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.

@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!

It is true a lot of parents take their dc out of private for 6th year in Scotland, but not for this reason.

The unis know where they went to school and where they got their Highers so it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.

Tractor my son was the only white person in his class a few years ago (private school). So there certainly are a lot of parents, many children if immigrants, who think paying fees is worth it.

I don't see why if you have positive discrimination for some given there is a limit to numbers you will not disadvantage those who but for others having the positive discrimination/contextual offers would have the place. Some one has to be elbowed out by contextual offers so yes some will be disadvantaged. The issue is with massive schemes like Bristol where 40% of schools in the UK are in the contextual group - that is a huge huge group.

[quote Empressofthemundane]@SkinnyMirror, that’s all about contextual admissions. There seems to have been a significant shift of intake composition from private to state school educated students. Are you saying this shift is made up entirely of contextual offers?[/quote]
No I've not said that at all. And that's certainly not the case.

You raised some concerns ( which have already been addressed numerous times in this thread!). Rather then repeat myself I signposted to a link that not only explains what contextual offers are, the rationale and links to data and research that shows that disadvantaged young people are still over 5x less likely to attend an elite university than those that are privately educated. That should be reassuring to those that think privately educated young people are now at a disadvantage. It's clearly not the case.

You also wanted facts. That link gives you facts.

@Xenia

Tractor my son was the only white person in his class a few years ago (private school). So there certainly are a lot of parents, many children if immigrants, who think paying fees is worth it.

I don't see why if you have positive discrimination for some given there is a limit to numbers you will not disadvantage those who but for others having the positive discrimination/contextual offers would have the place. Some one has to be elbowed out by contextual offers so yes some will be disadvantaged. The issue is with massive schemes like Bristol where 40% of schools in the UK are in the contextual group - that is a huge huge group.

Again, contextual admissions are not positive discrimination. That is illegal.

And no they are not disadvantaged. They are just applying in a marginally more competitive environment.

Look at it like this....it's not suddenly disadvantaging one group, but simply ensuring another group has access to the same advantage.

Empressofthemundane

“There are ridiculous responses because people are talking across each other on adjacent topics which are not the same.

I personally think it’s clear that no one disagrees with the principle of contextual offers. They have always existed. Some on this thread are questioning the more recent application of them. “

Finally some sense!

@christinarossetti19 - I’m all for contextual admissions actually. Presumably you read the response to my question from an actual Cambridge admissions tutor? Here it is again if you missed it -

Thankyou for being honest @missmoon.

My DC is in a selective independent. This is exactly what they were told in a uni admissions talk. They said that if applying from an independent, a string of A* will mean very little. You will have to have done things well above the curriculum to even get a look in.

They also said (in the case of Cambridge) that independent candidates who are pooled have effectively zero chance of being pulled out because colleges use the pool to top up their contextual admissions targets.

Would you say this is accurate?

Completely accurate. Sometimes we have really excellent independent school candidates who have just missed out (as we have run out of places), and I feel awful for them as I know they have close to zero chance of being picked out of the pool. The only exceptions are if women-only colleges or mature-student colleges are under-subscribed (the candidates might get a deferred offer for the latter).

Recently the focus has not been at all on a simplistic state school versus private school distinction. Those people who think that grammar schools, or more privileged state schools are being advantaged by the system are quite out of date. The admissions targets are based on proportions from the lowest postcode quintiles based on socio-economic status and rates of progression to HE. And as a result there has been significant recent movement in those areas. See actual Oxford data www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-statistics/undergraduate-students/current/disadvantage

There have always been excellent candidates who just missed out. That is not new. There have never been enough places for all of the excellent candidates who apply, so some inevitably miss out. Historically, that was predominantly the excellent state school candidates. These days, they could be from the state or private sector.

I don't know why people can't get their heads around the fact that middle class kids from either sector are not being disadvantaged by the removal of the tiniest bit of their middle class privilege in order to give the most disadvantaged kids a chance. The odds are still massively stacked in favour of the middle classes. They are not being denied places that are rightfully theirs, it's just that they're less able to keep others out of the running. The disadvantaged kids have just as much claim on those places and will have had to overcome many more obstacles to access them - even if they do get a contextual offer to counteract a small fraction of that disadvantage.

It's really shocking to me to realise just how incredibly entitled some posters feel. It's as if they genuinely feel that their kids are disadvantaged when the polar opposite is true. But deep down, they must know they're not actually disadvantaged, because otherwise they would all be gaming the system by moving to low income neighborhoods and sending their kids to the least successful schools in order to benefit from this so-called positive discrimination. So I guess that the reality is that, what they really want, is to keep the lower classes in their places so that the rich can carry on enjoying the privileges to which they apparently believe they are entitled. So depressing.

It’s not about entitlement. This is relevant to my son, right now and we are trying to work out if it’s worth him reapplying in the current climate of grade inflation.

Last year he applied to a certain Cambridge college, without realising there was only two spaces for his subject. His school told him that, I’d he gets pooled, he will not be taken out of the pool (because colleges use the pool to their meet widening participation criteria). In fact they told him, nobody from his school has been taken out of the pool for many years (and this school has a lot of Cambridge applicants). So I was wondering how accurate this is. It’s not entitlement, just wanting to know the facts.

When I say it’s useful to know the facts, this is because it affects college choice as some pool more / less than others and some take more from the pool.

He was pooled last year do this is why I ask.

