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.

@Xenia

The only reason I mentioned Bristol's scheme was to point out the impression given above that ALL contextual schemes require the applicant to have as high grades as those from free paying schools was not correct for all universities although may well be from Oxbridge.

We also have a problem with the huge rise of A and A*. Hardly anyone got an A in my day (A stars did not exist). I suppose that is why universities have moved to their own tests for some subjects such as medicine and law to distinguish people.

I agree with Skinny that those with not much money might well go to their local university - Northumbria, Sunderland etc (areas where I am from although my uncle and father both read medicine in those days at Durham University and were from Bishop Auckland up there so it was local. I checked their school which was a state grammar which was founded i the 1600s in their day and is not grammar today and I don't think any children now compared with the 1930s and 40s went to Durham now. That might just reflect poverty levels I suppose. My great grandparents moved up to NE England in the 1870s because it was rich and booming and there were jobs from the thriving coal fields. By 1929 there was dire poverty and people were trying to leave. 3 of my grandfather's brothers emigrated to Canada and one sister moved to London to work as a nurse for 30 years. A bit like my siblings and I all moving in the 1980s to get work.

Um, SkinnyMirror didn't say that 'those with not much money might well go to their local university'.

What she actually said, based on her research is that 'Early indications show that first generation students in particular and those from low participation groups ( often the same ) are still more likely to choose a local university rather than an elite university even when they are likely to achieve the grades required to study at a top university.'

Which is very different.

I love children who get into high up universities coming from lower class backgrounds and yes I agree that of course some of these kids are more intelligent and deserve it but at the moment you stand more chance if you are ethnic or diverse.

I'm sorry but that is so incorrect I'm not actually sure where to start.

When you say 'ethnic' or 'diverse' what do you actually mean? The group most underrepresented at university as a whole are while working class boys. However, under representation means different things to different universities which is why they have individual access and participation plans.

As for 'standing more chance'.... well that's not what contextual admissions is about. Currently, you 'stand more chance' of going to a top university in you are privately educated, attend a school which scores above the national average for GCSE results, if your parents went to university and if your parents work in a professional role.
Those are the facts.

I am trying to be charitable and assume that some of these mistaken comments come from people who do not understand how university admissions work, rather than people who resent their extreme privilege being reduced slightly to a great deal of privilege.

Let me explain in simple terms - if your nephew Nigel didn’t get into medicine with AAA it’s unlikely to be because all universities hate white middle class privately educated boys and all the places are taken by black asylum seekers from sink schools who are thick as two short planks.

It’s more likely to be because he got a lower score in the aptitude test and didn't even get interviewed. Or he scored low at interview because was MMI and they are fairer and more reliable that traditional interviews.

Nigel knows this. Maybe his mother does too. But it’s much easier to tell everyone else in the family that it’s been because of political correctness and “ diverse and ethnic “.

want to tell everyone that. S

Sorry for random last line ^

@threatmatrix

I sent my sons to private school on waitressing money. I never had a holiday, and worked six days a week while also studying to better myself. It can be done, but only if you are prepared to put your children before yourself. At the moment there is a drive to get state educated children into higher universities so it actually has been a bit biased and I have witnessed this first hand. You can call me a liar all you want, it doesn’t really affect me in any way. I was a firm believer in Grammar schools as they worked very well. I love children who get into high up universities coming from lower class backgrounds and yes I agree that of course some of these kids are more intelligent and deserve it but at the moment you stand more chance if you are ethnic or diverse.

Is the point of that post to make the op feel better, by any chance?

If we do things over and above what is expected for our children, and most parents do at some time or another, that is our choice. In no way should we make our efforts into a 'sacrifice' for which they have to feel grateful and perform accordingly.

Don't let your left hand know what your right is doing.

However, if your children are happy, well rounded and have achieved well academically, good for them.

Nigel knows this. Maybe his mother does too. But it’s much easier to tell everyone else in the family that it’s been because of political correctness and “ diverse and ethnic “. There are a lot of narratives wide of the truth about DC's achievements, for sure!

