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.

So, my friend sent her (now grown up) children to private school and when they finished they have struggled to get jobs.

So her argument was - there are too many people going to uni. In the second breadth she told me her DH didn’t have to do anything for his masters from Cambridge as they were automatically awarded a year after graduating.

Long live equality of access to higher education!

…

It sounds like a classic case of equality feeling like oppression when someone previously had privilege. I don't for one moment believe that independent schools are being discriminated against, but I do believe that the extra "weight" that was previously added to an application by going to a "good" (ie private) school is lessening.

This 100%

@BungleandGeorge
I’d say the most crucial thing is the parents and the really deprived are those without support and resource at home.

The home environment is important but don’t underestimate the power of their peers/peer group. Studies have shown its huge influence. Averagely academic kids can be raised up in insitution which demands academic excellence by all and where it is prized by all students. Whereas bright kids in a school where there is a pressure not to excel academically, not to be a “geek/bookworm” leads to huge unfulfilled potential.

I have it on good authority that universities have begun to realise that they're not always getting the brightest by picking those with the highest grades, hence the move towards contextual offers. It's not all altruism on the part of the unis - they're genuinely hoping to increase the quality of their intake, and I'm not talking about lineage.

I mean, it is true that the expectations are vastly different from comprehensive state vs private school candidates during admissions.

The "golden candidate" is smart, although he went to a failing comprehensive.

I absolutely don't see it as discrimination, but rather an attempt to somewhat level the playing field.

@camaleon the kind of data that moch11 has highlighted.

But we have had several overseas moves and wanted to keep dc in English education so we didn't have much choice.

We are currently in USA and likely now to be overseas students so it won't be a big issue.

But I was interested to see a thread about it because it was a concern I had had particularly when thinking about what to do about education if we returned to the UK.

Trying to balance the best education for the present versus university applications.

@moch11

I think the reality is far more nuanced than you want to believe OP.

It’s true that pre-16, only 7% of children are privately educated. However, at 16-18, this rises to about 18%.

At Oxbridge now, the proportions of applicants from the state sector is roughly 80%. And the offer rate is proportional to that.

But look more closely. Unis all want the headline figures of “widening participation - state school offers rise by 10% to 80%!’ What they are less keen to shout about is that about half of this state school cohort are from grammar schools or other selective state schools. And there are only about 160 grammars in the country! (clustered in certain local authorities). Is this really ‘widening participation?’

And that’s before you get into the issue if schools that select by faith criteria. Or the postcode lottery that excludes people from certain catchment areas because the house prices are too high.

What happens these days is that your GCSEs and A-levels are contextualised against the average in your school. So a student applying from say, Westminster, with ten grade 8s (ie ten A*s) would actually receive a negative score for GCSE which would indeed disadvantage them in terms of admissions. This is because the average score in that school would probably be closer to a clean slate of 9s. The exact same student, applying with the same grade 8s from a comprehensive, would be considered stellar and given a very positive GCSE score because the average GCSE score in that school might be 6s and 7s.

The question is, would the Westminster student have achieved the same GCSEs at the state school? In most cases, the answer would be a resounding ‘yes’ because you don’t get into Westminster unless you are in the top 1% of ability (at least). Most of these students, could do GCSEs off their own bat at home. In fact, getting into certain schools at 11 plus is definitely more competitive than getting into Oxbridge!

Students in independents are now being advised not to mention any relevant school trips or conferences etc on their personal statements as this might mark them out as ‘privileged.’ It’s all a bit of a mockery, to be honest.

You are told very bluntly at the uni advice days that if you are applying from a selective school, a string of top grades mean not much at all. Nada! If you don’t do something well beyond the curriculum, you will not have a chance against students with similar grades from non-selective state schools (especially those in under-represented areas like the NE or Wales). It understandable as to why this situation now exists, but nevertheless it does create an uneven playing field. If you were 18 and rejected from a uni with four A*, in favour of someone who gets a contextual offer of ABB, you might feel a bit miffed. This is also understandable.

It is not understandable that said private school student should feel miffed as the uneven playing field begins from birth and will have always primarily disadvantaged the state school student.

