Interesting: teachers misconception about state school pupils ending in top Unis

[camaleon]

"Fewer than half of teachers at state schools would advise pupils to apply to top universities, a new study shows - but many do not realise that a majority of Oxbridge students come from state schools"

Article here

StillSquiffy many top performing independent schools are increasingly becoming involved in state ed. Many claim to have strong links with both primary and secondary schools do you think this will have an impact or do you think this is just done to satisfy the charities commission?

happy there was an artcle in yesterday's Times about a school being set up in East London which will have heavy involvement from the private sector. More than would be necessary to satisfy the charity's commissioner I would have thought.

On the change this year, thanks camper, AAB, (not ABB as I had remembered it wrongly) is what will allow the better places to take more pupils so if our children can get AAB they wll more choice at better places. Sounds like a great change in that respect. If fewer go to useless places so much the better.

So if we do accept MC entry selection is on ability /capability ( and that the best apply) surely the ratio YT states reinforces my point that state school student are brighter per head than private school? -if the ratios are put together..that indicates the bias is even more astonishing...

Surely now you are beginning to see the point

Someone above pointed out the gapo is not as bad as it seems. At sexith form level somethin glike 16% of chilren are at private schools (and a lot of children have left school to work on the bins or go on the dole of course so may be 16% is the same as 7% across other ages though). Also if we accept that those with higher IQs tend to be able to afford fees and even given that 2 bright parents tend to have a slightly lower IQ child as IQ moves toward the average, their child will still be fairly bright.

Finally if at post university level employers need someone who can fit in with their customer base I don't think that's wrong. That might mean they drop ts and will fit in well in the inner London kingdom of XYZ local authority or that they shoot with a customer that's fine. It is not illegal to recruit based on ability to speak, accent, clothes, confidence and all the other stuff that goes towards whether someone will be good at a particular job.

I have worked in and with the City for nearly 30 years. There is a huge range of backgrounds there. YOu are only as good as the quality of your work most of the time. No matter how posh you are or how good your exam results if you are useless you don't last in many places these days.

As DH always says 'You're only as good as your last time sheet.'

Nah. Just means the private school grads didn't need to go to MC firms because they've gone to work in Dad's firm (or got a leg up into govt)

DH is involved in recruitment at his frim and he (being a working class lad) has no interest in filling up seats with posh boys.

However, he says the reality is

1. Not enough young people from bog standard comps apply. Nearly all indie of GS. Or increasingly, for outside the UK.
2. Of those that do apply, too many have been badly advised on their A Level/degree choice.
3. Some candidates are really really not cut out for it.

I know more than this would be required to satisfy the charity commission but its all part of the package of charitable work independent schools do. What I'm interested in is if anyone has experience of it and does it make any difference? Wellington recently invited some children from a "sink" comp to spend a days with them I struggle to se how they benefited from this surely all this showed them was how wide the gap between their school and Wellington is. Others schools send in teachers and pupils to both primary and secondary is this helpful? I don't know. Will these raise aspirations?

happy check out yesterday's Sunday Time magazine. Students from Newham at Eton. See what you think.

To be fair, the students were all high flyers anyway and might already have big ambitions.

Hmmm, yes, you can have the biggest brain in the world but it is hard to compete against nepotism - or indeed location. Forgive me, I'm not up on the correct terms, but I saw a piece on barrister training (???) and the point was made that because you are not earning it is tremendously hard for anyone to succeed who does not have a (free) base in London. Anyone who needs to pay rent is stuffed - so that's all people whose parents do not live within hailing distance of central London.

Nepotism also extends beyond the obvious securing your child a plum job. There is the knowledge. I have demonstrated in the above paragraph that my understanding of legal training is minimal. So if my ds fancied being a lawyer, we'd be starting at ground zero in terms of knowing the ropes and without a whole lot more dedication than someone with better connections would undoubtedly take a few wrong turnings.

One Eton student says to the visitors. 'Do you think we spend all day polishing our shoes or somehting?'

