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

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.

You've said yoursellf "they do just as well if not better." So they aren't second rate are they? There are ways you can tell, my son didn't go to a private school but he got a prize for the best science dissertation in his year. His dissertation was clearly better than the private school students.

@hangonamo

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 🤯

I agree with most of what you say but I still remember how impressed I was as a 12 year old from an inner city slum when I was invited to dinner at the consulate of another country. The Consul's DD was in my form at grammar school. I felt very awkward and out of my depth and I remember how kind her mother was and how she put me at my ease. I'd never have had that experience if I'd gone to the local secondary mod.

I’m not looking at any stats after 2019. I think the exam fiasco in response to COVID makes them meaningless.

Can you direct me to where you are getting your stats from? I’m relying on an old FT article.

I felt very awkward and out of my depth and I remember how kind her mother was and how she put me at my ease. I'd never have had that experience if I'd gone to the local secondary mod.

That's lovely, but for us the opportunity to feel awkward at a consulate wouldn't be enough to justify being separated from huge groups of society.

@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.

But the state educated kids in the second category are not getting the contextualised offers. There is simply no evidence that middle class state school kids are pushing out middle class privately educated kids unfairly.

I actually think it is patronizing beyond belief to want your dc to mix with dc in care or dc who might work as builders. Because they are all just dc not a special sub group that your dc would benefit from interacting with.
The dc I grew up with who would fit into this group were just children exactly the same as the ones my dc mix with at their private school.
Children who have crushes, chat about music and teachers.
They have different opportunities in the future, different financial cushions but the day to day interactions are just children being children.

Not sure why it's patronising to want DC to mix with lots of different people? I can't follow that reasoning, sorry.

The specific examples I gave (as I said in my post) were an attempt to show people who were arguing that private schools are more diverse than state schools, that in fact they are not. They are not a wish list that I'm hoping my DC can tick off, what are you on about?

@spicedappledonuts

I actually think it is patronizing beyond belief to want your dc to mix with dc in care or dc who might work as builders. Because they are all just dc not a special sub group that your dc would benefit from interacting with. The dc I grew up with who would fit into this group were just children exactly the same as the ones my dc mix with at their private school. Children who have crushes, chat about music and teachers. They have different opportunities in the future, different financial cushions but the day to day interactions are just children being children.

I don't agree at all that it's patronising to want your kids to mix with kids from different socio-economic backgrounds. I think it's a really important aspect of building a fairer society. Yes, on one level, they are all just kids together, but as they get older, there is a growing awareness of the fact that people have different challenges and different life chances, and of the fundamental unfairness that goes along with that.

My dd went to a state primary school but it was essentially a little middle class bubble. Intellectually, she knew that there were kids who didn't enjoy the privileged life that she enjoyed, but she had no real understanding of what this meant. The transition to secondary school was a bit of a shock for her, because she was suddenly exposed to a much wider range of people, but I have seen how her understanding and awareness has really grown over the years. She has become so more empathetic, so much less judgemental and so much more aware of her own privilege as a result of learning alongside kids from backgrounds very different to her own. As an aspiring doctor, I believe that these experiences will undoubtedly enable her to relate to her patients more effectively. Perhaps if more of those currently in government had been exposed to a wider cross section of society when they were growing up, they might even be making better and fairer decisions now about how to run the country.

Well, universities explain the thinking behind contextual offers as developing a student population that reflects wider society.

That's the benefit of mixing with lots of different people.

What is beyond patronising is saying things like children who have been/are in care are 'just children being children' like other children.

They're not. They've experienced abandonment and traumatic loss that most people won't go through even as adults, with long-term consequences.

My point is children are just children.
They interact in the same way with each other and have the same conversations about the same stuff regardless of other labels put on them.

There is no merit or demerit in mixing or not mixing with children from any particular backgrounds.

It is pretty insulting to suggest there is a special benefit to your children mixing with children in care in the same way that it would be insulting to suggest that you shouldn't mix with them.

You may not have intended it to sound like a I-spy tick off book but it can definitely come across that way.
I noticed it because it is something I seen before in middle class parents.
Obviously you may have come from this background yourself and only be wanting your dc to have the same experience as yourself but this is often not the case.

Dc in care definitely need decent support from adults but they shouldn't be part of a social mixing experiment for other kids.

