to not get the whole "children from comprehensives work harder to get the grades"

[Ohjustshootmenow]

An exam is an exam, right?

Nice spelling eh?

onimolap only an article about school fees fraud came up from your link when I clicked.

Sorry! This should be it!

(I'd just posted the other in "Forces' Sweethearts" and must have mucked up the copying).

Private school does not necessarily mean better teachers. A teacher in a private school does not have to be qualified teacher!

OTOH, being qualified as a teacher doesn't automatically make you a good teacher!

I think overall there does need to be some allowance for kids from comprehensives being on average a few grades down on their private school peers - the issue (and I'm sure part of the reason that nothing has been formalised yet) is that this would not take into account the different backgrounds of kids in the state sector.

I think it's fair to say that private education is now out of the reach of huge swathes of the professional middle classes (I may be wrong but it feels like it has got relatively more expensive) and those children are likely to still have a lot of support and encouragement at home so where does one put the barrier? If you are going to have some soft of "golfing handicap" system which grades achievements in relation to opportunity (as opposed to a blanket state / private thing) the mind boggles as to the complexity involved and the antagonism this could cause.

YABU. Why do parents pay 6K per term if it does not give their child a head start.

Spot on charitygirl

My kids are privately educated and I absolutely believe that (in general) any comprehensive child who gets the same grades as my DC's will absolutely trump them when it comes to University.
Private tutoring and piss-poor private schools and exceptional comps will always skew things but the general presumption must be true - children who are brought up to be academically competetive, who are taught generally by exceptionally well-qualified specialists and in a small class environment where bad behaviour is not tolerated will of course do better than children without those advantages, so a brace of 'A' grades in a comp trumps A grades from a private school any day.

I am tempted to approve of positive discrimination at University in the short term, but in the long term it would result in parents using more tutors and moving children between sectors, and will remove the pressure on state schools to raise their game. And having the private crowd pushing their children down into the good grammars (which is what will happen) doesn't do any favours to 'clever-but-poorer-Johnny', who then loses out his place in a good state school because the rich parents have all moved into the area and tutored their kids through the exams, thus depriving Johnny of a place at a good school.

And do smaller classes help? school class with 70 pupils

Not sure about this. One of the things that parents purchase at independent schools is breadth of education. Many children at independent schools have achieved not just equivalent examination grades to state educated children, but a whole host of additional skills. It really is true that some children just do a lot more with their lives than others. Will the state educated child with three A at A-level in maths, physics and chemistry but nothing else have worked harder than the independently educated child with the same three A grades who also speaks two languages fluently, has done competitive sport at a national level, acted, sung and danced...

OP why does it bother you that people might think this?

as a comp kid i'd agree that a lack of privilege does mean you have to be better to achieve the same results. that might mean working harder but it could equally mean having more natural aptitude. this reality continues into the workplace. the privately educated (or well connected state educated) often seem to do better even without qualifications.

did anyone watch 'who gets the best jobs'? a very good show i thought.

I still think that it will encourage comprehensives to not try very hard with bright pupils, because 'the universities will make allowances for them'.

It doesn't bother me it's just a thought that ive been pondering on since joining MN :)

To put it into context i was educated at a Grammar School, my siblings at a Comprehensive. They BOTH came out with better grades than me but seemed to coast through school more than I did. I know it's only anecdotal but its what prompted me to ponder on it 'aloud' as it were.

LeQueen - don't know about now, but in the past not all comprehensives streamed for academic subjects.

My comprehensive for first 4 years had all mixed ability classes. It wasn't until people were streamed for O levels or GCSE's that any streaming was in force.

But Bonsoir, while breadth is no doubt more common in private education, there is nothing that says that a child from a state school cannot have it, through a mixture of school provision and outside activities.

Dd is not the only child who gets a broad education from a combination of school and outside activities. She has several friends who have already acted in professional performances, who take singing lessons with specialists, play several instruments and are highly proficient in sports- and they have only just chosen their GCSE options. All the state schools dcs have attended have had very good music provision, several local comps offer a range of languages, there is a Latin club at dd's comp, there are science clubs, there are excellent (and not too expensive) drama and ballet schools locally, some of her friends have quite advanced sports coaching (as in preparing for possible future Olympics). I engaged a relative to give dd German lessons. Several of them can sail a boat. Many swim very well- you can learn that in a public pool or even in the sea (which is what I did) as well as in a school pool. Cookery lessons can also be supplemented at home- I could cook a 3 course dinner by the time I was 9, simply because my mum encouraged it.

