You think the British class system is a bit of a thing from the past, then you start looking into university’s and realise oh here it is, it’s still alive and kicking

[Ohhereiswhereitis]

like it’s just become a bit more hidden

Many years ago dh and I were travelling from Beirut into parts of Syria, in taxis. In our small tour party (just 2 taxis) were 3 French women of a certain age. One was from Paris, and chose firmly to share our taxi, since she wouldn’t have anything to do with the other two.

I forget where they were from, but it wasn’t Paris. I mean this in the nicest possible way, since they were great fun and a good laugh, but the Brit equivalent at the time might well have been a pair of Blackpool landladies out on a spree.
Madame Parisienne was most exceedingly sniffy about them!

I'm from a WC background. My DS graduated with a First from a top ten RG university, yesterday, and will study for his MA at a global top ten university - all on merit.
PS If you're going to goad, at least learn how to use an apostrophe 🙄

If you live in a deprived area you definitely know the class system is live and kicking

Cambridge terms are significantly shorter so plenty of time to work in the holidays. Also accommodation is much cheaper and you only pay for term time so loan goes further l

The apostrophe is correct here.

Quotas? Really? I thought they were just trying to pull the brightest from across the whole population, regardless of wealth?

Snooty Parisians are in a class (boom boom) of their own, even by French standards.

People who don't think social class underpins the vast majority of things in UK society are mostly speaking from a place of privilege. It's absolute madness to say social class isn't important, because it is, for many reasons. And it is a huge barrier to accessing education. Wealth inequality is also important.

Err?

Go on...

university's

But who cares?

Of course the class system isn't a thing of the past. Who even thinks that? It is systemic. And it's definitely not just 'an English thing'. Continental Europe is much the same, as is Scandinavia. Rife.

The British class system is alive and,sadly, well.

Son of a postman from South London here and I cannot say that I noticed this when applying to Uni or when I was there.

Not true at all, and very odd you think that it's entirely exclusive in England.

It’s laughable to talk about there being an equality of opportunity and access to top universities when the class disadvantages start before people are even born - language, accent, cultural capital, quality of education, aspiration, role models etc.

The fact that many high paying careers recruit PURELY from Oxbridge, and Oxbridge colleges recruit mainly from private schools tells you everything you need to know whether there is a class system or not.

And yes, some of that is money, but if you don’t speak RP, or go skiing, or know people who own their own stables, or any of the other many nuanced class signifiers, you’re not going to pass either.

@Screamingabdabz - are you just goading or having a laugh? You are actually posting lies which some may believe. Shame on you.

You are talking about socioeconomic class, not aristocracy. That won’t be going away.

Upper middle class and upper class parents have been shown to parent differently. It’s not better or worse than other parenting, it is just different. The result is children who are raised with a sense that they belong and that they will succeed if they work hard. They are taught to speak to authority as equals even as children, always polite, but able to articulate a point. These are social mores that help young adults access lucrative and fulfilling careers. That is the primary parenting goal, to launch children who can maintain their socioeconomic status.

There is frequent talk on mumsnet about how not all children are academic and not everyone is university material. That is just not something that happens in some social circles unless someone has profound differences in ability. Children are raised with high expectations and there is never any doubt that they will meet their goals.

But for parents on very low incomes, Cambridge provide full bursaries which include accommodation costs. It's what I wanted my DS to do but he didn't want the pressure of applying and the interview so he's at Warwick.

It's still easier for us because he gets the full maintenance loan (plus a small bursary) and as I've only discovered recently, the loan is never paid back anyway (and not worth trying because of the interest) so he won't be paying more than a lot of people who didn't receive the full loan.

It's easier to get into Cambridge from Hill Road sixth form (state sixth form in Cambridge). That's why many privately educated kids in Cambridge go there. (Also because it's free and one of the best sixth forms in the country.)

Really?

One way around the issue that ‘the cost of the HE means it is only available to the already privileged ‘ is the degree apprenticeship. Three options, Finance, Marketing or Technology, fiercely competitive but open to all.

All the benefit in terms of salary and experience of working full time for three years, a cohort of others doing the same course, plenty of access to people and resources to support project and dissertation work and a degree for the cost of the academic registration, a few hundred pounds.

in the interests of making these more widely known, I hope the ad is ok here

https://careers.sky.com/earlycareers/apprenticeships

@Notellinganyone was saying that the apostrophe was correct in the section quoted "like it’s just become a bit more hidden". I drew attention to OP's use of the apostrophe in university's which is what I assumed you were referring to, to highlight that posters were looking at different sets of apostrophes.
Personally, I really don't give a fig about how posters on an online fourm spell or use punctuation; I'm just pleased to read their contributions.

This is nonsense.

Hills Road has something like 3000 students. Of those, ~80 a year get into Oxbridge. There are some private schools where a much larger percentage of the much smaller year go, so 50 from a year of 110 or 60 from 200. This isn't because of class or wealth (except indirectly because 90% of the cohort in those private schools are paying full fees so are obviously wealthy), it's because the kids in those highly competitive schools had to pass a very selective exam to get in and obviously more of them are going to be very bright because the schools have already selected the brightest children available to them from a generous pool. Plus they don't have the disruption of cover teachers who can't teach the subject, lack of facilities, underfunding etc. And the schools are set up to help them with Oxbridge applications, of course, as I'm sure Hills Road does too given that they are proud of their Oxbridge results.

Plus universities like Oxford and Cambridge do look at where GCSEs were taken so will be well aware of what kind of privilege is in play (or not). Moving to a state sixth form after having been at private until GCSE confers no real advantage. It's marginal at best.

This isn’t true but I understand the sentiment behind it and agree that privilege and, therefore, greater opportunity start at an early age. Occupations like Law still like to recruit from Oxbridge and those students are probably over represented in the top firms.