The kids in care I mixed with as a child just talked about the same stuff as everyone else in school. Because kids actually do that regardless of backgrounds.

As a children's social worker I understand their support needs reasonably well and they don't include educating my dc about anything, that is my job as a parent.

There is no merit or demerit in mixing or not mixing with children from any particular backgrounds.

Pretty mind boggling if you can't see the benefits of children mixing with people who are different from themselves.

My point is children are just children. They interact in the same way with each other and have the same conversations about the same stuff regardless of other labels put on them.

You come across as very naive.

It is pretty insulting to suggest there is a special benefit to your children mixing with children in care in the same way that it would be insulting to suggest that you shouldn't mix with them.

I didn't suggest there is a special benefit to my children mixing with children in care. I said I didn't want my children to be separated from a large section of society, the society they live in. And mentioned another poster who actually suggested that children should be protected from other people in society (basically, poorer people). I must say I was expecting unanimous outrage about that, not about the idea of children from diverse backgrounds being educated together 🤷‍♀️

@spicedappledonuts

My point is children are just children. They interact in the same way with each other and have the same conversations about the same stuff regardless of other labels put on them.

There is no merit or demerit in mixing or not mixing with children from any particular backgrounds.

It is pretty insulting to suggest there is a special benefit to your children mixing with children in care in the same way that it would be insulting to suggest that you shouldn't mix with them.

You may not have intended it to sound like a I-spy tick off book but it can definitely come across that way.
I noticed it because it is something I seen before in middle class parents.
Obviously you may have come from this background yourself and only be wanting your dc to have the same experience as yourself but this is often not the case.

I fundamentally disagree that there is no merit in mixing with kids from different backgrounds. The fact that they all mix as equals and talk about the same stuff is precisely the point. That's what gives them the insight that those kids are actually just like them, despite the difference in their life chances. It's a shame that many of those in positions of power lack this insight. And indeed many on this thread.

It's ridiculous to suggest it's about some sort of middle class i-spy tick list. It isn't a freak show or a bingo game. It's simply about kids having opportunities to build genuine friendships with people who have very different life experiences from their own by spending time together over a sustained period.

I know that my knowledge and understanding of our society increased enormously as a result of having friends from very different socio-economic backgrounds to my own. Why wouldn't I want my dd to have similar opportunities?

Of course, those who are very happy with the status quo probably won't see any value in exposing their kids to a broader cross section of the population. I guess it's the same difference in values as the one that makes people opposed to efforts to widen participation in HE. If the poor can be kept at arm's length, then I suppose people don't have to trouble themselves too much thinking about them.

And for the avoidance of any misunderstanding, this is not about the poorer dc or children in care having to educate privileged middle class dc about anything. It's about enabling them to mix freely so that there is no othering of people who are different from themselves.

Indeed Alexa.

You're a children's social worker spiced appledonuts, and you don't understand the benefits of mixing with different people?

Mind. Blown.

Presumably spicedappledonuts wouldn't mind if children in care were only educated with other children in care, since there is no merit or demerit in mixing or not mixing with children from any particular backgrounds.

Who knows?

I'm still trying to process a childrens social worker talking about children in care as a comparable category to children whose parents might work at builders.

One of the things I realized when my dc ended up in private school is that there really isn't much difference between dc in different socioeconomic groups.

Much less than I might have expected.

I have no issues with any group of children mixing with any other. I am just not convinced that it makes the kind of differences I had assumed it would.

Growing up in a very economically deprived area I only mixed with other dc in the same situation.

I think I carried prejudices about private schools and perhaps even middle class backgrounds for many years.

But having my dc in a private school meant I had to address them and I realized that they really were just prejudices.

The kids were exactly the same as the kids I grew up with, my dc weren't gaining or losing anything by mixing with a different group of dc.

I remember chatting to a teacher at my dc's school who had previously taught at a very tough state school in the UK who said they had also come to realize dc are just dc, pretty much the same everywhere. Not better, not worse and not actually different either.

It is always a little painful to have to leave some of ones Guardian approved ideas behind as a social worker but sometimes it happens.

( the point about dc in care and laborers was raised by a pp, I was just repeating it
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 )

As I said children in care do actually get placed in private schools at times so this isn't actually totally accurate anyway.

