To scream, "Your Private School Children Are Not Being Discriminated Against at Uni"

[Triffid1]

Between work and social I seem to have a pretty diverse group of people who I engage with regularly but as my DC are at an age where we're thinking about high schools, there have been quite a few conversations around this recently. I have now had not one but THREE separate conversations with parents who are planning to send their children to private schools who have expressed concern that it might "disadvantage" them because the universities are prioritising state school children.

Clearly, every time someone says this, I immediately move them further down the pile of people I want to hang out with. But why is this so prevalent? Yesterday, talking with a client on Zoom, where he was ringing from his lovely home office in his leafy suburb of London I didn't actually know what to even say but I wanted to yell, "FFS, if there's a small shift so that the small number of private school children don't get the majority of places at the top universities, you'll have to live with it." Instead I simply changed the subject politely. Argh.

There is a misconception that state school kids get into top universities with lower grades. That’s simply untrue for most people. Universities have an entrance requirement and the overwhelming majority of students are expected to obtain them. The odd student getting lucky and being offered a place with lower grades isn’t limited to state schools. I know of students from private schools who missed the entrance requirement for Cambridge and got accepted to Oxford on lesser grades.

Now consider the huge advantage in terms of preparation for interviews, support writing the personal statement and much smaller class sizes, that private school students benefit from.

A state school student who made it to an elite university didn’t get there out of pity or some quota. They got there through hard work and receiving far less help and support than private school students.

It’s really disingenuous to down these young peoples hard work and success and claim they get into universities more easily.

Nobody is vilifying privately educated children. It's just acknowledging the advantages and privilege that gives an individual.

On the whole it is going to be easier for a privately educated child to achieve high grades and gain a huge amount of social and cultural capital.
There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that and ensuring that those who haven't had those advantages aren't able to access the same opportunities.

*are able to access

I know 6 DC off to uni this and last week from private 6th forms and they all got into their 1st Uni of Choice and course of choice so I think this is BS. These are students studying medicine, English, and Maths degrees.

My DC's school has 100% success rate of getting their 1st choice uni and it is not even a top private school.

No-one is vilifying privately educated children or their parents, just recognising that this status affords advantage.

And Xenia your claim that parents chose a 'sink school' and that advantages the child is bonkers. Well and truly bonkers.

TortillaBonita of course it's BS to say that privately educated children don't have advantages. That's precisely what parents pay for.

@Xenia DC in grammar schools do not qualify for contextualised offers and rightly so.

As someone who didn't go to uni until I was almost 40, I really don't get this school thing. Why do kids have to go straight to uni from school anyway? Why not go out into the real world and get a job at the bottom of the heap then they will appreciate uni more and be better equipped to handle the further education experience. I was embarrassed by how little my fellow students knew about life outside their own class experience.

I have to admit to being anti private education, there is an expectation that just because they go there it gives the children more rights than the average population. When in fact children are well trained in taking exams but not so good in self learning.
Children who are naturally bright will eventually be able to do both, you can’t buy intelligence.
It is the old story of entitlement vs ability the time comes when money is no longer enough.

@Mirw

As someone who didn't go to uni until I was almost 40, I really don't get this school thing. Why do kids have to go straight to uni from school anyway? Why not go out into the real world and get a job at the bottom of the heap then they will appreciate uni more and be better equipped to handle the further education experience. I was embarrassed by how little my fellow students knew about life outside their own class experience.

I think you make a good point. I did this for 2 years, not so much choice but necessity as I didn’t get the grades but it was a positive experience and gave me life experience and more crucially some money too.

Contextual offers are designed to get the highest ability into the top unis, not to penalise anyone.

And, at the end of the day, Oxbridge interview (as do Imperial and other top unis).

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Do those given contextual offers do well?

@Mirw

As someone who didn't go to uni until I was almost 40, I really don't get this school thing. Why do kids have to go straight to uni from school anyway? Why not go out into the real world and get a job at the bottom of the heap then they will appreciate uni more and be better equipped to handle the further education experience. I was embarrassed by how little my fellow students knew about life outside their own class experience.

There is a lot to be said for this.

I teach mainly mature students and it's a completely different dynamic.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Do those given contextual offers do well?

Yes. They generally perform as well if not better from an academic perspective.

@DrWhoNowww

Thing is, on a population level we absolutely should be prioritising equal and fair access to further education regardless off your parental and secondary education background.

But, if you happen to be the poor sod whose been slogging their guts out at private school for an oxbridge place and you lose out to someone with worse grades but they went to a worse school…it feels quite personal.

So I can also see why some parents feel for their “precious darlings”.

Really the solution is making sure primary and secondary education access is more fair and equitable - so all children have the same opportunities.

The educational disadvantage starts early, fixing it at university entrance punishes the wrong people.

Yes

It’s not about their jobs necessarily it’s about the rounded balanced people they hopefully become as a result of their early experiences.

YABU
It’s discrimination - places at Oxbridge etc should go to the best performing candidate. Private school children have less chance than a state child who has lower grades than them. That’s discrimination.
The top state 6th forms will be heaving with ex-private schoolchildren. And then people will moan about that too.

And it’s a fallacy that all private schools are academic hothouses - simply not true.

@Toomuchtrouble4me

YABU It’s discrimination - places at Oxbridge etc should go to the best performing candidate. Private school children have less chance than a state child who has lower grades than them. That’s discrimination. The top state 6th forms will be heaving with ex-private schoolchildren. And then people will moan about that too.

Exactly this

I find it interesting how little some people on the thread trust universities, to make decisions about who will benefit most from the particular educational opportunities they offer.