@threatmatrix

I sent my sons to private school on waitressing money. I never had a holiday, and worked six days a week while also studying to better myself. It can be done, but only if you are prepared to put your children before yourself. At the moment there is a drive to get state educated children into higher universities so it actually has been a bit biased and I have witnessed this first hand. You can call me a liar all you want, it doesn’t really affect me in any way. I was a firm believer in Grammar schools as they worked very well. I love children who get into high up universities coming from lower class backgrounds and yes I agree that of course some of these kids are more intelligent and deserve it but at the moment you stand more chance if you are ethnic or diverse.

Aside from the sums not adding up, I do not think you work in university admissions as you would know that is patently not how access and widening participation works.

Given private schools cost about 15-20K a year per child, someone who managed to pay for that from waitressing would need to work circa 40 hours a week (i.e. fulltime) just to pay the fees alone - and that’s just for one child and obviously doesn’t include cost of rent, food, bills. Unless there was a substantial bursary those sums just don’t add up!
Totally agree with previous posters that to pay 30-40K a year for say 2 children at private school isn’t something available to many people. No amount of scrimping or saving can magic up more money than you actually earn in the first place!

It's ca be a bit lower, even "only" £10k in the North by the way not £15k a year. However no one is pretending everyone can afford it. Any housewife who does not work even with a husband on £14k a year though could return to full time work and the net minimum wage would pay one set of school fees if 100% of that wage went no that, in many parts of the UK (one child).

I agree that plenty of state and private parents however have an over inflated view of how brilliant their child is. However plenty of those who don't get into Oxbridge from both sectors are probably up to the standard but were just unlucky.

It doesn't really matter if that poster did manage to send her kids to private school on a 'waitresses wage'. That's neither here nor there.

It's the comments about only standing a chance if you're ethnic or diverse which are utter bollocks! Even a cursory glance at the statistics demonstrate that,

I sent my sons to private school on waitressing money. I never had a holiday, and worked six days a week while also studying to better myself. It can be done, but only if you are prepared to put your children before yourself.

Nice implication there that everyone sending their kids to state schools is just lazy and/or selfish.

What about those who could afford private education but chose state? Can you wrap your head around that?

Seriously the single sex state girls school in our city has better results than the private one and is bigger which to me is a plus. My academic dd1 is really pushed and doing well and has a nice group of like minded pals. She does sport in an out of school club. It would be insane for us to sell our house to send ours private! Plus we both state educated and did really well.

@Xenia - when Bristol first started giving preferential access (by accepting lower a level grades) about 12 years ago, it was gamed by a number of private school parents. After their 18 year olds were rejected because of their grades they then chose the "retake" their a levels at the worst state school they could find. In reality whilst they were officially on the register, the pupils were mostly privately tutored at home. They then reapplied to Bristol and go in. The state 6th forms were complicit in this as they could then make a big show about how some of their pupils got into top universities studying really competitive degrees.

Bristol Uni caught on to this after a couple of years and tightened up the criteria to take into consideration all the applicants education as well as whether the parents went to Uni as well.

@singingstones

I sent my sons to private school on waitressing money. I never had a holiday, and worked six days a week while also studying to better myself. It can be done, but only if you are prepared to put your children before yourself.

Nice implication there that everyone sending their kids to state schools is just lazy and/or selfish.

What about those who could afford private education but chose state? Can you wrap your head around that?

My DD heard this at university. She was told her parents didn't love her enough to pay for a good education for her. She pointed out she had better A level results than the other person and they were at the same uni on the same course so if her education wasn't good then neither was theirs even if it had cost lots of money.

@threatmatrix

I sent my sons to private school on waitressing money. I never had a holiday, and worked six days a week while also studying to better myself. It can be done, but only if you are prepared to put your children before yourself. At the moment there is a drive to get state educated children into higher universities so it actually has been a bit biased and I have witnessed this first hand. You can call me a liar all you want, it doesn’t really affect me in any way. I was a firm believer in Grammar schools as they worked very well. I love children who get into high up universities coming from lower class backgrounds and yes I agree that of course some of these kids are more intelligent and deserve it but at the moment you stand more chance if you are ethnic or diverse.

How long ago was that???!