@hangonamo

I felt very awkward and out of my depth and I remember how kind her mother was and how she put me at my ease. I'd never have had that experience if I'd gone to the local secondary mod.

That's lovely, but for us the opportunity to feel awkward at a consulate wouldn't be enough to justify being separated from huge groups of society.

I'm not sure what huge group I was separated from. I wasn't the only one from a rundown inner city area, in my friendship group was the Consul's daughter, the daughter of a barrister, the daughter of a single parent who worked in a factory, a fireman's daughter, a Muslim girl and I think her dad had a shop a Turkish girl whose parents were academics, an American girl whose father was working at the local university on a teporary contract, think she was with us for two years. Honestly it was a much broader spread of society than if I had gone to the local secondary mod where there were certainly no Consul's daughters or barrister's daughters. There would have been plenty of Muslim girls and girls from single parent families.

You say that mixing with people from other socio economic groups doesn't make any difference. Then you say that you didn't do that, and were prejudiced against people different from you for years.
Prejudice is bad, yes?
So doing something that results in prejudice is undesirable?

But isn't that the whole point spicedappledonuts? I deliberately sent my sons to Scouts in a relatively deprived area as opposed to the naice middle class troop most of their schoolfriends attended precisely because I wanted them to know that those children were pretty much the same as them.
Perhaps you wouldn't have had those prejudices if you had had the opportunity to mix with a wider range of people at an earlier stage?
I do think it is important for people to recognise their privileges but it is far more important to learn that as a general rule we have far more in common with most human beings than we have differences - and surely we learn that by meeting different people?

@spicedappledonuts

One of the things I realized when my dc ended up in private school is that there really isn't much difference between dc in different socioeconomic groups.

Much less than I might have expected.

I have no issues with any group of children mixing with any other. I am just not convinced that it makes the kind of differences I had assumed it would.

Growing up in a very economically deprived area I only mixed with other dc in the same situation.

I think I carried prejudices about private schools and perhaps even middle class backgrounds for many years.

But having my dc in a private school meant I had to address them and I realized that they really were just prejudices.

The kids were exactly the same as the kids I grew up with, my dc weren't gaining or losing anything by mixing with a different group of dc.

I remember chatting to a teacher at my dc's school who had previously taught at a very tough state school in the UK who said they had also come to realize dc are just dc, pretty much the same everywhere. Not better, not worse and not actually different either.

It is always a little painful to have to leave some of ones Guardian approved ideas behind as a social worker but sometimes it happens.

( the point about dc in care and laborers was raised by a pp, I was just repeating it
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 )

As I said children in care do actually get placed in private schools at times so this isn't actually totally accurate anyway.

OK, I get where you're coming from, but actually, you're underlining the importance of giving kids the opportunity to mix.

As a child, you only mixed with other kids in economically deprived areas, and you developed some prejudices about people from "posh" backgrounds which were later dispelled when you got to know them. I had a similar experience when I mixed with a lot of privately educated people at university.

Can you not see that many privately educated kids (or indeed kids in very middle class state schools) develop similar prejudices against people from poorer backgrounds, but very seldom get the exposure to have those prejudices challenged? And as a result, we have decision-makers in power making policies on the basis of what they think poorer people are like, without actually having any real insights into what life is really like for those people.

At some point in everyone's life Affirmative Action has to stop. The system will have done its best (or its worst), it's time to deliver the result. The point where what matters is your actual level of attainment, not how you got there. I don't think the education system is prepared to admit this, so the point will continue to come when applying for your first job.

Ancient gran, so basically you got to mix with people posher than you, according to that list? Surely the mixing has to go both ways

I would add, I saw my own dd make that transition when she moved from her very middle class state primary school to her much more socially diverse secondary school. In the beginning, she had loads of prejudices about the kids who were different from her, and she avoided many of them because she had been warned at primary school about the dangers of getting into the "wrong crowd". By the end of year 11, her perspective was totally different as she had come to realise that they weren't really that different from her after all...or at least, the differences were fairly superficial and she understood the reasons for them. By the end of her time at the school, she was able to look past all of those differences and see people for who they were - kids like her with a similar mix of strengths and weaknesses as any of her other friends from primary school. Personally, I think that move away from judgement towards an open mind and mutual respect and understanding was a hugely important part of my dd's development, whereas her primary school friends who went to the private school did not make that shift.