I think a lot of you don't have a clear understanding of what it takes to get a contextual offer. I know someone who got a contextual offer and it involved hours and hours of work and a 5000 word essay written in conjunction with a PHD student before she got the contextual offer. She worked incredibly hard for that offer and is very deserving of it. She is absolutely up to par with the students who didn't get contextual offers at her uni because she gets the same (and in some cases better) grades as those students on her course. The students on her course are predominantly private school students who did not get contextual offers. That hasn't made them any better at the course than she is.

I really hope that the admissions departments at elite universities are using their common sense.

An 18 year old who gets A,B,B at A levels:
*from a council estate,
*attending an average to low performing school,
*on free school meals,
*first member of their family to go to university

Should get preferential treatment over an
18 year old with A,A,A who went to Eton / Wellington / Marlborough

Lots of good points on here, not least is that education is generally not exactly a level playing field and that there are way too many variables. I would include grammar schools in this - in DS' year, I know a number of kids who are applying for grammar school and in every case they have had private tutoring and additional support from their parents to help them get there. Not that they aren't smart, just that the extra help has been on hand. So I can see a situation where grammar schools are the ones that then get all the extra places and that it's not necessarily any more fair.

But if 25% (according to the FT) of places are still taken by private school kids, that does suggest there remains an inequality there. Then exacerbated by the high percentage of grammar school kids who get top university places and who have probably had help along the way too in one form or another.

I was struck recently by Wes Streeting's list of things that children under 10 should have done and that many children from socially/economically deprived children don't have. It wasn't complex or hardcore things like skiing trips but rather things like the opportunity to present / speak publicly, trips to museums etc.

Only in Britain would people be gloating that unquestionably bright children who have passed highly selective entrance exams (beating contemporaries both from the private and state sectors) should be turned away from seats of learning on the basis their parents paid for their schooling.

I agree with much of moch11s post. I had two DC at Westminster, both taking 5 A levels including 4A* predictions. Both ended up with 2 offers, received in late March. We were warned, and half expected, that one at least would not get an offer and have to reapply.

Had they been at a bog standard comp I expect they would have got more offers, and heard earlier.

Does it matter?

I don’t think it does. Oxbridge is not the be all and end all. As it was both ended up getting good degrees from London Us, in quite specialist subjects not offered by Oxbridge. Their secondary education had prepared them well for further study.

There are plenty of good universities, both in the UK and overseas. If Oxbridge are looking for a different profile, so be it. Other Universities will be interest in good academic applicants with study skills in place. Proportions of overseas students are so high in London that the state/private debate becomes a bit meaningless. You need to be good enough to get in, and good enough to keep up.

The Oxbridge obsession is the problem.

@Plumtree391

People have funny ideas when it comes to their children's education. Those that I know in recent times have gone to good universities from state schools but they were generally grammar schools with high academic standards.

Just look around and find schools that suit your children, where they will blossom, and ignore everybody else.

Or selective comps/6th forms colleges.

There are areas of the country with no grammar schools and they get good cohort of their pupils into university including Oxbridge.

Funny thing was when the tactics they use to get pupils into university were uncovered in the media a few years back, I was amused as it has been going on for decades.

When the quality of state education is consistent across the country and not determined by your postcode, population density or religion - then the state versus independent argument makes sense.

Not everybody is prepared to become Catholic to get into the oversubscribed Catholic school down the road. So it might become a toss up between paying up £xxxxx in stamp duty and higher house prices to get into the catchment of a good state comprehensive, or stay put and use the money towards school fees instead. This is often the case in overpopulated areas of London (and I’m sure other cities as well) where the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ schools can be particularly stark. Plus there simply aren’t enough state schools for the population in first place. It’s a vicious circle in many areas.

The choice to go private is usually a function of where you happen to live. The same family, in a leafy suburb with a good / outstanding comp locally, would happily send their kids there. They are not sending their child to a private school because they want to be better than everyone else. Perhaps they just don’t want their child involved in a culture of knife crime or something like that. So, if you’re not fortunate to have a good school that you are in the catchment for (or you lack the religious credentials), you move or you pay up if you possibly can. That is the state of education in Britain today.