No way would this be possible now

@Xenia

Mary "No one gets into the top 5 or the 20 Russell Group universities with compromised grades or sob stories." Bristol where 3 of mine go let those in the bottom 40% of schools get in with about 2 grades lower so whilst what you say may be true of Oxbridge(same grades but choosing the FSM candidate over Eton) is not the case for places like Bristol.

Most of my children's private school friends are not handed jobs on plate as Eleg implies. I don't even know how you give a child a job in law or accountancy. I know loads of lawyers but the firms have complicated application processes. You cannot bypass them.

What do you think of those students with the two grades lower who get above average degree results at Bristol? Does that tell you anything?

@ancientgran what a horrible thing that was said to your DD. I had similar interactions at my RG university - lots of the kids who’d come straight from some of the more elite boarding schools (not all the private schools, by any means) seemed to think university was just a ‘bigger house’ and that all the same social structures of bullying, one upmanship and various hierarchies were still in place. They had a bit of a rude awakening in meeting other more mature and streetwise folk from a mix of private snd state schools who met comments like ‘you can’t talk to him that way, he’s an actual second year!’ with utter bemusement, what with being that we were all adults living away from home.

What about those who could afford private education but chose state? Can you wrap your head around that?

Yep, that includes me. I'm sure some people probably think I'm a terrible parent for choosing to send my child to a state comprehensive school instead of a private school when we could have comfortably afforded it. It wasn't even an ofsted "outstanding" school either.

The thing is, I had faith in my dd's ability to do well in the sector and I had faith in my own ability as a parent to support her. I know that I don't need to pay for private school in order for her to fulfil her potential.

Not all kids have the same advantages in life, though. Not all parents have the confidence or the ability to support their children's education. And I probably would have gone private if my only option had been a "sink school" in which I didn't think dd would thrive. It's the kids for whom the local sink school is the only choice that need the contextual offers.

@RoseGoldEagle

Well I don’t know, isn’t the whole point of sending your children to private school is to get them into a better university and then a better job?

Not in our case. We looked round a private school recently (not decided yet if we’re going to send our kids private yet), and the thing we liked most was the range of different opportunities, outside academia, that are kids are able to access. The benefit of that in my eyes isn’t to ‘create a well rounded individual who can put a perfect uni application in’ - it’s to hopefully increase their chances of finding things outside of academia that they love doing- purely for the sake that enjoying what you’re doing is a great way to spend your time. I’ve no agenda about whether they go to uni or not, or if they do - which one, I want them to pursue whatever it is they enjoy for the sake of their own happiness. Of course they (at some point) need to consider the job prospects of whatever it is they enjoy doing, but it’s ultimately their life and up to them when they do.

I do completely appreciate (and dislike) the unfairness of these schools being available only to people who can afford them, I wish all schools offered those opportunities. It’s one of the reasons I can’t decide whether to go down the private route or not, it’s something I’ve always felt was unfair and it’s very recently that we’re in a position to be able to afford it. I completely agree with the idea of a ‘A’ from some schools being worth more than a ‘A’ from some private schools.

It’s interesting as when I’ve asked people why they opted for private school for their dc they usually reply with this answer (about the range of non academic opportunities), or that they felt it would be a better fit for their dc etc etc. They never say that it’s to try and get good grades or to help with future university/career options , which I’m pretty sure is the real reason.

And I do tend to roll my eyes a bit when they use this as a reason, because it’s perfectly possible, and a lot cheaper, to give your dc a range of extra curricular opportunities (music/art/sports) outside of school if you have sufficient finances. We have done this with all of our dc and the older ones are still heavily involved in their chosen interests and have many friends in those areas.

ancient, as most students get 2/1 and 1sts it is a bit hard to compare the contextualised offer holders v. those in state or private with no contextualised offers.

"In 2016, the university admitted 1,000 students on such offers. Although the students are not offered any additional targeted support once admitted, research has shown that students admitted to Bristol with one grade lower than the entry requirements do just as well as, if not better than, those admitted on the standard offer." www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/promoting-equal-opportunities/effective-practice/contextual-admissions/examples/ I have not found data showing they do better and it is so hard to remove the politics in this as people will want to prove those let in with lower grades do fine and others the opposite.