I used to think we were freaks to provide so much for dcs- now I realise that we are not at all unusual for this LMC area.

Not having everything on school premises doesn't mean you can't have it at all.

Obviously, this is not going to be the case for all state educated children. But I am a bit fed up with hearing that only privately educated children can possibly know anything beyond their narrow range of school subjects. Tell that to dd's friends who spend their breaktimes discussing Stanislavsky's method.

Stanislavski and the dude who wrote the Cherry Orchard are common things to study in Drama are they not?

Much like when you study music you can't do so without studying Bach.

Chekov is the dude i was thinking of

It's an over generalisation isn't it? I got in to Oxbridge in the late 80's. Though I got a standard offer and indeed met the grades, they asked about (if I recall correctly given the long time gap ) class size, contact time and any extenuating circumstances. My comp was by no means top notch but most kids were keen to stay in 6th form. Consequently I think my biggest a level group was 25. This was unheard of in either the private sector or comp's where the 6th forms were smaller. I also had less contact hours than private schools, plus for one subject the school couldn't actually timetable all the alloted lessons so we caught up as best we could in the time we did have!

It's by no means black and white though is it? There's some pretty crappy private schools out there and some excellent comps. My Oxbridge peers were about 55% state but many of the privately educated people had won school scholarships and many of the state pupils were from selective state schools or comps in very salubrious areas. The devil, as they say, is in the detail.

Yes, fair enough, Stanislavski was a bad example on my part. But otoh these girls aren't all studying drama at school and most of them will not be doing it for their GCSEs (which they haven't started yet anyway); most of them are planning to go down the science/humanities route; their interest is due to external enrichment activities. My point being that just because you are at a state school you don't have to be narrow in your interests as suggested by Bonsoir.

I was told last week that as I went to a grammar then a private school (for 6th form), my grade boundaries to get a first at university should be higher than the grade boundaries for someone from a comp. Now that is truly bonkers.

I agree with cory that it's not only private school pupils who can have a broad education; lots of the extracurricular activities I did outside school were full of friends of mine from various comps around the place. I think the parental input has a huge impact.

My younger brother's girlfriend for instance (at a comp) is applying for uni. She wants to apply to Bath, her school has been very encouraging, but her parents have told her not to bother because it's top 5 for her subject and she shouldn't get her hopes up. The attitude of her parents is probably doing more damage to her academic potential than the fact she's at a comprehensive, I think. (And from what I hear, she's perfectly capable, and there's no reason to discourage her from applying to a good university.)

They should insist on meeting the parents/grandparents and all the teachers if they want a level playing field.
My DD's are at private school but I am rubbish at maths and they have a dreadful French teacher so they should get kudos if they ever pass either of those subjects, yet my friend is a single mum who lives on a sink estate but her father is an engineer and publishes papers regularly and writes for exam boards, so i suspect her boys will be just fine at maths and physics.
Could we not just agree it's swings and roundabouts and if your parents screw up your chances you can always go back as an adult anyway.

cory - I didn't say only privately educated children had breadth of education - just that parents purchased private education to get more breadth (more easily, if you like).

One thing that is often brought up on these private/state school is that privately educated children are not cut off from the rest of humanity because they socialise with state educated children during out-of-school activities. Which surely seems to suggest that a fair few state educated children attend out-of-school activities.

And ComeAlong makes a valid point about parental expectation. I have several older nieces of nephews, all of which seem rather bright to me (and to their respective schools). Three of them, from the same family, were getting constant hints from their mother that higher education was somehow pushy and getting above yourself. YOunger niece, with a handsome collections of A's, a good command of two or three foreign languages and a decided aptitude for creative writing ended up working in a call centre. The teachers must have been tearing their hair out. But her mum was pleased.

I think the greater issue is the area which the state school is in - I went to a god awful comp in the middle of the estates whereas my husband went to one in a 'good' area. At my school, the teachers didn't care, bullying was rife, class sizes were at the 30+ end and expectations very very low (I think out of my gcse group only about three or four of us went to uni, twenty or so did A-levels). but at my dh's school, oxbridge was encouraged, most teachers were enthusiastic and there were extra curricular activities.

Btw, I used to sit on the interview panel for my uni, we were more sympathetic (if that's the right word) to comp students who came from socio-economically deprived areas rather than to all comp students.