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

[Ohjustshootmenow]

An exam is an exam, right?

If you have personality and something to say, Cambridge will make an offer they think you can meet. In practise this means that even now they make lower offers to people they really want*. They recognise that GCSEs and A level results are not the sum total of a person's achievements or potential. This puts bright state school pupils in dreadful circumstances at an advantage compared to universities that select solely on exam results.

• I heard of a boy from DCs' school being given an EEE offer. He did not meet it as was off saving the whale or something and failed to take his exams.

Onetoomany/duchesse, there was an article a couple of days ago in the guardian, which annoyingly I can't find, where one of the Cambridge admission tutors were saying that they were less able to make low offers these days with A* grades etc (couldn't quite figure out why).

Not sure how that relates to S levels, STEP etc (do these even still exist?).

I know that back in the late 80s there were a few colleges that didn't insist on them on principle because they weren't generally available in state schools. Like you Cornettos I didn't have any option to take S levels, along with Further Maths they were just completely off the radar, I doubt most of my teachers had even heard of them tbh.

i haven't heard of anyone getting oxbridge offers of less than the maximum AAA or A*AA no matter where they went (recent years)

I went to Oxbridge (not saying which) in the early/mid-nineties and then it was apparently common practice that once you were through the entrance exam and interview, you were basically told you were in as long as you got E grades or above in A-levels.

But I understand that's not the case anymore.

FWIW, I went to a comp.

Maybe not so much a school thing as a general disadvantage thing.
I've taight kids who have got A* grades :) :) who had to struggle against multiple disadvantages to get them: financial poverty, low expectations, impoverished culture locally and in the family, no books in the home, disrupted classrooms, sink school with hit and miss teaching, disinterested and or hostile parents :(
And yes, I do think that that is a greater achievement than it is for a child in a warm and comfortable, literate home, with interested parents and family, at a school where high achievemnt is encouraged and where the others in the class are also high achievers.
It's the difference between swimming upstream or swimming against a tide of treacle.

Oops I mean taught kids, of course (standard of teachers in comprehensives dear oh dear!!!)

upstream or downstream, whichever is easier....

I think some Oxford colleges do go softer on comprehensive pupils. A friend who's an admissions tutor told me he'd taken on a boy to do English who had poorer A level results because he liked him and thought he was very bright and would relish the course. The boy was doing very well.

Still think it leaves poor state schools an easy option. No need to brush up on teaching or standards because good universities will make allowances.Decent teachers teaching bright, engaged, pupils should be able to get the same results regardless of where they are. Certainly in a subject such as English or History, where we (still) benefit from good public libraries and free internet. Anyone can access books and articles and use iPlayer to find interesting documentaries on BBC. For free. All you need is some gumption. If a school library is inadequate a pupils should be directed to the nearest large public library. Or shown how to search for material on the internet. Tickets for the theatre (if you're studying Shakespeare, say) can often be acquired very cheaply if you know how to apply. A decent teacher should know how to do this.

It may be different with sciences and lack of lab facilities, I don't know. But I know about studying English and History on the cheap.

By A level only people who really want to succeed in a subject should be studying it. It seems a tacit admission that comprehensives schools can't do as good a job as private schools. If that's the case, let's abolish them or radically re-structure them and start again.

Yay!

Let's abolish comps and all go private!

Let's do it this way - private education is free for all, and if anyone prefers to go to a comp they'll have to pay for it :o

Fantastic idea question! Let's have some

But Abr1de, it's not just the school/teaching/facilities that affect kids but their general environment. Why does everyone just focus on the school all the time? No matter how bright you are, how many facilities you have and how good your teaching is you have to be able to concentrate on learning. There are a multitude of ways in which this can be difficult for many kids whose parents can't afford a private education. If all these educational factors are equal they just have to work a bit harder. Is that so difficult to see?

Sorry, by the time A levels are being studied those not interested in the subject have opted put. You're left with a self-selecting cohort who've chosen to be there. Why, if teachers are as good as they are in the independent sector, as we are told they are, can't this children be expected to do well

....these children, even.

Hmmm now I went to a 'comp' and got three A's at A'Level ( although apparently that's very average these days)

I think that perhaps this is when parental expectations kick in and when a difficult homelike really starts to disadvantage children. I had a friend living in a squat, another in a children's home who faced eviction at 17... Teachers can't do everything, they can only teach and provide some pastoral care.

"by the time A levels are being studied those not interested in the subject have opted put. You're left with a self-selecting cohort who've chosen to be there."
Not entirely true... at the moment at least, we do get students on our courses because they're there for their EMA. In fact on one of my courses that started in Jan, not one student was there because of a desire to actually do the subject, they were all there to make up their timetables, get EMA etc etc...

Also, having taught in both the state and the private sector, I think there are some students who are naturally bright who would get an A wherever they studied, state or private.

However, they are also those students who will scrape their As with a lot of support, and given that private schools can often afford to give more support than state schools, then it will be easier to achieve in private schools.

