To not give a fuck about schools?

[sensuallettuce]

AIBU to be totally hacked off with this subject every bloody year.

I don't care that Saffron didn't get into your first choice school even though the local school is varie good she just isn't "suited" to that "environment" all the council estate kids .

It's such thinly veiled snobbery and competitive parenting at its very worst. Kids should go to the local school end of and if there is a grammar system state educated kids should be permitted to take the entrance exam (not privately educated kids who are trained to pass an exam) and this should be means tested.

I live in one of the most competitive school areas of the country with a massive social divide (Poole in Dorset). Because of this I ended up with all 3 kids at 3 different schools for 3 yrs .

How can people bang on about the state providing a perfectly good education then spend an extra £50,000 on a house in the "right" area. It's hypocritical snobby bollocks.

Kids will learn if they want to. I do not believe any of them have faired any better or worse due to my non choice of school. They are fulfilling who they are.

They have a loving home and are well balanced grounded kids and they know if I believe they have been "wronged" I am behind them 100%, if they have done "wrong" I am behind the school. I a, supportive of and interested in their education.

We all need to bloody calm down about this seriously

It is true for most! Or are we saying poor people are thick?

Most children go to state schools and yet only 14% get into to the top universities. You don't need a first in Maths from Cambridge to work out that as a state school pupil you are disadvantaged.

Metabilis3 - How do you know this though? Your DCs may do really well and I am guessing you have too but doesn't mean they wouldn't do even better with a private education. I also appreciate that it may also not be the case but I am just curious how you know it isn't going to be true?

I did ok at state school, got all A-C's and eventually found my way to getting the career I wanted but I did not reach my full potential at school and felt I would have done better at a private school.

I was offered a place at 11 and refused it as wanted to stay with my friends. I really regret that now though and wish my parents had pushed the issue more but I am guessing a very strong willed 11 year old would have done everything possible NOT to get on well at the private school!!

Haberdashery the article was about the fact that those few schools combined were sending more pupils to Oxford and Cambridge in a single year than all successful FSM applicants combined.

I know the private schools around where Metabilis lives and I'd make exactly the same choice for each of my DC too.

The statistics are very clear that privately educated pupils are over represented on the most competitive courses at the most competitive universities.

Selection does play its part in this of course, but there are so many other factors.

The first is definitely culture. If you are at a scholl where there is a culture of people making applications, then you are much more likely to apply yourself. Private schools and grammars have, for the most part, this culture. Thus an able student will see themselves making the application and attending. Wheras an equally able student from an ordinary comp will be less likely to make the ap. An equally able student from a poor comp or sixth form college will be very unlikely to make the ap.

Second, and this is part and parcel of living in that culture, the advice given to pupils will be commensurate. Schools which have a large % of pupils who intend to make these applications will be well versed in ensuring doors are not closed. Thus pupils will be advised against subjects considered soft options. Indeed many private schools and grammars do not even offer them. Parents too are more likely to know how the system works and able to give good advice.

Then of course there are all the other issues such as small classess, individual attention etc.

And one can't forget the extent to which good old fashioned wealth plays its part. Wealthy parents (who will form a large contingent of private schools and grammars) are able to pay for tutors, crammers, resits. They can also pay fees and living expenses which makes it far more likely their DC will apply (the trouble with loans is that they're only universally avaialbale for fees. Living expenses loans are calculated on parental finances. Many families with a reasonable income are not entitled to much at all, yet their outgoings may preclude helping their DC. And before anyone talks about jobs, Oxbridge and certain other universities make it very plain that this is actively discouraged.).

Of course I'm not saying poor people are thick! People of any financial background can be clever or otherwise. I'm saying possibly I am a bit thick (and I don't mean academically) not to have noticed that there were networking opportunities available. If they were available, that is. I didn't notice. I'm still not sure what I'd have done with them. I don't think I'm a networking type person.

Most children go to state schools and yet only 14% get into to the top universities. You don't need a first in Maths from Cambridge to work out that as a state school pupil you are disadvantaged.

But the point is that if 30% or 50% from highly highly selective schools are getting in to these universities, then 14% from non-selective schools is not actually bad at all. Where is the disadvantage?

100 pupils at highly selective school - 30 to Oxbridge.

100 pupils at non-selective school (ten or so of these would have got into selective school) - maybe 2 or 3 to Oxbridge. Is this a reasonable figure? I have no idea. Looking at a local sixth form college's results, it seems fairly reasonable.

If the selective schools were only taking the top 10% (and the kinds of schools that get 30 or 50% to Oxbridge are taking a far narrower band than that) then this kind of result makes perfect sense, surely?

Apologies for misremembering the thrust of the articles I was thinking about.

My daughter attends a state school, btw, and it has been rated Satisfactory by Ofsted and is v unpopular in the local area (although I think it is a fantastic place). However, she is only five so I have absolutely no idea if she is even university material, never mind Oxbridge.

