All this stuff about private school kids being overrepresented in universities..

[fivecandles]

out of interest does anyone know whether if a child goes to a private school up to age 16 but then a sixth form college or FE college to do A Levels the student would count as private school or state school in the stats? And how would university admissions tutors look on such a student?

Xenia- sorry, but has your spell checker deserted you.. and as for your grammar correcter! ? God, sorry, I'm being a reet cow, but really! You, of all people, would know that here, on MN, there's the wholesale derision of 'my DC has got to get into grammer or independent, innit cos he's clevver?' Typed on a teensy padded iPhone, I hope!

OK, you miss the fundamental point of this whole debate in your use of the word 'better'. 6 pages of various opinion must surely highlight the point that 'better' and 'better coached' are two separate concepts. The ishoo here is that universities should, based on current, recent research, recognise in selecting candidates that a be-starred private schooler isn't necessarily a 'better candidate' than an adequately qualified state schooler. As 'B' may well outshine 'A'.

Not a hard concept to grasp, however much you've shelled out in 5 DC's private schooling.

Ampere -
"I get quite p*d off when we are endlessly told, like on here: 'Well, state schools should teach excellently then it wouldn't be a problem'. OK, so let's see how well NLC/Eton/Westminster/Cheltenham etc cope with having 75% of their pupils drawn from a deprived, neglected, socially marginalised, welfare dependent 'sink' council estate. Let's see the string of A's from them."

Whilst I find myself sympathising with what you've written here, isn't it still a rather depressing outlook? I mean, if 75% of children at many schools are hopeless cases, there's no point in trying really is there? Surely there must be a way of educating successfully at least some of that 75%? Or shall we just write them off and run with our nice middle-class children for hills?

The whole point is that it is wrong and unfair that there is a two tier education system going on. Children should be entitled to a decent education regardless of their parents' income.

The competition for university places is never going to be 'fair' whilst some people can buy better results ( but no-one can buy raw intelligence) and so there has to be some kind of criteria to even it all out a bit if one really wants the brightest to get the places at the top universities.

Obviously making some failing state schools 'better' (in simplistic terms) is a good idea!!! But not really very easy to do considering the intake, as others have stated. Some children are simply not capable of taking 8 GCSEs in academic subjects and their needs have to be catered for too...

Completely agree with Ampere. It's hard to grasp how some people have missed the point completely although I tend to think they rather enjoy doing so :) Not their problem, is it?

For a good long while the children from the sink school who does better than usual from that university has had some allowance for that at university entrance. I don't think anyone disputes that at all.

However if we have a wholesale change where children with bad grades from bad state schools (not good state schools in leafy suburbs or state grammars of course) are given a huge leap up of help when they aren't up to the standards and insitutions now needing to show that lots of pupils have reached a worse standard but are let in as they came from bad schools.. when that change comes and the universities are told you can only chareg £9k if you can show you are letting in those low standard pupils, the institutions will opt out and the chidlren of the rich will be supremely benefited. As the Government will see that that is so I doubt we will have the changes suggested. We'll see. I certainly have never felt I paid fees to buy grades or university places. There are lots of reasons why parents choose carefully the right school for their child in both state and private sector.

What is this two tier system? The state grammsr and posh comps in leafy suburbs are as much responsible for taking up lots of university places as the private schools. Would you damn everyone except those who go to my local comp (with its 34% AC at GCSE)?

It is not the case that the Government is going to make all children do GCSE History or Geography. All children will have to a humanity GCSE, but that will include subjects like Music. Geography isn't a humanity anyway. I think we will have to wait and see which subjects the Government picks.

The whole idea of innate intelligence is difficult. There is no test of innate intelligence anyway. Universities should be choosing students who are adequately prepared for Higher Education, as indicated by A level grades, and students who are not adequately prepared but who, due to great potential as indicated at interview, will be able to catch up while at university.

State schools need to make sure that all children are adequately prepared for life after school, through preparing some children for Higher Education and some children for other destinations, depending on the aptitude and career choices of the child. But even if 90% of Oxford students were from state schools, that hasn't addressed the needs of the majority of state school pupils, who are going elsewhere. So we have to deal with the needs of the majority and the different needs of a very academic minority at the same time.

Cambridge published the figures for success at interview, broken down by school background. State grammar students were more likely to be successful at interview than applicants from independent schools. So it really isn't a case of private vs. state.

All children attending an interview at Cambridge are likely to be very able. Either non-selective state schools are not doing a good job of providing a rounded education to the very able or Cambridge interviews are doing a poor job of selecting applicants. I don't know which. Alternatively, grammar and private school students are educated in a way that leads them to be a good candidate for a tutorial system, while non-selective students might benefit more from the system operating in other universities; neither system of education is superior.