My friend taught in a private school, and she actually had written into her contract that she was given an average of half an hour per student per week to provide 1:1 tuition for those who needed it. Where I teach now (state) I have about half an hour per half term. Therefore, any extra support the students need either comes out of my free time (as it usually does) or the student goes without.

Another public school near me regularly pays for the chief examiners of the subject to go and talk to students, to give them guidance on how to answer their exams and tips etc. We can never provide anything like this. I've been to one of these sessions - and what the students got from it, was amazing.

Incidentally, I run a weekly support session for my students (I don't get paid for this) to help them in any way they need. I would say that I see more students who are wanting to boost their grades from a B to an A than I do at the bottom end of the spectrum. Interestingly, my value added scores are really high year on year, and it has a really positive effect. When I taught in a private school, it was standard to offer this and teachers were paid for doing so.

Finally, whilst I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but when I taught private I had 8 in a class. Now I've got 24 in one of my A2 classes. It makes a big difference.

Whilst teachers are the same from state to private are the same (I've taught both!), the facilities and support differ widely.

Abr1de - I cannot possibly agree with your last statement. I had experience of both the state and public school sectors and they did not compare. The state school I attended had some fantastic teachers. It also had some that were truly awful and did not deserve to be teaching their subjects. They were meant to be teaching children during the final years of their school education but some of the teaching was of such a poor standard that not many pupils passed the exams. This had an obvious impact on their further education prospects. This wouldn't happen in a private school which depends upon being able to tell prospective parents that a large number of its FPs have gone on to top unis.

haven't read this but I think YABU to not get it.

Kids at the best independant schools are spoon fed from day one and have exam techinique drilled into them whereas at my 6th form college they couldn't give a crap and taugt us shit all.

If you want t say that admissions should be based on a-level results, what you are really rating is that a-levels in themselves are a good predictor of academic success. AFAIK this is not the case.

Agree with you, to a degree.

The Rowntree report on child poverty and its effect on achievement stated that on 14% (or maybe 19%?) of final exam grades was a result of the school effect. The remainder depends on a hige slew of factors - family support and other home circumstances, from the earliest age, and of course psychological factors, social and cultural pressures etc etc
The effects of poverty and deprivation are enormous and can't be fixed easily, even by a very good school

YABU

Its the cohort the children are taught in. A child at a comp might be taught in a class where the average grade is a D, when a child at a private/grammar is taught in a cohort where most will get As.

Being taught at D grade for 2 years, compared to a child taught at A grade for 2 years, who do you think is most likely to achieve 3 As? The success of grammar schools at getting children into oxbridge demonstrates the difference it makes.

FWIW, I went to the 'bog-standard comp'. It achieves such low grades that it ranked in the 'worst 200 schools' ratings. Nice. I got into an 'elite' university, but didnt apply to oxbridge as the teachers predicted low grades (Bs).

Personally I also think that life skills come into play. I know it may sound silly but I think children from comprehensives are usually more capable in terms of dealing with the harsher realities of the university environment. As for the working harder part, children from comprehensives obviously have to work harder due to lack of facilities, larger classes, more disruptive students per class and less one on one time with teacher. Of course there are other socio-economic factors apart from these few obvious ones. There are plusses, such as the life skills and diversity of comp schools, I think with good parenting the flaws of a comp can be greatly overcome. Besides, private schooling, as others have mentione, does not guarantee better teaching itself as there are not the same strict requirements of new teachers as in the state system.

I actually heard today of an aquaintance of mine now teaching in a private school. I would not want him teaching my children from knowing him personally. His qualifications are not that great either.

I don't think that children from comprehensives work harder to get the grades. Where they have the distinct edge over many private school pupils is in their proven ability to be focussed and self-motivated. Ime there are maybe 2 or 3 per school year in any comprehensive who gather all the qualities together to succeed despite their environment (for the purposes of my argument I'll call them category A pupils).

There are many, many more who have the ability but are not able to focus/keep their eye on the long-term goal and work despite the environment (category B). It seems to me that many people believe that only category A pupils ought to succeed. Clearly, although these kids are a distinct cut above category B in terms of maturity, I don't see that as a reason to discount all of category B (the majority of pupils). There are to my mind two or three other categories of pupils but I do not feel they are relevant to my argument.

Again ime the profile of even selected private school pupils is very similar. Where they have the advantage is in their environment which is generally far more conducive to knuckling down. In most private schools, category B pupils do as well or nearly as well as category A ones, which is where the apparent higher achievement of private schools comes in.

In my opinion the only way to even up the gap between state and private is to enforce proper discipline in state schools. If in my years of teaching I'd seen even one school where disruption was effectively dealt with, my children would be there and not in private schools.

Disagree that its only 2 or 3 per year- especially given that comprehensives usually set by ability so higher sets will contain top grade motivated pupils. Agree broadly thought that pupils around the 'average' need all the help they can get- and for some parents that means paying for private. Though why on earth would an average pupil be aiming for oxbridge anyway?! The top universities are about educating the brightest and best minds. If you need to be privately educated to get into Oxbridge , then you have no right to be there- and I bet the admissions tutors would agree. They really couldn't give a stuff where students have come from - they just want sheer ability, not someone who is a product of their environment