It's been interesting observing differences and similarities in the experiences of my brother's children (very ordinary non-selective state schools from a town so average it gets used for more market research than anywhere else), my child (non-selective state school from leafy prosperous highly educated area) and my sister's children (top flight independent schools). It's quite clear that parental social and academic capital makes a vast amount of the running.

What I have been told, by a reliable academic source, is that there may be a differential in the 'second chance' routes. Eg at Oxbridge the college pool. If you are from a private school and you can't ring the bell first time round, that's not well regarded.

[quote supermoonrising]@notanothertakeaway
That's quite a generalisation. In my city, one of the state schools has excellent sporting facilities, better exam results and better pastoral support than the closest two private schools

Well, just change it to “the majority of state schools will never be able to compete”, then.

The average state school kid has about £5k spent on him/her a year. The average private school kid - a day pupil - about 13k a year. So 2.5x
A private boarder about 30k a year.

So 2.5x the money is invested in their education than a state school child’s education. Add on the amounts spent on (overwhelmingly) state school kids with behavioural problems, learning disabilities, English as a second language etc. Add on the fact that the private school intake will be academically stringer to begin with (wealthier, more academic, more motivated parents).

I’m not against private schools per se. But I AM against Tory politicians (in the main) pretending that every state school has the potential to get 80% A grades at A- Level like Eton (or the country top state school for that matter), if only they’d X,Y and Z (more discipline! more Bibles! More Ofsetd! more marking bureaucracy!）It is disingenuous bollocks.[/quote]
Surely the figures you have quoted are the school fees rather than the amount actually spent on the child? And I supplement the state school cost with things like lunches, text books, donations. I pay for out of school sport and a tutor.
Every private school doesn’t and can’t meet the grades of Eton but I believe they are extremely selective academically. And don’t they have a very large amount of means tested bursaries?
Some children are incredibly disadvantaged and definitely deserve consideration however a lot who complain are middle class engaged parents with cash to pay for extras who want to believe that their children would have done so much better at private school.

I used to work in a private school as a non teaching member of staff. I was honestly shocked by how much the teachers did for the kids. I mean literally sometimes they would do the work for them - at one point even the moderator was questioning how the coursework of one student could be so wildly different (and better) than their exam work. Also, during the exams the rules were not always followed (they didn't always take phones away etc)

I felt like the head of department felt a huge pressure to get high grades for the students so people would continue to pay for their children to go to that school and very often a student would come away with a grade that they really didn't deserve, and more importantly they didn't actually learn what they needed to!

From what I have seen at (disclaimer) one university and one subject. Contextualisation comes into play particulaly in 2 instances: getting interviewed and deciding the final fee places.

So, in this instance (and it's one of the two Oxbridge universities), if you certain combinations of contextual markers and meet the minimum admissions requirement you basically have to be given am interview. So you get the chance to prove yourself in person regardless of how well crafted your application is/isn't.

In the second case, the students who are stand out brilliant across the board (admissions test/written work/interview) will get places regardless of private/state school. So will probably the next best students. But say you can take 8 students and you now have one place left. Two students have the same grades, and similar level level of understanding but one went to a private school, has lots of extra curricular and is very polished in speaking and expressing themselves. The other is more nervous, they haven't been coached interviews, their ideas are good but not as well expressed, they haven't had many clubs. Do you you for the first student because they present better? Or do you look at the contextual school information and go "hey, the second person hasn't had as many opportunities to develop their confidence, public speaking etc or as much extra curricular opportunities but they've their aptitude and enthusiasm is as good, we should give them a chance"?

Sometimes following a parents career is advantageous too.
DS has a friend who is following his Dad into medical physics. His dad got him several work experiences, and was able to talk around the subject at home to a great depth.
We however cannot help at all with DS engineering choice.

So maybe looking at the parents may be a way to level the field too??