'Nah,' says one girls quick as a flash. 'You've got people to do that for you.'

gramercy there are some financila help schemes for the bar. But these are few and far between.

Most barristers will have to fund a degree, a conversion course if their degree was not law, bar finals (including dinners) and then a pupilage (where most barristers earn very very little indeed).

It is highly competitive to secure a pupilage and many will also have done mini pupilages (essentially internships) for free.

Even after pupilage, if a barrister is offered a tenancy (a place in chambers) it is self employed work. Withoutb good contacts among solicitors firms, and a good relationship with the clerks (who have some say in how work is handed out), many barristers earn very little for those early years.

For women there is also the added problem of maternity leave etc.

It could not be set up less advantageously.

Aspirations are very hard to change in reality

When I worked in the city our firm (large investment bank) sponsored the top five students every year in a very poor East End school. They were selected at 15 and supported financially through the rest of their schooling and had all their uni costs paid. They were mentored by HR and also by a couple of members of staff, and we used to give talks to everyone in the school about careers etc. The selected students had to agree to do two summers of (paid) work experience in return for their sponsorship, and that time was used to send them abroad for a while (eg New York) and also to enable them to see lawyers/accountants/financiers in action. At the end of Uni they had a guaranteed Job offer.

All but 1 student dropped out before they got to permanent job stage .

The 1 who came in worked for me for a while. He was brilliant. Really really clever. But. He had refused to leave home for uni so had ended up in one of the really shite unis and his degree was not really worth anything in the real job market. Even sadder, even at 25 he wouldn't countenance working abroad (even on short term secondment). It was all peer pressure (he wanted to live at home, see his mates at the weekend). That reluctance held him back in his career

Plenty of working class people do move abroad however. I am not sure they are all wedded to staying at home.

I don't agree it is harder than ever in law. In the first two if you are very very good which most people aren't wherever they go to school then 100% of your fees are paid and an allowance after you graduate for the post grad stuff. If you go back long enough given new people are useless and a burden for ages they paid to be taken on and endured which of course is how pure market forces would always operate and why apprenticeships in most things have never been very well paid at all and people would traditionally pay for someone to take their son or daughter on for a 5 year apprenticeship in all kinds of areas.

I am always a bit -sighing emoticon - when I read "sponsored... East End school"...

Why does deprivation or disadvantage begin and end within two square miles of Trafalgar Square? Whenever underachieving kids are mentioned there are always pictures of London children. In fact, when success stories are picked up they are generally students who are not really deprived as such, they have immigrated to the UK and have very ambitious and supportive parents. Mostly they are first generation. I can't think I have ever seen the case of a student from, say, Great Yarmouth or Pontefract having exciting visits/chances bestowed upon them.

Stillsqiffy interesting I always surprised by friends who are flapping talking about their 16/17 year olds going away abroad with the school for a few days. How they're going to miss them, are they going to be OK. some even come home after 24 hours home sick!! Obviously those children who've been lucky enough to have boarded especially form prep school age take all this in their stride (an of course so do parents). I believe its so important in this day and age for children to be prepared to travel for uni and work.

Yes, I put emotional robustness, ability to cope with little sleep, strength of will as high for characteristics needed as brains. You can have that coping ability whatever your class however. Indeed if you've been sorely tested at home, looked after younger siblings, been a parent to your parent you might well have that just as much as someone who has done a lot of school trips. Employers need people who are very hard working and committed. I sometimes thing one reason my children don't do too badly as we are virtually never off sick and if you don't feel ill you put up with it and get on with whatever you have to do. That is as valuable to them a background as hours spent learning spellings at home.

I have been to see my Headteacher today, on the back of this thread, and asked if I can take on some kind of whole-school responsibility for raising aspriations. We are such a stereotypical sink comp - rural, social deprivation, high unemployment, poor social mobility. It makes me want to weep. As I mentioned up-thread, I had a girl in 6th Form who left 4 A Levels, at which she was doing well, to work on the checkouts at a supermarket, and another boy last week (A/A* GCSE student) tell me he's not coming to 6th Form any more as he has an apprenticeship at the place his dad works. He wants to be an aeronautical engineer, but no amount of conversation, discussion, showing him information etc etc will change his mind.

