Does Oxbridge get the same Brownie points for a state grammar-school educated kid as for a state comp-educated one?

[BeckySharper]

Just wondering. You and Yours had a big programme on widening access to Oxbridge today, and it sounded like grammars and comps were equally weighted in terms of getting the state school leaver targets up.

I don'y understand your point. Many areasof the country don't have grammars so the top of the comp would be at grammar in the afflicted areas.

I think in terms of percentages, yes state is state in whatever form (ie if 54% of oxford students are state educated then that includes grammars).
However, I think (and may be totally wrong) that when they're deciding whether to give favourable weighting to a state school applicant they look at the school's general results and compare the applicant's achievements to that. ie if a candidate with four As comes from, say, Tiffin, this isn't as impressive as a candidate with four As from Special Measures comp.
Would be v interested to know what's the truth of this...

Didn't see the programme but grammars ARE state schools so yes, students from grammar schools will contribute to the overall percentage coming from the state sector.

I think that in terms of targets then yes, state is state (though I am not sure who is awarding these brownie points, did the programme explain that it was related to funding or similar?).

But in terms of how schools are weighted against each other for undergraduate admissions, then performance is crucial (so, an applicant with good GCSE grades from a school with poor overall results would be recognised as faring better against the odds than one with the same grades from a school with good overall results).

There are also other initiatives (access schemes) that seek to facilitate applications from schools which have been very unlikely to send applicants to Oxbridge in the past. So, not just trying to improve intake from state schools, but specifically from less good/less Oxbridge experienced state schools. I don't know if increased application/intake from schools so indentified is rewarded in any way, but it's a big part of the outreach programmes.

polly yes, that's right: GSCE scores (the only ones we systematically have at the point of application) are put into context.

Of course, that's only one of a great many factors taken into account for undergraduate admission.

I'll have to listen again to the programme, but they have percentage targets for the ratio of independent to state schooled students. Sorry not to be more precise. Your point about there only being grammars in a few areas is a good one, addictive.

Aquavit, there are AS level scores as well, aren't there?

The prog was v interesting - confirming that schools with little expertise in sending kids to Oxbridge tended to discourage applications, either passively or actively. 'Not for the likes of you' type of stuff.

Well, we have AS results for a lot of the applicants but not all schools declare them, so it's not possible to systematically compare all of the applicants that way.

I've been doing admissions in Ox for over a decade now and while I think things have improved - some of the initiatives targeting 'access' schools have really paid off (talks at the schools; summer schools at the university, etc) - there is still a MASSIVE problem with students simply not applying because they, their parents and/or their school think it's not for them. So it's good to hear that there was some media attention to this side of things rather than to the elitism that is supposed to weight the system in favour of certain types of people, which is upsettingly common and does a huge amount to sustain the alienation many schools and students feel from the Oxbridge application process.

It was an interesting programme - I agree with you aquavit that it's content was encouraging.

I also thought that the guy from the Sutton Trust was very good.

At my state school, bright and able pupils talked themselves out of going to Oxbridge. It was wrong, and they missed out.

I always thought Cambridge a lot less posh than Bristol. Because the work is so hard, you can't impress people just by having gone to Eton; the workload is a great leveller, as is the fair way accommodation is provided.

Yes, grammars and comps count the same for the figures. However, I did interviews at Oxford for a couple of years and, while student background wasn't taken into account until the final stages, when we only had 3 places left and there were 5 students on the table we started talking about school background. It wasn't deterministic in any sense but we were trying to weigh up which were the brightest as opposed to which were the most educated students. In that discussion grammar schools vs comps did come up.

Trouble is, I went to a grammar in a shitty bit of Kent with the country's highest teenage pregnancy rate and very high unemployment etc, and where there's basically no middle class competing for school places. Comparing that with Tunbridge Wells Grammar School is almost as unfair as comparing it with a comp.

takethatlady yes I think it's right that schooling be taken into account at that point. For one thing, someone who gets good grades with fewer resources and less support than other students have had available to them has effectively demonstrated his/her commitment to their work.

You're quite right that comparing state schools as though they all provided equal education and opportunities is nonsense. One way that we get round it these days is to do that contextualised GSCE score - so it really is the overall performance of the school that counts, not whether it is a state school or not. This means that the 'score' an applicant gets for their contextualised GCSE grades is higher for the student who achieved grades xyz in a poorly performing school than for the student who got the same grades in a better performing school - regardless of whether those schools are state, grammar, private, whatever.

civil, Sutton Trust do a wonderful job, and have got exactly the right idea that persuading people NOT to talk themselves out of applying is really important.

The state school targets were imposed by the last government so I wonder whether they will be quietly dropped. If DH's old college is anything to go by, most of their state school educated students were at grammar schools rather than comprehensives. But if you look at the intake for a lot of RG/1994 Group universities, you'd probably find that a high proportion of their state school intake comes from grammar or selective sixth forms.

After the age of 16, comprehensive schools aren't comprehensive e.g. they only let students with good GCSEs carry on with their A-levels.

So, in effect, all V1 forms are selective, whether in grammar school areas or normal areas, whether part of schools or as large VI form colleges.

Of course, civil, I hadn't thought of that.

I didn't hear the program but I'm curious as whether these targets would affect the processes internally. When I was interviewing applicants a while back, the decision was that of the tutors in the subject concerned at each college as to who they accepted, and I presume that hasn't changed. It was essentially up to each interviewer or set of interviewers to what extent they weighted the applicant's background. I'm not sure how targets would work when each set of tutors is selecting maybe half a dozen people.

