To think - yes, universities should take state school applicants with lower grades

[Lemiserableoldgimmer]

.. than applicants from private and grammar schools, on the basis that this new research suggests that as a group, state school pupils appear to be more able than private school applicants with identical A level and GCSE grades. More likely to get a good degree, less likely to drop out.

here

What do you think?

You realise grammar schools are state schools? why do you think GS pupils should be considered differently from those a t comprehensives?

Shit happens, of course. But there are groups in society where it happens worse and more consistently. And where shit is endemic.

They shouldn't but I suspect there are an awful lot more kids in high achieving comps who would be affected by this than those at gs as there are more of them.Parents buying places into the top comps via property is a bigger problem.

Hak and those just over who get nothing?

Extremely low income,parents working all hours and no help with fsm,trips,pp etc.Then they would get penalised when they apply to uni on top.Madness.

You could say that about any intervention. There has to be a cut off point.

"Parents buying places into the top comps via property is a bigger problem."

Is it? I often hear this, and I have never seen any figures to back it up.

Bristol has contextual offers for state schools, my ds has a contextual offer from there.
Durham says they also take this into considrration when they make offers.

Sutton rant about it enough,I guess they have their figures.

This report is focusing on kids in schools which have poor progress figures and clearly thinks thinks there is an issue between those at the best state schools including comps and the poorest.

From the bun fights you hear about on allocation day with vast numbers of parents not getting their first choice and catchments down to a few yards away wealth and buying places via property clearly is an issue although more palatable to many as more use it to their advantage.

My non London dsis has a fab comp near her she'd love her kids to go to but the house prices a few yards down the road into catchment are laughable.She has more chance of getting them into the grammar than said comp.

I had unconditionals from Scottish universities (Edinburgh, Stirling, Glasgow) and mad conditionals from one English and one Welsh university because they didn't quite get the Scottish system. They were both wanting, aside from my previous grades, BB or AB at CSYS, which I did eventually get. However, given my previous grades, that was like asking for AAA at A level when the equivalent offer for an English or Welsh student was BCC or BBC. I made it, but I wasn't predicted to - I was predicted for a D and a no award at CSYS.

The admissions system is deeply weird and I don't understand it, but certainly in my day there was no discount for being state educated. There is a definite disparity between the different systems though.

I think there is a lot of naivety on here.

I was state educated until 16. My parents moved me because I was being bullied due to my academic performance (it was too good).

In my extremely selective, extremely expensive private school I was literally spoon fed. I went from class sizes of 30 to a maximum of 16 (that teacher just about made my Ma laugh out loud when she bemoaned at parents evening how difficult it was to teach such a "large" class).

In my private school people arrived for lessons with the correct books, stationary and generally sat down and shut up ready to learn. At my state school (which is a generally well regarded school in a naive area) the beginning of every lesson was a battle to get started.

Therefore this research comes as little surprise to me. Kids who do well in the state sector (and we are still talking about kids who have done well, just perhaps not achieved all A*)have generally had to overcome the odds to achieve this.

Anecdotally my university experiences also support this research - my flatmate for many years attended one of England's most elite public schools. He had excellent A-levels (4 or 5 As, no A* in my day, but one of those was general studies). He also fucked up every single set of exams we ever had and wasted every holiday studying for resist.

IMO he had become accustomed to being spoon fed at school and lacked the ability to plan and carry out his own work. He and I have pursued the same professional career and the path has been the same - failure to pass our professional exams has prevented him from progressing to the same level as me and the majority of our peers.

Yet on paper when you look at our school grades he is much much better qualified than me.

I think they can look at individual schools and adjust for that but a blanket policy of one type of school over another is ridiculous.

Btw DD1 attended a well known super selective grammar and the teaching in one subject at A level was so appallingly bad that the whole class hired tutors.

In the past there was positive discrimination for admission to sought after professional subjects at universities in Scotland. It was known that an identifiable sector of the applicants did much better in their Highers due to accident of birth, That sector had to get 6 or 7 Highers at A where the disadvantaged applicants would only have to get 5 Highers and not all As. The advantaged by birth applicants were the girls.One result was to increase the proportion of boys from working class backgrounds on these courses. Girls still do better than boys at school in Scotland. Should they not be discriminated against now? Exam results show academic attainment which is not the same as academic ability. I can't see how we can ever have a fair system unless we require only a basic pass/fail secondary school certificate and university admittance on the basis of nationally set and marked ability/aptitude tests and no interviews . Does anyone know of a country where the admissions system is fair to everyone?

ItsDinah, I was in (Scottish) high school in the late 90s. You couldn't take 6 or 7 Highers in a year - I did 5 which was the maximum - scheduling wouldn't permit it. 7 Highers with equal class time for them all, how is that even possible? Especially not if you were expected to get straight As.