It's really shocking to me to realise just how incredibly entitled some posters feel. It's as if they genuinely feel that their kids are disadvantaged when the polar opposite is true. But deep down, they must know they're not actually disadvantaged, because otherwise they would all be gaming the system by moving to low income neighborhoods and sending their kids to the least successful schools in order to benefit from this so-called positive discrimination. So I guess that the reality is that, what they really want, is to keep the lower classes in their places so that the rich can carry on enjoying the privileges to which they apparently believe they are entitled. So depressing.
@AlexaShutUp you have hit the nail on the head (again) . The more state school students get places in "top" universities, the more annoyed the privileged get (and the more they deny having any advantage over others!, despite that being exactly what they chose and why they chose it)

The establishment don’t like it when their privilege is even slightly chipped away. There were riots by male students and effigies of women hung when there was a vote as to whether to admit women into Cambridge (out with the 2 women’s colleges) in the 1890s 🙁

If that above is supposed to aimed at me, I am hardly ‘the privileged establishment.’ I am an immigrant from a country where schools would make the average British Comp look like Harvard! My husband was an asylum seeker.

@sol5

It’s not about entitlement. This is relevant to my son, right now and we are trying to work out if it’s worth him reapplying in the current climate of grade inflation.

Last year he applied to a certain Cambridge college, without realising there was only two spaces for his subject. His school told him that, I’d he gets pooled, he will not be taken out of the pool (because colleges use the pool to their meet widening participation criteria). In fact they told him, nobody from his school has been taken out of the pool for many years (and this school has a lot of Cambridge applicants). So I was wondering how accurate this is. It’s not entitlement, just wanting to know the facts.

So? There are other universities that he can apply for.

As others have said, entry to 'top' universities has always been very competitive, even more so in recent years with more applicants.

Most applicants won't get in and will apply elsewhere.

If he didn't get into Cambridge last year, he's no more likely to get in this year tbh. If he wants a shot, good luck to him, same as every other candidate.

I don't know why people can't get their heads around the fact that middle class kids from either sector are not being disadvantaged by the removal of the tiniest bit of their middle class privilege in order to give the most disadvantaged kids a chance

Most people would like transparency and objective criteria to assess applicants. No assumptions, not lowering of grades required for certain children, etc. And when two candidates demonstrate equal aptitude, the decision should be made through a ballot system which would also be unbiased and fair. It's not too much to ask, is it?

@Xenia

Tractor my son was the only white person in his class a few years ago (private school). So there certainly are a lot of parents, many children if immigrants, who think paying fees is worth it.

I don't see why if you have positive discrimination for some given there is a limit to numbers you will not disadvantage those who but for others having the positive discrimination/contextual offers would have the place. Some one has to be elbowed out by contextual offers so yes some will be disadvantaged. The issue is with massive schemes like Bristol where 40% of schools in the UK are in the contextual group - that is a huge huge group.

What has being an immigrant got to do with anything? Perhaps you're referring to the racial disadvantage angle but as an immigrant myself this mainly applies to UK born non-white people when it comes to education/uni admission. Given the U.K's rigid tiered visa system most current non-white immigrants are highly paid, middle class professionals who can afford to give their children the best. It's not like the 1980's where lots of Commonwealth citizens came over as cheap labour.

I don't think the Oxbridge version of contextual offers count as discrimination because by the time they reach the selection stage everybody in the pool would have had an offer if not for the existence of others. Those who are truly outstanding and clear Oxbridge material get offers no matter what. So if your child, after all of those expensive private school fees is still 'average' then them getting in is a matter of luck anyway. Someone else who could achieve the same grades but under duress is probably a lot brighter all things considered.

Now regarding other universities - it's impossible to analyse because the schemes are different. As there are many RG universities and applications will be spread out the competition isn't that cutthroat. So I highly doubt that qualifying private school students will be edged out by contextual offer students.

In order to assess the true impact of contextual offers on non Oxbridge unis, we need:

• A breakdown of the number of private school, non-private school and qualifying contextual offer holders by course, by uni.
• The UCAS choices of private school applications for said courses and the number of rejections they received for courses they they qualified for.

@sol5

If that above is supposed to aimed at me, I am hardly ‘the privileged establishment.’ I am an immigrant from a country where schools would make the average British Comp look like Harvard! My husband was an asylum seeker.

Neither am I ‘establishment’. I made it to Oxford as the child of semi-literate parents, from a failing non-UK school that hardly ever sent anyone to any form of third-level education, far less elite overseas institutions. I made it because I was stubborn, hungry, angry and lucky, and because an admissions tutor kept an open mind. This does not mean I am trying to buy my own child privilege.

Also to add - as pp have said the principle of contextual offers is one thing, the application is another...

christinarossetti19 - why would you think we don’t realise this?

There was a Cambridge admissions person there so I asked a relevant question. Is that ok?

it makes a huge difference as to whether the contextual offers are for competitive courses.
Reduced offers for subjects like Medicine make no sense, but there's nothing wrong with making one for Marketing and Management...

Most people would like transparency and objective criteria to assess applicants
This exists. Just look at individual university websites. It's all out there if you can be bothered to look 🤷🏼‍♀️

No assumptions, not lowering of grades required for certain children, etc.

It's getting embarrassing for you now. It's clear you still don't understand contextual admissions. Again, you clearly can't be bothered to look. I even provided you with a link!!

And when two candidates demonstrate equal aptitude, the decision should be made through a ballot system which would also be unbiased and fair. It's not too much to ask, is it?

Again, if you could be bothered to understand the issue you would understand why this wouldn't be fair either.

I think you're just a troll now.

Most people would like transparency and objective criteria to assess applicants. No assumptions, not lowering of grades required for certain children, etc. And when two candidates demonstrate equal aptitude, the decision should be made through a ballot system which would also be unbiased and fair. It's not too much to ask, is it?

No, it's not too much to ask at all, as long as all of the candidates have equal access to educational opportunities from the early years through to A-levels, so that a truly objective assessment of their aptitude is feasible.

What you're really saying, @mustlovegin, is that you want a semblance of transparency and fairness so that your dc can enjoy the advantages that you feel you have paid for.