MillyR- you'd need to link! As my DS1 nasty comprehensive tells the Y7's: PEE- Point, Evidence, Explanation!

I know! I know! I am being lazy by not finding the stats. I will go and trawl the internet. I haven't really offered an explanation though; it is more of a speculation.

None of the 'anti- 'preference to state school applicant'' posters here has yet come up with a convincing argument as to why the RG universities shouldn't discriminate in favour of state school applicants.

The overriding tenure seems to be 'Well, cos privately schooled children are, well, better, aren't they? They just are, aren't they?'

subtext: I haven't paid all this money to keep Bruno and Isolde away from the nasty state school oiks so they can sit in splendid, selected, social isolation from the nastier side of life, with their fab facilities and hand holding one-to-one tutors, with their ability to expel the 'mistakes' only to find out that many of the other 93% of the populace are beginning to feel pretty cheesed off that well-trained, highly coached Bruno and Isolde don't actually deserve or warrant their birthright of an RG university education, as someone feels they got their string of A* through coaching, not innate ability...'

Non?

Okay, I have found the latest figures (2009). These are success rate of applicants, and not success at interview. The stats I referred to are out of date so I am wrong!

Out of comprehensive students who applied, 20% were accepted. 30% of the grammar school students were accepted and 33% of the independent school students were accepted.

Link:

www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2009-10/special/15/table1_2.pdf

Ampere, I don't think either side has given a compelling argument. It is more complex than just changing admissions numbers. Historically, universities such as Cambridge has developed its teaching style to cater for students who are privately educated, and privately educated children have been educated to prepare them for universities such as Cambridge. Public schools and certain universities have developed to fit each other.

We need to look at how we prepare students for university and if that preparation is suitable. We then need to look at how we prepare university students for life and work after university.

As I have said before on similar threads, to the horror of other posters, my advice to DS will be to apply to a university other than Oxford or Cambridge. I don't think he will personally benefit from the Oxbridge culture, the tutorial system or the type of education given, when compared to other universities.

It is important in a democracy that many people from a wide range of social and cultural backgrounds reach positions of power. That is not currently happening and need to be addressed, but I don't think it will be addressed particularly well by changing admissions procedures without changing the methods of education in state schools, the methods of education in universities and the ways that people are selected for occupations that hold great influence.

By age 3 children in homes where parents don't have a big vocabulary are behind so I doubt social engineering at age 18 is going to do much good and that's not what universities are for.

Why should in a large scale way childre at state school b e given more lee way in getting int? I said that the current system where very bad sink comp and pupil with great grades for that place is favoured works pretty well. However to say private school therefore need an A not a B is not fair. It's like saying if you're a white male you will get a place. We won't get the best people if we do that and the good students will go abroad and britain PLC will suffer in its competitiveness. However that will not happen.

As seen above there is vritually no difference betwen grammar and private in entrance success (33 and 30%) so if discrimination in favour of those who do worse in exams but have uneducated parents without degrees or whatever system we will go on, it needs to be keep the good state schools out too and that will include some of the better comps too.

The 'two tier' system to which I refer, if it really needs explaining, is the one whereby some people (i.e me, who live in areas with grammar schools, and those who choose to pay, either by using the independent sector or by buying a house in the catchment area to a good comp) actually have a choice as to how to educate their children.

Many people do not have a choice in anything in their lives at all, let alone education.

And so their children have to go to the school that doesn't offer the GCSEs needed to even contemplate applying to a top university, let alone competing on a level playing field.

I realise this is an alien concept to some people on this thread. I really cannot understand why it has to be explained in such simple terms. I suspect it is because they are simply not interested, why would they be really? Unless, of course, universities really do start discriminating against the private sector, which I doubt they will, for the reasons MillyR gives above. Those in power will want to preserve the status quo. Why wouldn't they?

Ampere, I think the problem we have with a blanket lower offers to all state children is that there is demonstrably a huge range of school standards across both state and private and children don't usually have much say in their educational choices so you are potentially penalising a child whose parents send them to a third rate private school and giving a huge boost to a child whose affluent parents live in the catchment of a top ranked state school (by virtue of being able to afford a house i the right catchment). Most people are saying it seems right to take contextual information into account (so give more weight to GCSE scores that are high for that school for instance, or where a child has a specific reason to have underperformed eg illness or home circumstances), which is done to some extent today. However, to apply a blanket rule that says lower offers to all state children will quite possibly introduce more inequalities than it fixes.

As to privately educated children being 'better' (hate that term), this is only a statistical thing across a large number of children and schools. It won't work at an individual level at all and it would be easy to find particular state schools and particular private schools where it works the other way. But it is enough to skew the admission figures. What is unknown is to what extent it does - it's impossible to say.

