Private school pupils penalised

[Cortina]

school

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

I don't see this happening atm but it's about time it did. For instance we are told that there is no point applying for medicine unless you are expecting AAA yet the fraction of students achieving these grades at a poor state school might be 1%. If a student from this school is expecting ABB this could still put them in the top 15% from their school yet cannot apply for medicine or may waste their choices by doing so.

I haven't seen any prospectus' that says they want AAA but if you are a high achiever at your school apply with less. It would be fairer IMO.

But adams - once that person with ABB gets on the medical course, then what? They are going to be expected to know the stuff - which is why there's an AAA requirement - and if they're in a class full of other kids who have the subject knowledge and ability to demonstrate it on the exam by getting AAA, it doesn't matter a jot that they were a high achiever at their old school.

Unless that medical course is going to provide remedial studies to help the bright kid with ABB catch up to the other students who were able to get the required AAA for entry. But when will that happen? Will the ABB kids start a month earlier? Will they start with everyone else but perpetually be a month behind everyone else? Will they get extra tutoring?

The unfairness doesn't lie with the university entrance system - it's the fact that the bright kid is spending all those years in a poor state school, unable to realise and demonstrate their potential. We should focus instead on poor state schools instead of making university entrance into a social engineering mechanism.

It is just another way of tacklin
G perveived priveledge without doing the harder work of looking at root cause. Education starts in the early years, and its always the parents who actively seek an excellent education who are smacke din the teeth. Maybe we should go back to birth and look at why so many kids start school unable to speak properly and recognise their names (not for sen reasons) and start expecting more of parents. The so called crap schools are always in areas that are lower income - why? Do good teachers only want o work in posh areas?

As Julia Hartley Brewer pointed out on the Sky newspaper review, would it not be better to fix rubbish schools rather than try and fix the exam results to compensate.

Tyelperion,

The thing is that an ABB child from a less good school will a) probably be brighter and b) have much better self-motivation and independent study skills than a child who gets AAA who has been spoon-fed in a tiny class in an independent school.

Medicine at university does not cover the same ground as A-levels - it starts on a whole new set of subjects in Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry et al. A student's ability to succeed in these is down to their actual intelligence / ability to memorise large bodies of facts and a highly driven work ethic... not their previous exam grades.

teacherwith2kids a child with ABB from a less good school "may" be brighter but not "probably." There are too many other factors that come into play. The state school child could have been tutored. I am not sure what you view as spoon feeding but if it means teaching in excess of the syllabus AND preparing students to reach their potential in an exam. Then what you call spoon feeding I would call good teaching.
The ex-private school students I have taught have been highly motivated as have many state school pupils. Equally there are those who reach university, have their loans/grants and go mad and do no work in the first year and these come form a variety of schools.

teacher - I accept I may be guided my my experience of studying maths where what I learned at school was absolutely necessary for study at university and that other subjects may be different.

But if they are, and a student's ability isn't down to their previous exam grades, why ask for grades at all? Or even get the kids to do specific subjects for specific courses? Surely everyone should be interviewed instead to winnow out who is really motivated and who isn't - the kid from the less good school might have had a battery of tutors, right?

I know these are all examples at the extremes. But fundamentally, I just don't think university entrance is right method, or the right time to try and make up for the fact that some schools are not properly resourced and some kids are held back by their poor schools from achieving their academic potential. The fact that kids are being held back by poor schools because their parents can't afford to send them elsewhere (either to a fee-paying establishment or by moving to a better catchment area) is fundamentally unfair, and tinkering with university entrance criteria will not and cannot make up for that.

GGT - I agree that there are other factors that come into play - parental input / educational background being a huge one.

The thing is that the very 'closely attentive' teaching that is typical of a private school wishing to extract the maximum grades from their children is NOT in any way typical of university teaching (large lectures, huge practical labs, large seminars / tutorials). Some children - I agree not all - may not have been given the opportunity to develop the independent learning skills which are necessary in that very different environment. A child who is not used to getting such close attention / exam preparation at school but still gets excellent results may have been better prepared for university in some ways.

I have a trivial personal example - I am privately educated through secondary (100% scholarship). One brother wholly state educated (he obtained all 8 of the A grade O-levels from his year of 60 - and nearly half of the 18 O-level passes...yes, that is the total from 60 pupils). One brother half and half. Our A-level results vary slightly in line with our schooling - 4As, 2 As and a B, 3 As. All of us went to Oxbridge to do sciences, all got top grades. Did my elder brother - who did in many way the hardest degree as he was a physicist, I'm a mere life scientist - need 'extra tutoring' as he only got 2As and a B? Nope... one of the top students in his year, just his school (average A-level grades even from his 6th form college something like CCC/ CCD) hadn't done the huge focus on 'answering A-level questions' that my school had. Didn't make him less bright.

teacherwith2kids, that small class, spoon fed stuff was very much what DH experienced at his Oxford college so it does happen at some universities.

He always says that it really didn't prepare him for the world of work and for 'real life'. He's not overly keen on any of our 4 going to Oxbridge, even our so called 'gifted' DD1. He thinks they'd get a much rounder education at say, Manchester or Edinburgh.

TP, I do absolutely agree with you that it is too late at university entrance to make up for poor schools - they need to be tackled much earlier.

BUT some of the schools may not be 'poor'. They might be great schools, getting massive progress from students from hugely disadvantaged backgrounds. The fact remains that they might not be 'best set up' for their minority of extremely able children IYSWIM?

I'm not being very clear. What i'm trying to say is that some schools with less good results are, in fact, excellent schools because they take in children who on average are achieving very poorly on intake ... and then achieve at a much higher level than would be expected from this at the end. Some schools take in poor students, don't do much with them, and they leave with poor grades - that IS a poor school. Some schools take in very bright kids, don't do much with them, spit them out with fairly good results and are seen as 'great' schools because the raw results are good even if what the school has done is actually very little...

I have thought this was coming for a long time which is why mine are going private primary state secondary. I don't think it is worth paying the ridiculous private secondary fees now if your ultimate goal is that your children have a reasonable shot at a top uni place.

MoreBeta does Julia Hartley Brewer plan an article supporting the increased State spending and tax to pay for the school improvements? Like 'Building Schools for the Future'? Oh, wait...that was Satan incarnate Gordon Brown and it's been cancelled by the Condems.