I think there are some valid points in this thread, and a lot of interesting ones. One thing I would support though, is the assertion that you can't force the brightest state school students to apply to Oxbridge. And since Oxbridge don't get to hand-pick their students from all Year 13s in all schools, it clearly follows that Oxbridge don't have the brightest and best of all students, just the brightest and best of the students who applied.

Clearly schools like mine have work to do in raising the aspirations of the brightest students in our care, but there is so much to battle against - I sat down with a fantastically bright Yr 12 student today to talk about her ambitions. I showed her the RG list and told her she ought to be looking at these first. Her response was that she didn't want to go to a "posh" university, as she's not "posh". She wanted to go to a "normal" university with "normal" people.

Your idea sounds excellent, EvilTwins.

Sil teaches at a rural comp. She was dismayed to find one of her brightest students who had mentioned that she would like to be a doctor had opted for GCSE (or perhaps BTec) Health & Social Care instead of French because it would be more helpful. Sil waded in and told her she was making a mistake. Cue sil hauled over the coals by her superiors for passing a negative judgement on another subject and that all exams must be portrayed as equal.

grammercy - that sounds frighteningly familiar. We offer BTEC H&S both at KS4 and KS5 - the number of students who think it will be "useful" is bizarre. The girl I was talking to today about RG universities wants to be a midwife, and she is taking it (couldn't be persuaded otherwise) Luckily, she's also doing Maths, Biology, Chemistry and Psychology, so the H&S will be pretty irrelevent.

So if the child in EvilTwins school doesn't want to mix with "posh" children maybe meeting and sharing lessons with "posh" children like Wellington and realising that they are normal would be good for her. I hate to think that AS is right as I personally cant stand the man.

At least ET is trying. In some professions they have found class more than gender holds people back yet unlike a sex change which is hard, class and changing class or adopting a few habits which mean you fit in is not that hard. Daughter 2 was working with a student who was given the chance of work experience where she was working recently. The student happened to work in an evening job where someone at the place had a relative.

The girl couldn't answer basic questions like the names of the places she had applied to for jobs or the area she was interested in which presumably most people could easily look up. Also she didn't wear anything on her legs. Now everyone else did so what is interesting is that she didn't go home on the Monday night and come in the next day with a pair of tights (assuming she could afford them of course). I don't think any of them could bear to talk to her about her clothes which is a pity. I am sure it could have been put very nicely to her.

I don't think there are only or mostly posh people at better universities. It just needs to be made clearer what a range of backgrounds people have at the better universities. They want hard working clever students with high grades who are passionate about their subject.

Someone whose daughter wants to do law went off to an ex poly because all her friends were going to it. She had the best A levels in her comprehensive school. Her father who is working class earns £200k a year. She has lots of family support. Neither her father nor her school said if you go to that place you won't get the job you want and nor was she able to do an internet search to find that out which would take her about 4 minutes.

gramercy the poor advice given to some students drives me demented.

You see it here on MN often. Posters defending certain courses to the hilt. Refusing to accept that certain courses open doors and certain clourses close them.

No one is saying that is right. Or fair. Just that it is. And so we should not tell students differently.
A bright young man I know wanted to become a lawyer and work in the city. No reason why he shouldn't. Til I saw his A level choices. They will not get him onto a competitive course at a well thought of university. So that's that.

It's criminal. He has made no secret of his ambition. His parents know nothing of the system so he was relying entirely on school to advise him.

The interesting thing about the school in Newham (though I take your point about most outreach schemes being London-centric) was that it was offereing very limited, very rigorous A level choices.

EvilTwins I'm assuming that your school hasn't currently formed a direct link with a particular Oxford college. Each has a geographical area it's responsible for in terms of raising awareness/ aspiration. If you find out which college it is from the university website and contact them, they'll bombard your students with help - there are all sorts of initiatives and lots of nil cost opportunities out there to attract your brightest and best.