Private school pupils penalised

[Cortina]

school

Thoughts on this? Has this been happening anyway? Interesting.

Parents with kids at private schools already know that some universities discriminate against them. 20+ people in my year 11 and my brother's year 11 (different years and different private schools, so I assume it happens a lot) left to go to crap or average 6th forms as they knew it would increase their chances of getting in to Oxbridge. I'm 25 so this was nearly 10 years ago.

This system will just hugely increase the number of privately educated 16 year olds wanting to transfer to bog standard or even poor 6th forms, who will of course accept them as they know it will drive their results up, all in all, dramatically reducing the places avaliable for students who can't afford private 6th form.

My DD went to a comprehensive (more like a secondary modern as we have grammar schools) and suffered from a lot of disruption to classes throughout her time there, whereas my DS attended a grammar and was surrounded by kids who behaved well and who had very involved parents with high aspirations. However, I felt the teachers at the comprehensive were more inspiring and skilled whenever I met them, as some of the pupils were hard to engage. So I think it can be harder to achieve good grades and succeed in a school where many pupils are not aspirational, especially regarding university admission. I agree with taking the schooling of the pupil into account when making offers/ awarding places- not private verses state, but the intake of a school is important.

I don't think it's discrimination at all. A child who has achieved AAB from a school where the norm is BCD has proved something about themselves that a child who's achieved AAA where the norm is 3A*s has not, and it's entirely reasonable to put this in the balance. Children from super-selective grammars or extraordinary comps will not benefit, nor should they.

Would I consider playing the system to take advantage of this? Absolutely never. The one thing I would never want for my DD is to be comfortably the highest achiever in her year, and no amount of redistributive grade tweaking would make up for that, pupils in that situation deserve all the help they're given.

This happens already (look at Runnerhasbeen's post) and actually I can understand it.

Personally I went to private and state and if the school average grades and achievements are taken into account then actually the state school would have been the one that I would have been penalised for attending (high achieving grammar).

I feel I have seen circumstantial evidence (friend's children with very little between them academically and social skill wise) of this happening. It is more often on courses where it is very competitive (medicine/vet...) and it has been more a matter of straight A candidates and the university picking the candidate from the less well performing school (in this case state).

Another problem is how, in a high performing school in either sector does a 'natural' 4 A* pupil distinguish themselves from one who has been coached through? In my day that was through extra curricular stuff but almost all kids at such schools do that

I occasionally think they like bringing out old news!

Grade inflation is a big problem

A quick look at google tells me you can pay for tutoring in those tests.

Yes, you can find commercial companies which claim to be able to tutor you at a cost but there is no evidence at all that this money will be well spent. It is certainly worth a student's time to do practice papers to familiarize themselves with the format and to refine technique, but they cannot be revised for or taught in that way.

Lovingthecoast

I do not disbelieve your reasons for going private and - my own children go to a private school which rank in the top ten of the UK league tables, so I am not anti-independent education - but inevitably, top exam results are expected as part of the package at these school and so, in general, I believe it is disingenuous to say otherwise.

Tortu is correct when she states, from her own direct experience that this kind of contextualizing of results currently happens informally between admissions tutors and schools. It is discrimination - of course it is. It is unfair that many children struggle against the odds in difficult circumstances. Equally it is unfair that hard-working children at good schools get the grades they are asked to slog for (because these children at good schools do not come by these grades without a great deal of work) and then might lose out. Perhaps a lottery system for all who meet minimum requirements, much as is operated in The Netherlands is fairer in the end?

Ok, I just took exception to your comment because I was the one who said it was about extras and not exam results and it isn't, to me at least.

I'm not anti high academic achievement either and my DCs go to a selective school so I'd expect them to do well. I just don't see it as the only or most important goal and in my experience of teaching in high achieving state secondary schools, this seems central to everything.

I don't know what the answer is. I do think we need to look at circumstances and perhaps adjust but some hard working kids are going to lose out simply because they go to a good school in whatever sector.

This is a very silly suggestion by AQA.

If they want to award on anything other than achievement in university entrance exams (ie A levels), they have to have a different type of exam. They need to add in an element of V/NV Reasoning. This is how the SAT is structured in the USA.

Universities already have widening access schemes. These should be developed rather than doctoring the marks on exam papers.

Hi, there's a lot of disinformation here. The Ivy League schools are not what you think; there, admissions are done by administrators, who typically award extra points if Mom or Pop is an alum.

(I am an admissions tutor at Oxford). We are trying to spot potential, and we think every section of an application is a chance to show that potential - marks, yes, but also PS, reference, pre-test, and both interviews. I'd say interviews exist to dig behind coaching, and try to discover what lies beneath. I don't think the proposed system or any other flagging system will be likely to override those judgements. They will have to be made in any case because there will still be too many applicants for every place. A lottery system would not be fairer if it meant that the people admitted were miserable when they got here.

Anyhow, it's academic as all the private schools will drop AQA if this comes in, so they lose market share, and the private schools will either change to OCR and Edexcel, or move to Pre U or the IB.

Heads of the other exam boards are not in favour of this, so if AQA introduces it, and schools march with their feet, where does it leave them?

Sorry, packing for a funeral and back to Uk tomorrow - meant VOTE with their feet obviously.

electra44 I think you are unfair to say that lovingthecoast is being "disingenuous" when she says it's not exam results that she's paying for. I genuinely believe that my exceptionally able son would achieve the same exam results from out excellent local comp. the head is very proud of the schools achievements and wants gifted children with Oxbridge potential and would make every effort to ensure that they achieved top grades. But I think you need to accept that we all have different reasons for paying and I acknowledge that the vast majority are paying for better results but there will aways be a small % of us who are motivated by other things.