I wish there could be a study on the percentage of children who were always going to get As and get into Oxford or Cambridge anyway also went to private school. Cos I bet it would be significant!

Xenia I started reading your post, and was moved to wonder why, if a three year old from a middle class home is already significantly and irrevocably ahead of one from a less well-to-do background, before he or she entered a school whether private or state, there would be any point spending the money anyway? But then I got to your second paragraph and couldn't make any sense of what you were actually trying to say. Did you go to state school?

Naughty joan!

MillyR - yes, I'd agree with you regarding the 'fit' between private schools and Oxbridge. Whilst I would agree that both universities (and similar) do produce world class scientists etc, they evidently don't produce particularly good political leaders, do they?! I also, were my DS in that academic rank, wouldn't encourage Oxbridge as it's an old boys club for those initiated at the age of 7.

My proposal are perhaps in line with snorkie- taking a DC's GCSE results in context. I recognise that might penalise my own DSs in that they attend the best academically performing comprehensive in our county BUT so be it. That's the price of recognising there must be more 'fairness'. Because it isn't all about me, me, me.

Joan - looking at your question another way - the state system has a comparitively high 'attrition rate'. Meaning pupils who are doing very well at some point in their education don't go onto university.

This Sutton Trust Report. Shows than about 60,000 pupils per year group, who were a some point (age 11, 14 or 16) in the top fifth of performers in their year, don't go on to university.

Private schools, generally, have a much lower attrition rate.

Joan I suspect you don't give a flying fart, but here goes anyway.

My kids are no doubt privileged (before we get to the school). Both parents in a stable relationship, highly educated, speak a couple of languages, play instruments,in gainful interesting employment, earn plenty of cash, house with land and full of books/music yadda yadda.

Already far far luckier than the vast majority of kids in the country.

So why would I need to send them to a private school? The answer is of course I don't need to.
Just like I don't need a lot of things.

But life is not about need is it? It's about joy and stimulation and expansion. It's about making the most of yourself and the world around you.

And personally, I feel that by sending my DCs to the schools that I do, I am doing those things.

It is not about results. Or avoiding poor people ( I suspect I started out my life much poorer than the vast majority of hand wrngers here on MN). It's them enjoying the ride.

thelastresort - I'm not really getting the impression that people here are debating the fairness of Tarquin at Eton getting a place at Oxbridge over Jocasta at St Top-Comp.

You only need to briefly look at the exam statistics at some schools to realise that vast swathes of children are achieving very little from their 11-13 years of education. Surely it can't really be possible that middle-class children are that much smarter and that much cleverer. I just don't happen to think that the right place to resolve this unfairness is at the end of the 13 years. That's just daft, it makes me wonder why anyone would bother to go to school at all if everything can be taught in 3 years at a university.

Here is another interesting Sutton Trust Report

P14 has a chart which breaks down the educational attainment for: FSM state pupils, non-FSM state pupils and private school pupils. From age 16 to place at Uni.

I'd be interested in how many private-school choosing parents would still opt for that 'ride' if the end result was exams success exactly in line with the attainments of similarly IQ'ed DCs in the state sector.

We'd watch all the guff about 'joy, stimulation and expansion' evaporate like scotch mist, I suspect.

Do you think I don't know people send their children to private school because they think it will be nicer, more enjoyable .... all the stuff you've cited? Fine - but then that does somewhat negate the argument that private schools are for getting the results, and state schools can't do the same, surely?

I'm happy to hear about your cash though, that's really nice

Pity my poor joyless daughters, who will never get to make the most of themselves or be stimulated, or 'enjoy the ride' though, won't you?

re. attrition rate - maybe that accounts for the state school kids doing better at university than their independently educated peers, then? Perhaps the ones who would have attritioned out of the game aren't allowed to at independent school, and then although they get into uni quite easily, don't do as well as they might have?

MrsMipp What we need is a society that recognises and values talent and skill other than just a string of As at A level. We aren't that society. We have demostrated our contempt for apprenticeships, Certificates, Diplomas, and many professional qualifications by only validating their worthiness if* they're a degree. Hence Golf Course Management and Surfing Studies all at degree level now.

We have demonstrated our unwillingness to challenge the status quo of wealth and power by electing clowns like Cameron and Clegg to 'govern' us. We 'allow' bankers to go on collecting multi-million pound bonuses whilst our manufacturing base, the thing that MADE us 'great' in the first place, collapses, starved of trained talent and capital.

And increasingly all we seem to value is how we can advantage our own DC, absolutely at the expense of all others. We want 'all schools to be good' as long as ours is 'better' and no meddling do-gooder attempts to throw a spanner in the works of our carefully crafted wealth generation plan for our DCs.