Haberdashery, but are there any superselective state schools that send 30% of their pupils to Oxbridge? I haven't heard of any.

I think it's less bleak out there than some MNers would have us believe. There are massive drives at university level to encourage and facilitate applications from those who might be deterred from applying for a variety of reasons.

In DD3's year at Magdalen there are only two Etonians, both very clever and clearly fully deserving of a place. There are also a whole range of other students from all areas of the UK and from a wide range of schools. The coal face is interesting, often far more so than prejudice.

I don't know! But are there any superselective state schools where 70 or 80% of leavers have made an Oxbridge application? Everything I've read about it suggests that it's people not applying (often because they think it's not the right kind of place for them) that makes the gap in numbers so great, not the attitude of the universities themselves.

Not to mention that the superselective state schools (thinking about places that are close to me) are almost certainly taking a wider ability band than somewhere like Westminster or wherever. They must be - surely the teaching at these superselectives must be pretty good and I imagine the potential for disruptive behaviour from students leading to others being unable to learn effectively is pretty severely curtailed.

"Children will learn if they want to."

This is bollocks, seriously OP, have you been in a rough/not so rough school in the last 20 years? How about had panic attacks or woken up crying before going to one every day for five years? Yeah, it was just me and my lack of motivation that stopped me from learning all the gems of knowledge they were offering us there. Can't stand it when people say that bright kids will be okay anywhere- bright, not so bright, super clever, thick.....this school system does right by no one. Anyway, you don't want bright kids to be Okay, you want them to be Great, Brilliant, Confident. You still can't do a whole lot with your head just above the water.

There are a small number of top superselectives which send 20% or so, though there are inevtably fluctuations with different cohorts.

I don't know. How selective is Westminster? If a state superselective is taking the top 5%, what is Westminster taking?

I would say far fewer apply from superselectives, relatively, than they do from the big name independents. I think things may be shifting on that front though.

Westminster is far more selective than the top superselsectives! As is SPGS and St. Pauls and the other few schools in that bracket.

So why do Westminster and St Pauls have worse GCSE results that the state superselectives? Is that part of the problem? Do state schools focus too much on GCSEs and not enough on something else?

quirrelquarrel - I agree with you about this. The idea that "children will learn if they want to" is one of those comforting lies people tell themselves, even though a moment's reflection will tell you it's not true. If it were really true that children will learn if they want to, why would we bother making any effort with schools at all? Why bother trying to provide good teacher training or an interesting curriculum or an attractive physical environment if it was all simply down to individual motivation? How are you supposed to learn, bright or not, if you're sitting in a classroom where the lessons are constantly disrupted by badly behaved children, and the teacher has given up trying to teach but simply engaged in crowd control?

@seahouses what is Westminster taking Really rich people who live in the SE. HTH.

@seahouses So why do Westminster and St Pauls have worse GCSE results that the state superselectives? Is that part of the problem? Do state schools focus too much on GCSEs and not enough on something else?

Is it not the case that they do IGCSEs for some subjects which the government doesn't count for the purposes of stats for reasons known only to themselves?

hackmum I also think it's really paronising to so many kids who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and attend poor schools.
Oh if only they wanted to learn and tried a bit harder!!!

I also think the discussions of whether schools send 20% or 30% or whatever to the most competitive universities is a bit of a red herring. Instead let's look at all those schools who don't send anyone. It cannot be that there isn't one able student in their cohort!!!

I think lots of the better public schools prefer to ask pupils to do only 9 or 10 GCSEs or IGCSEs whereas an able comprehensive student may well be encouraged to do 12 or 14 GCSEs, at least that's what seems to happen round here. It depends what you mean by worse results. The average point score for each pupil may be higher in a school where pupils take more exams each but most are probably not getting rates of nearly 100% A and A, for instance. The school I went to actually has its own courses (externally moderated) for some subjects, which obviously will not appear on league table results. And looking at its results in 2012, no child got 5 A-C at GCSE and no child achieved the English Bacc - it seems unlikely that nobody took that mix of subjects so maybe IGSCEs instead or their own curriculum. Even in my day (O Levels, so quite some time back) we did a lot of stuff that was outside or beyond the curriculum for O and A Levels.

Surely nobody could really suggest that finances don't play a part in getting into Westminster? The majority of people who go there have parents who are paying some or all of the fees. Obviously you have to be super bright as well as having rich parents and living close to London. Oh, and you have to be a boy, too. For most of the time (in the 6th form you can be a girl).

Westminster is not for the less academic child. It's also not for the less wealthy.

wordfactory: "I also think it's really paronising to so many kids who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and attend poor schools.
Oh if only they wanted to learn and tried a bit harder!!"

Yes, so true! And also there's a failure to recognise that children are complicated - some kids may not want to learn because they don't see the point, but could be turned onto learning by a good teacher. "Bright" is another word I have problems with (though god knows, I've used it myself often enough) because a child can be bright in one context but not another, or could be a slow developer who blossoms when they reach secondary school.