To think this 'Austerity Day' is one of the most patronising things I've ever seen?

[NoHunsHereHun]

St Paul's Girls school having to eat baked potatoes and fresh fruit for lunch. For a day. I mean FFS, there are SO many better ways to help. Volunteering at a food bank for one.
www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-44578499

Really? You don’t think it gives such children a very distorted view of the world and how opportunities are distributed?

Not really. Such a very small proportion of the population who will never experience normal life except the people they will meet in uni - even then, only maybe. We are not talking about mere multimillionaires here, we are talking about at least half a billion plus. Even if they weren't pushed to achieve, they would still be in their special worlds - at least they will be educated in extremely liberal bastions of higher education and will then be challenged as much as they possibly could be.

The life they lead is a gilded cage. I feel sorry for them and feel no envy.

I’m far more dubious than you. They graduate, go to work in their family office and invest left right and centre in businesses whose end users and impact on the world they do not understand...

I think they understand quite well the world they are investing in. They would be poor businessmen if they did not.

You really do not need to understand the negative externalities of your business model to be a good investor. Better not, from an investor perspective.

Then I don't understand your concern, user. If they will be better at business, which you assume they will go into (probably rightly, but no guarantee), what is the problem. Also, what precisely is the world they would not understand?

I still remember feeling very upset by the congratulations in the school newsletter to the family who had taken on the challenge of living on the same amount as our weekly food budget - £1 per person per day. There were several other families in the same situation as us and it felt patronising and horrible. Particularly nasty watching other parents in the playground telling them how amazing they were. My kids had been doing it for months - no one was telling them they were amazing (apart from me obviously).

Are you being deliberately obtuse, Mominatrix? Better at business is not the same thing as a force for good...

BishopstonFaffing how awful for you and your family, completely thoughtless of the school.

Just like when I tell you that you bought your kids their success, it isn't earned, no one at private school earned their place at a university like someone in a state. Yet you pretend otherwise.

I didn't buy DS his success. He did get an academic scholarship and a music scholarship (both tokens really because the school saves its dosh to give to parents who can't afford it) and he worked his arse off for years. You cannot buy a kid a place at Oxbridge. It's not possible and the rigour of the entrance processes are such that the coached and the merely bright as opposed to the extra bright just show up straight away.

No that's completely not true Thesearepearls. Absolutely everyone at Oxbridge, including tutors, know that in the grey middle band of borderline applicants a far too high a proportion of places go to the heavily coached private schoolers. It's not even a moot point - all the students know that there's this band of private school DC lacking a towering intellect. This is not at the top end of course - there the very bright private schoolers richly deserve their place.

If only the entrance processes were rigourous enough to guarantee purity and therefore social mobility, but they're not - it's still work in progress.

Or even rigorous enough.

in the grey middle band of borderline applicants

Oxbridge has its pick of applicants. There really aren't many in the grey middle band. You cannot coach a student through careful and persistent questioning around stuff they haven't done and can't anticipate - the universities just test the approach. The flagship courses are mainly sorted in this regard. Maths and Natsci at Cambridge are entirely meritocratic now (I believe) I hear you with some of the less competitive courses.

Do you think those heavily coached pupils gravitate towards certain subjects goodbyestranger?

They only have their pick of the people who apply and they tend to be predominantly privately educated or from leafy comps in the South East.

Of course there's a grey middle band - there's always a cluster around the lower end of applicants for everything competitive: top/ cluster/ not a cat's chance.

I think there will be applicants in all subjects every year but a) I know the expected answer is Classics/ Norse etc and b) lots of private schools are very savvy about college application and push their less hopeful candidates towards certain places (again, I know the party line is that college choice makes no difference at all, but it can, and does).

If you ate for one of your meals jacket potato coleslaw and fresh fruit, you wouldn’t be malnourished or overweight (provided you were getting two other balanced meals a day). I’d regard this as a healthy lunch. It would probably cost about 5.00 with fresh fruit. These girls will have had a healthy breakfast and will eat a healthy tea.

Some people are trying to feed a family of 4 on £5.00 per day or less. They are struggling to heat their homes. They are underweight or overweight, deficient in vitamins and will struggle with issues like constipation and diabetes because of the starchy processed diet that they eat.
I think this was a disgraceful attempt to teach privileged children about the world around them.

How can eating a healthy, balanced and nutritious meal possibly teach you to have empathy for the poor?

Thanks goodbyestranger I am just gathering as much information as I can because the sixth form college DS is going to in September have put him on their Oxbridge programme. Both they and school have suggested he looks at PPE but I can’t see that being a realistic prospect because he has a specific learning difficulty which makes maths very challenging.

LARLARLAND if PPE is what he's interested in, that's what he should apply for. Maths is not nearly as critical for PPE as it is for Cambridge Economics. It would be seriously counter productive for clever state schooled DC not to apply in case they get pipped at the post by an incredibly well prepped indie DC. I'm just making the point that the entrance process is not a perfect science even with the best will in the world on the part of the unis and those who benefit are the adequately bright indie DC and those who lose out are the slightly brighter state schooled DC. Tutorial is where they can't hide, once they're in. Few will be so bad they get the boot, the issue is that some brighter less advantaged applicant will have lost the chance of that possibly transformative education.

I think he will check it out goodbyestranger but I know he will be very worried about the maths element. He is really interested in the politics side (he has been to hear lots of politicians speak, runs a politics blog etc) but when I have broached it he just reminds me of his specific learning difficulty as a barrier to his application. There are lots of great straight politics courses around. I think he’d love to Scottish universities.

Yes. It's only one choice though, out of five. That's the way my DC have always looked at it. Nothing to lose so why not?

That’s what I have said. I think he will have a shot at it. Now that completely unrelated teachers have both mentioned the same course there must be something in it. I have read that Oxford do one to ones on their open days with people with specific learning difficulties so that may be the breakthrough he needs.

He could also arguably be described as a young carer although he would go bananas if I suggested he put that in his UCAS form

Well some DC insist that they want to be taken 'on merit' so I get the bananas thing (not, obviously, that being a young carer isn't meritorious). But they want to get in on intellect alone. Some of my own DC would have been well within the range of being awarded special consideration for certain exams for family reasons but would have refused point blank so I never even raised it as a possibility. One DC has been hearing impaired from birth but has consistently refused to declare that either, until after the place/ jobs were secured. You've got to respect that although when one reads about how quick some people are to put in bids for special this and special that it does make one question who's right.

That’s how I feel goodbye when I read how people try to manoeuvre their dc into advantageous positions. There is no chance he’ll ever mention it.