This initiative will never happen :gavel:

Happygardening, I don't wish to dismiss the idea that people are after more than exam results when paying for private education...but I'd be interested to see how many would continue to pay if the local comp's results started exceeding those of private schools. People pay for "the package" - a presumed consistency in teaching quality, Oxbridge experience and prep in the case of very able children like yours, and for all children, an expectation that they will be helped to achieve their potential in every way. Exam grades are a huge part of this are they not?

My nephew has just gained 4 A* at the local comp with super teaching. My teaching career was in the state system. I am comp educated (and counil house raised) and was able to attend Oxbridge. I know the state system well and repect it and my colleagues. I still maintain it is a little patronising to claim that children generally would do as well locally, as easily as at schools like the household name school your son attends, though as your son has exceptional ability, I am sure you are right in his particular (exceptional) case.

I see from the school my children attend that the difference in resourcing makes a vast difference - not only in terms of material resources but in terms of the teachers having time and space to do what is needed - as does the ability to select. We are free to make our choices, and I am not in favour of the the kind of discrimination proposed by AQA - my children work as hard in their school as my nephew in his. People are too individual to be able to categorize in this way, hence, as Sieglinde says, interviewing and allowing tutors to make their judgements as best they can remains the fairest way we currently have - but neither do I agree that things are equal between the sectors.

There is a local comp here which is in the top ten of county results (the others being private, we dont have the grammar system here). The results are great. I know a few mums who have kids there and it does seem like a great school HOWEVER it is MASSIVE (2,500 pupils) and they ALL (all the mums i know) without exception have tutors for their children and do a massive amount out of school. I am afraid I am too lazy for that and really love the fact that all is done inside school

electra44 I have a friend who is a head at a top grammar school and he always says that the exceptional will always do well where ever they go thus echoing the point that you made and you are obviously proof of this. Maybe I'm wrong but surely it is the exceptional that places like Oxford, Cambridge etc are looking for so therefore there is no need to penalise anybody.

my children are not exceptional though (apart from to me obviously).

Being exceptional (I'm not really sure what contitutes exceptional exactly?)is not essential for going to Oxbridge. There are plenty of exceptional people there, but a great many just bright/interested/well educated. The tutors don't have too much problem choosing the exceptional, but they have a much harder job selecting between the rest. And the same applies to all competitive universities. People pay because they perceive an advantage surely? It might make me feel bad to recognize this but it doesn't stop it being true.

Thank you, Happygardening!

My children are still of primary age so we haven't reached the stage of GCSE and A'Level so maybe I'm being clouded by what I want their childhood to be about. The local catchment was one of the first 'Beacon' schools way back and gets ridiculously high SATs results but SATs seemed to be everything to the HT and, it seemed, to ofsted. The school also had two AST teachers on staff so I'm not sure I could be accused of paying for better teaching either.

However, I wanted the broadest possible education for my kids, especially DD1 who was labelled gifted at 3yrs and certainly is exceptionally bright. She has just started Y1 and is working (academically) at the level of a 10yr old. However, school whilst stretching her in that way also still treat her like the 6yr old she is. She still needs to learn the social stuff and her favourite part of school is art. As I said yesterday, I wanted her esp in an environment which would allow her to develop other talents and not see her as just a very bright girls. Having taught in state secondaries I have seen too often children like her forced into doing an excessive amount of academic work and told they can't do Home Economics or food nutrition or art and they need to be doing further maths etc. I simply didn't want that.

So no, I am not paying to ensure the highest academic results as, like Happygardening, I'm sure my DD1 would achieve wherever she is. I'm actually paying to ensure that's not all she gets.

Oh and obviously for somewhere that would offer lots to her sister and brothers.

And yes, Electra, I do agree with you that I'm paying for an advantage but in my circumstances it's more about a personal advantage for her rather than an advantage over other 6yr olds if that makes sense. Of course, on top of that there is also the advantage of smaller classes and a greater variety of activities which the state sector simply would not be able to offer. So their day to day experience is enriched. But I really haven't thought about advantage in terms of end results on paper as I doubt that's the case here.

The BBC report describes it better - it isn't about "penalising private school pupils" (and very lazy of the Independent to describe it as such, though no more than I would expect from the Telegraph .

As the Independent article explains - it's more about just getting pupils from poorly performing schools onto the longlists where their applications can be considered, nothing about dividing private / state schools as such.

If teachers at private schools (or indeed at high performing state schools) think that getting possibly outstanding candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds to even be considered alongside their own pupils, will damage their chances, then that's tough shit, frankly.

And I say that as a parent with a child at a well-performing state school with a broad social mix of pupils, who'd be unlikely to get any of these Brownie points for attending it.

That said, I don't think it's right for an individual exam board to get involved in this - but are they not suggesting a national ranking system which I guess would take IGCSE's into account as well?

I wonder if there are any private schools which would gain points under the ranking system suggested?

Surely not on a measure of FSM - but if you went to a very un-academic or alternative private school where hardly anyone did A-levels for instance?

Psammyad, when we lived in Cheshire there was a large amount of private schools fairly close geographically to each other. A few carved out a very specialist niche catering for (in one case) dyslexic children. Another had a large mix of children with varying mild SNs inc HFA. One of these schools in particular was an amazing place where kids who would have languished in many state schools positively thrived in classes of 10 or 12 with specialist teaching. I wonder if schools like theirs would just be considered 'private education' rather than what they actually were. Though perhaps some would argue it is unfair that because their parents could pay they were given opportunities that they wouldn't have received in the state sector thus back to having had an 'advantage'.