You'd think they were run by credulous fools, with no awareness of the relationship between grades, potential and tertiary outcomes, if some of the comments here were taken at face value.

@Toomuchtrouble4me

YABU It’s discrimination - places at Oxbridge etc should go to the best performing candidate. Private school children have less chance than a state child who has lower grades than them. That’s discrimination. The top state 6th forms will be heaving with ex-private schoolchildren. And then people will moan about that too.

Again, it's not discrimination

@fiveinfulham

When people talk about ‘buying privilege’ it’s as if they imagine a family saying, “oh look, we’ve got the money so let’s just send him to St Paul’s.”

I mean, I’d people have any idea?

There is no such think as buying a place at a top school any more than you can rock up at Cambridge and buy a place there. No amount of money will make these schools take your child if they don’t get into the top x% of applicants. Doesn’t matter what you do. Yes there are tutors and a whole money-making racket out there, but you can only do so much with an 11 year old. You can’t ‘buy’ underlying ability. Many of the schools use CAT tests now because they want to assess underlying ability, rather than learned ability.

So yes, they are privileged to have the opportunity in the first place, of course. But 90% will be rejected at 11 (or 7 or 13). You can only ‘buy privilege’ if they let your child in!

Su when schools can literally cherry pick their students, they don’t actually have to be educational wizards to get the results they do. The students largely do it on their own. It’s no magic formula that state schools are missing. Nor is it any surprise that students with IQs of 130 plus are more likely to apply to university. No shit Sherlock. These students are in every school, but in some schools they are the entire cohort.

Less (or even non) selective independents tend to be extremely hit and miss. You are at the mercy of the governing body so be careful. Some schools hold in to teachers who aren’t fit to teach because they’re all friends and support each other’s weird ways. Sometimes the class sizes aren’t that much smaller than in state schools. Other times they are too small so that it limits options (eg if only two students want to take psychology they just won’t run that course).

Independents schools vary massively - between sleepy preps v superselectives or urban schools v traditional ‘big names.’ Not to mention that some schools are boarding! Whole other ball game. I would say, independent schools vary more than state, so to lump all those students together as “they are this” or “they do that” is beyond ridiculous. Imagine doing that to any other group in society.

Exactly this. Most people commenting have no first hand experience of private schools, how different they are or how the selection process for the top London day schools works.

It would be preferable for all state schools to be good, of course, but they aren't. Many teachers went into teaching in years gone by because they weren't academically exceptional enough to succeed where their original ambitions lead them. Two thirds of my all-female year group (1974) became teachers or nurses, and I am sure most have done okay and enjoyed a decent career. But the teaching profession is now closing ranks behind a veil of bureaucratic requirements to say we are the professionals. When it's blatantly obviously that a lot of the intake into teacher training, unless as a second career, is because they failed the live up to their dreams of acting or academia, and then we all have to cast around for an alternative. You're happy with a DP and decide to teach, do your PGCE and you get the hang of it, work out how to fill in the forms and keep up to speed with the paperwork, have kids, apply for an HoD in a nice place, get it and STAY forever. I love teachers, some of my close friends are teachers, teachers have tipped off my DS to opportunities he might not have seen.

The post I am currently seeing above what I am writing asks about equality. Raise the standard of state schools. I agree. But to do that you have to raise the standards and aspirations of state school parents. Private school parents prove they value education by paying for it. After being taxed for it.

I stumbled across a supplement in a Sunday newspaper that listed all private schools, the fees for day and boarding and the alumni. Some boarding schools cost 50k per annum and that’s just the fees. Add uniforms, extra tuition and travel on top and that’s a hefty price tag. These children are already way ahead of their poor comprehensive/academy school peers. They have had opportunities all their life, won’t be in debt when they graduate, will have a nice deposit for a house and pushy parents that have contacts and can make things happen for them. Intelligent, hardworking children from poorer backgrounds need to be prioritised by the top universities because we need these kinds of people doing the top jobs. Funnily enough nearly every serving U.K. politician was listed in the alumni.

Was one of the non private school kids at Cambridge. Now an admissions tutor myself.

I am not prejudiced against private schools, but I don’t read the personal statements. Schools that send a lot of students to our university write a slick letter for the student, some poor kid from South London at a school that Gavin Williams thinks needs 3 grades knocking off will not have an oxbridge tutor to polish up their letter.

@Feefsie53

I stumbled across a supplement in a Sunday newspaper that listed all private schools, the fees for day and boarding and the alumni. Some boarding schools cost 50k per annum and that’s just the fees. Add uniforms, extra tuition and travel on top and that’s a hefty price tag. These children are already way ahead of their poor comprehensive/academy school peers. They have had opportunities all their life, won’t be in debt when they graduate, will have a nice deposit for a house and pushy parents that have contacts and can make things happen for them. Intelligent, hardworking children from poorer backgrounds need to be prioritised by the top universities because we need these kinds of people doing the top jobs. Funnily enough nearly every serving U.K. politician was listed in the alumni.

My privately educated DC will be in debt when they graduate, won’t have a house deposit and will only benefit from our contacts if they go into a field that we work in ( 0 out of 4 intending to do that at present). They know that their inheritance is their education and they need to utilise it. We have done well despite not because of our patchy state school educations and wanted different experiences for our DC. Too many assumptions on this thread.

My Ds has friends and acquaintances right across the educational spectrum, having had a misjudged education (my fault). From Eton, his oldest chum, who was very bright, to the child (also bright) of a deaf logcutter who installed his 15 yo son into a static uninsulated unheated caravan at 15 to make room for younger chldren (six of them). And every variation in between. DS is socially fluid; he's had to be, but it has been a learning curve.