@Caplin

I took my kids out of private primary (our local primary was one of the worst in the city), but to the horror of other parents I'm taking them out to go to our very decent (mid table) state secondary. I never really wnated to get stuck in tehprivate school bubble.

But I learned that lots of private school parents in Scotland take their kids out on S6 and put them into state secondary as they are more likely to get a spot in a decent uni! In Scotland most exams are done and dusted in S5 so can be a bit of a doss year for bright kids.

Talk about gaming the system!

This doesn’t work so I don’t know why people would do it to their kids. Because

1. University entrance requirements are adjusted for only a small number of state high schools, not all of them.

1. These adjustments are for pupils who have attended such schools for

4-5 years, not 4-5 months. The admissions officers can see where the applicants sat their N5s and Highers.

@girljulian What you write is factually correct but I disagree with your conclusion. Every single person in Westminster school is extremely privileged, mostly by virtue of having rich and supportive parents. They are also bright, but really the level of brightness varies (it is generally not possible to capture brightness by A level results...). Same is more or less true for every selective school with high results. As such I would indeed expect much better performance from students coming from such schools than from a student who went to regular comprehensive. The exception to this would be a rare student on full scholarship.

Of course you could game the system by sending your child to a local school and prepping him at home, but most people don't do it which is quite telling.

It sounds like a classic case of equality feeling like oppression when someone previously had privilege.

Yes, this. If you want to say something just repeat 'if all you've ever known is privilege, equality starts to feel like oppression'. I don't think it's either right or wrong to speak up. It will depend on the situation and what you feel able to do, but that is simple and to the point. It allows them to cogitate without being massively confrontational.

@moch11

When the quality of state education is consistent across the country and not determined by your postcode, population density or religion - then the state versus independent argument makes sense.

Not everybody is prepared to become Catholic to get into the oversubscribed Catholic school down the road. So it might become a toss up between paying up £xxxxx in stamp duty and higher house prices to get into the catchment of a good state comprehensive, or stay put and use the money towards school fees instead. This is often the case in overpopulated areas of London (and I’m sure other cities as well) where the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ schools can be particularly stark. Plus there simply aren’t enough state schools for the population in first place. It’s a vicious circle in many areas.

The choice to go private is usually a function of where you happen to live. The same family, in a leafy suburb with a good / outstanding comp locally, would happily send their kids there. They are not sending their child to a private school because they want to be better than everyone else. Perhaps they just don’t want their child involved in a culture of knife crime or something like that. So, if you’re not fortunate to have a good school that you are in the catchment for (or you lack the religious credentials), you move or you pay up if you possibly can. That is the state of education in Britain today.

That is a really good point. We have relatives who did this, the choice was an underperforming sink school or private, one child had SEN and they went private as they weren’t being catered for adequately at the local school.

It’s complex and there is no way of achieving fairness, but I like the idea of giving a leg up to those with real potential but poor life opportunities.

@terrywynne

I am hoping you would go for the 2nd, not as polished applicant

@Caplin

I took my kids out of private primary (our local primary was one of the worst in the city), but to the horror of other parents I'm taking them out to go to our very decent (mid table) state secondary. I never really wnated to get stuck in tehprivate school bubble.

But I learned that lots of private school parents in Scotland take their kids out on S6 and put them into state secondary as they are more likely to get a spot in a decent uni! In Scotland most exams are done and dusted in S5 so can be a bit of a doss year for bright kids.

Talk about gaming the system!

You shouldn't be silly enough to believe everything you've "learned", then. Bright pupils in the Scottish examination system applying for high-demand courses in Scottish universities will NOT get a place based only on 5th year exams ( "Highers"). They will almost certainly be required to obtain Advanced Highers in 6th year.

If they're applying to a Russell Group Uni in England to study a high-demand course , they will almost certainly need 6th year qualifications to compete with students from R UK who also have 6th-year qualifications.

So any notion that a kid from Private school with 5 highers can then spend year 6 dossing in a state comp is going to be sadly disappointed.

"For more competitive programmes (Medicine, Dentistry or Veterinary Medicine), you're likely to need five Highers achieved in the fifth year and two Advanced Highers and an additional Higher in the sixth year."