best option, depending on the subject and the student. They are actively fighting against the 'Oxbridge is the best' default position (of course, for some students and courses, Oxbridge absolutely is the best). As others have said, the IB is going to attract a lot of international students - not just overseas boarders, but internationally-minded UK students who are likely to be more drawn to overseas universities than average. So a school like Sevenoaks is likely to have a lower Oxbridge percentage than you might expect, given its academic results.

Also, your 'at the cost of great anxiety' comment may be a separate thread, but I do think it's a massive generalisation. No doubt the IB is a tough qualification, but I know a couple of IB schools quite well and don't see a generally higher level of stress and angst than at the equivalent A level schools. Of course, some students do get very stressed. But so do those at A level schools, particularly the more academically selective ones (state or private).

You are overthinking this! You are looking at small differences in small groups of different individuals, it’s pretty irrelevant to your dc. Just go and look round the schools and see which one you like. As a teacher I’d say please don’t have these discussions in front of your dc - very pressurising!