@AlexaShutUp

What about those who could afford private education but chose state? Can you wrap your head around that?

Yep, that includes me. I'm sure some people probably think I'm a terrible parent for choosing to send my child to a state comprehensive school instead of a private school when we could have comfortably afforded it. It wasn't even an ofsted "outstanding" school either.

The thing is, I had faith in my dd's ability to do well in the sector and I had faith in my own ability as a parent to support her. I know that I don't need to pay for private school in order for her to fulfil her potential.

Not all kids have the same advantages in life, though. Not all parents have the confidence or the ability to support their children's education. And I probably would have gone private if my only option had been a "sink school" in which I didn't think dd would thrive. It's the kids for whom the local sink school is the only choice that need the contextual offers.

We are in this position too, could have comfortably afforded one, with much tighter budgeting two, but like you we trusted in our own dcs’ abilities and they went to an ofsted “good” state comp. We knew we could support and arrange tutoring if needed but it wasn’t.

At times I did question whether we’d done the right thing. Especially when we heard of the disruption and behavioural issues in certain classes, but these were the exception not the rule, and the higher set classes were fine.

I agree with you about the “sink school” comment.

@Lollipop444, we have done that too. And funnily enough, as dd has got older, she has encountered a lot of privately educated dc at her extracurricular activities because they are looking for the sort of high level specialist provision that even a private school with lots of opportunities can't provide.

Again, it's easy to do this when you have the money to pay for it, regardless of the type of school that your children attend. It's the kids whose parents can't or won't support these activities who end up missing out.

People are talking across each other here. I think there are two arguments going on:

1. Poor children with contextualised offers are knocking private school children out of university places unfairly
2. Middle class stats educated children are knocking middle class privately educated children out of university places unfairly

The first is nonsense. No one on this thread believed that. People arguing against that are responding to a convenient straw man.

The second is worth a look. According to the FT, in 2019, 25% of the A-star grades came from private school pupils. If you lower the proportion at elite universities of private school graduates below 25%, you have to use some form of discrimination to do so. Why? Because targets.

@Empressofthemundane

People are talking across each other here. I think there are two arguments going on:

1. Poor children with contextualised offers are knocking private school children out of university places unfairly
2. Middle class stats educated children are knocking middle class privately educated children out of university places unfairly

The first is nonsense. No one on this thread believed that. People arguing against that are responding to a convenient straw man.

The second is worth a look. According to the FT, in 2019, 25% of the A-star grades came from private school pupils. If you lower the proportion at elite universities of private school graduates below 25%, you have to use some form of discrimination to do so. Why? Because targets.

Well it is only worth a look where the % of privately educated pupils is less than that 25%. Of course this is assuming that these 25% of A* corresponds to 25% of applicants and these are spread across the full range of subjects - neither of which are likely to be true given the propensity of private schools to encourage pupils to take more A-levels and concentrate them into applying for "higher value" subjects such as law and medicine.

In 2020, for example, 31.4% of the successful UK applicants to Oxford (according to the stats in the university's own website) were privately educated. Now, I don't have a triple first in Maths from Cambridge, but that does look like it is still more than 25%, despite years of contextual offers and the apparent "discrimination" going on these days.

As such, where is the evidence that privately educated applicants are being discriminated against given that they are still overrepresented at one of our most sought after institutions even using a very generous measure of individual A-level grades awarded?

The thing is, I had faith in my dd's ability to do well in the sector and I had faith in my own ability as a parent to support her.

Same - for us the advantages of state education outweighed the disadvantages. It's hard work to stay interested and involved and it's difficult for working parents to manage activities out of school, but doable. As a PP would probably sneer, it can be done, but only if you are prepared to put your children before yourself.

I completely agree with the eye rolling at "it's not about buying grades, it's about opportunities outside the classroom". No need for private education if that's what you genuinely want. The other classic is people arguing that selective schools are more diverse, when the whole point of selection is to exclude great swathes of society. The mental gymnastics are quite something. I brought this up once on a different thread, that students at private school were unlikely to meet a child in care, or one whose parents were unemployed, or one who might only get 2 GCSEs and become a labourer - one poster replied that there are some things in life that children should be protected from 🤯