Also, as well as being the only state school person on my course, I was the only female for a couple of years (we got some transfers in 4th year). I wasn't asked to have 6/7 Highers compared with the boys on 4 or whatever. It was a very competitive course and we talked about these kinds of things ("of course, when I got my award to Fettes"...) and I would have known, because no-one would have been shy about telling me.

Whatever the system is, there will be more middle-class parents and pupils (and teachers of such!) who figture out how to game it than there will be working-class people who do the same.

Just to clarify, there are no government imposed rules of admission of state/private pupils.

Universities do however have this measured, and some universities are under pressure to increase the numbers of state school parents.

If a universities had a quotas of places for any individual course, this is an internal target that they have chosen.

Hi shockinglybadteacher. 1970s and it worked by discriminating against girls at private schools and state schools where they did do 6 highers (if no science) or 7 (with physics and chemistry ), in classes of over 30 if privately educated although could be down to tiny classes at state schools. Routine at single sex state (yes we had them) and private schools at the time. It was also standard for state schools to offer 6 highers even ones where the teachers got paid extra to work in a deprived area. Woefully, if you went to certain state schools some university courses were impossible to get into even if you were not female. The school would offer 6 highers but not in the right combination of subjects. Suppose it was only the scruff so no-one made a fuss (semper idem?) I know lots of folks with 6 or 7 highers from that era and they didn't all go to university or ever consider it. The school day was 9 to 4. Not all subjects had equal time. Generally less time for subjects everyone studied from 1st year and more for ones you picked up later. The requirement for more and better highers from girls certainly discriminated most effectively against girls at state schools. That kind of gender discrimination was outlawed and the proportion of girls in professional courses shot up so that they formed the majority in medicine and other professional courses although not on the course you did (why not?) We still have hideous inequality of true opportunity. Lowering the exam results expected from the scruff would be one way of evening things up. Would what that admitted be acceptable ?

Thanks, Cream teas, are there broad Government targets though that RG universities tend to stick to even if not yet mandatory? Is this 'the pressure' you mention that Universities are under to admit more state school pupils? What are the 'current government targets' referred to below or is this all completely false do you think? Thanks:

As an admissions tutor for a Russell group University, I have 150 or so undergraduate places on offer each academic year. Of those 150, 80 are reserved for state schools under current government targets, 10 are reserved for independent schools, while 60 places are available for overseas students. To make my targets for state schools, I have to reduce the offer for those candidates. Insofar as overseas candidates are concerned, I reject about 100 candidates who on paper far exceed the qualifications of the state school candidates. So I am obliged to admit students on the basis of government targets rather than ability.

"Of those 150, 80 are reserved for state schools under current government targets,"

I am as sure as I can be that this is not true.

I am also pretty sure that this is not true of our RG university, we have way more than 10 out of 150 private school pupils (about 6/7%), indeed the majority of our students are from private, grammar or overseas and not from standard comps. You can tell this is not true if you look at the % private vs state in the RG sector.

If the unis set their own internal targets, that's different, but the ones I know don't, although they have widening participation initiatives and that includes people who don't have A levels but do access courses and things like that.

No YABU because external boards mark exam papers and pupils have to meet the same criteria to meet the grades, whether in free or private school. They are marked blind.

Positive discrimination isnt fair either. What about children who did got to private school but have really struggled and have worked hard to get results but are then disadvantaged again.

That said, A level grades alone aren't an accurate reflection of how able you are.

I'm not privately educated, but husband is and I will be doing everything I can to get my kids into private school. This experience of school is much nicer than mine and whilst his friends have lovely manners, the kids I went to school with are all complete chavs

Also, most universities are expanding if they can, we can recruit AAB grade students without any limits (below that and the universities are restricted), and these students are more likely to have come from private/grammar sector- so that's another existing source of over-representation.

this article shows that universities have agreed targets with the govt. They achieve this by telling the admission teams to meet them. So they are not directly set by the government, but that is the reality.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9946510/Half-of-top-universities-cut-state-school-admissions.html

This article is a bit out of date in that it refers to data from '11/12 but basically shows that despite the rhetoric around widening participation in fact places such as Bristol are taking in more private school students than ever (40% plus). There may be talk of targets, but universities like money, and private school pupils in general have wealthier parents, so providing they get AAB, there is no limit on their expansion in this sector.

I also read that in 2010, 46% of Oxford students went to private schools, and less than 1% were on free school meals.

I don't think some people on this thread realise just how favoured private school pupils currently are, and why people in education are keen to try to identify clever but disadvantaged students, it isn't a form of dumbing down at all, if anything the standards may go up if more disadvantaged comp students are included.

There's a big difference between targets and quotas!

From the article Caroldecker posted: However, figures show 11 Russell Group members have opted to use state schools as a specific target measure. Might the alleged admissions tutor upthread have come from one of these? 150 places in his subject and 80 have to be given to State school pupils perhaps? Is that really not feasible?