Personally, I found that about 15% of applicants essentially selected themselves by being outstanding, and a similar percentage you had to rule out as clearly not able to cope with the course. It was deciding which of the remaining applicants to take that you start to consider background at all. It's tough though, because as other posters have said, not all state schools are equal nor are all independent schools and I'm sure the best state schools out there better than some independent schools. There are certainly also state school students who get private tuition and how do you take that into account? There are some easy decisions sure, but lots of much more difficult ones.

FWIW, of all the dozens and dozens of people I interviewed, I only ever interviewed one person not predicted four A grades at A-level and that applicant was predicted three As and a B!

I think on the programme they talked about targets for state school participation at Oxbridge of 60% by 2015(?) however the consensus was that this is unlikely to happen.

The state school numbers given, include state grammars ( the Sutton Trust do a breakdown between comp and grammars on their website).

Oxbridge do look at a candidate's GCSE marks compared to their school average - I believe. Which should be help pupils in poorer performing schools.

Thanks, Zayla. Interesting. I haven't yet had a chance to listen again - am hoping to do that tomorrow.

Also - most of the 'effort' to achieve this target is 'outreach' to schools and summer schools type activity. Rather than trying to 'interfere' in Oxbridge admissions directly. The thinking being - that there are many excellent state educated people who just don't apply.

jackstar is right that a (the?) major concern is that there are too many excellent state school students who don't apply. The bias is not at the point of acceptance but that of application: Oxbridge accept roughly the same balance of state/private students that they receive applications from. That means that their undergraduate population does indeed fail to reflect the relative numbers of state/private students who apply to ALL universities, but that is a consequence of the much greater number (as a proportion of their whole) of privately schooled students who apply.

zayla, things have changed a bit in the last few years in my subject with regard to Faculty (i.e. pan-university) supervision of the individual colleges' decisions. It's now much more closely scrutinised by the Faculty and the candidates are ranked across ALL applications for the subject (using a wide range of criteria). Colleges are still fairly autonomous in the first stages of admissions, but students who rank highly but aren't accepted by their first choice college get flagged for other interested colleges to look at; and there is a lot of effort made to ensure that the students who are accepted are, basically, the top layer according to that ranking. It's all made a bit easier by the fact that more and more students don't name colleges on their applications, they make 'open' applications.

I honestly think that that complexity outlined in your last paragraph, Aquavit, is one of the reasons state schooled kids find it hard to tackle an Oxbridge application. Where do you even begin to consider which college you might apply to? I know the websites try to make it less opaque, but you just get the feeling that unless generations of your family have been going 'up to Oxford/Cambridge' you've got to climb a coalface before you can even decide whether or not to put in an application. If your family can't recommend a college, and your parents are too busy working to research it for you, how can you possibly find out enough about it all?

I certainly hope comprehensive sixth forms are more selective these days- I still remember sitting in an A-level maths class trying to explain the concept of a square root to someone who hadn't managed to get a C at GCSE.

I was the only student in 3 years to even apply to Oxbridge and the head of sixth form did her absolute best to dissuade me (so goodness knows what went on my reference). Mind you, I don't think she was impressed that I applied to Exeter either- far too posh!

When I was interviewed I was asked if I thought my teaching had been good. I had to say 'yes'.

However, what made it easy to apply for Cambridge from a state school background was that both my parents had been there.

I had also lived in Cambridge as a child and grew up with the incorrect belief that - everyone went to University and that there was only one university! (Cambridge!)

Civil - that reminds me of my friend (an immigrant to the UK) who took her son on day trips to Oxford and Cambridge universities when he was 7 years old. To show him where he'll be going when he finishes school (he preferred Cambridge!).

that's food for thought, Becky. It is more complicated than just applying to a single institution but I hadn't thought of it being one of the ways in which the sense that 'it's not for people like me' is reinforced. I hope that the increased tendency to make open applications, i.e. not to name a college, helps some people out of that dilemma.

There's loads more information available about all the colleges now than there was, say, 15 years ago - not least as the current undergraduates get very involved in college-based outreach to school students. But I think there's a potential problem with that, which is that nearly everyone thinks that their own college is great, and wants to emphasise just how good the particular experience is there. To be sure, different colleges do have different characters; but overstressing that must contribute to the problem you outline, and it's more important to remember that 1. teaching is increasingly less college based, and the education 'experience' less variable from college to college than once it was (and same for extra-curricular activities too); and 2. there is a reason why nearly all undergraduates think that their own college is great, namely, that most people at ALL colleges have a very good experience in Oxford/Cambridge! It would be hard to get it badly wrong, in other words: your undergraduate experience depends much more on you than on your college.

The other thing I thought on reading your post was - you should, aged 17, be doing your own research on universities and courses, not have your parents do it for you...

But I think you would have to be rather messianic (ie deluded) as a 17 year old to be convinced that you were worthy of a place at Oxbridge if your family and social network had no experience of it. Even if you knew you were pretty clever. So I think there would be a degree of - what? - shame, perhaps, in taking the initiative to begin researching something which was not generally considered for the likes of you. Someone would need to be encouraging you.

And also, from a home with zero knowledge of university, let alone Russell Group, then the research would need to start well before the age of 17. I agree that a 17 year old should certainly do the work at that age.

I think this is a (hidden) flaw with the comprehensive school system. Forty years ago bright kids (who got into grammar school) were more likely to have a least one teacher with an Oxbridge degree. They were also more likely to have a few peers headed for Oxbridge.

With the almost universal introduction of comprehensive schools, Oxbridge educated teachers and bright kids were diluted amongst a wider population of schools. Now bright kids often go through secondary school without meeting anyone who has been to Oxbridge or is aiming to go there.

I'm not advocating a return to the 11+.(so don't flame me with any 11+ horror stories) but I do think we need to do more to support the more academic pupils, especially in terms of raising their aspirations.