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

I didn't know that, YT. Thank you! I will look it up.

I'm a state school teacher - a kid in my last tutor group now 18 is off to Cambridge I told him he would end up there if he applied (I also told him he would make a good chancellor of the exchequer and if so he would be the saving of us all - a terrifying young man...used to leave me lists of things to do I miss him)

His parents weren't from a uni background at all - it is partly a function of the tutor to recognise ability and nuture it but the most important person in that decision was him. He decided - he made it happen. Just as the kid who told me he was off to IC (I told him they let anyone in eg me) chose not to work hard enough.

My ds (Yr6) is thinking Cambridge or Bristol whichever is better at teaching him his subject and his work ethic scares me - we cannot take out from the statistic the responsibility of the child to choose where they go and then work to get there. My students who are off to Russell Group universities have worked harder than those who are not. This has been true all the way through their secondary school careers. They are not as supported as their private school colleagues perhaps and I expect them to push themselves.

It is interesting your point Seahouses though that it depends on the course which institution should be considered the best and the snobbery that surrounds Oxbridge is often unrelated to the teaching value of the courses

On the other hand I went to state school and then Imperial and my tutor encouraged me by rolling on the floor laughing when I told him and offering to bet me I'd never get in plus insisting I fill in the poly application...

So yeaahh anyway don't dis us teachers we are cool and in wid da kids!

(goes and lies down after too much marking)

It's encouragement and knowledge children need. If they don't know that despite the best teaching in the country in their subject being at Hull poly if they go there most of the jobs they think they want will be denied them, then they have been badly helped. Many recruiters for the better jobs have a pecking order in their heads which starts with Oxbridge and then has Durham and Bristol etc It may be very out of date but it's in their minds and it can take decades for a view of a place to alter in their views even if everyone knows somewhere else is better.

I also agree with cinnamon about hard work. I work much harder than most people (took 2 weeks holiday to have babies) usually work 6 or 7 days a week, 2 weeks holiday a yera. Believe it or not I adore what I do and am pretty successful and earn quite a lot. It is much more about the hard work than any innate talent or even background that determines how I have done. I worked very hard as a teenager. I worked extremely hard at university and won prizes not because of brilliance as much as hours in the library and perhaps being teetotal. I worked hard also as a teenager in writing to universities (no internet then ) and going to the library and really looking carefully at where I might go and whta people earn in particular jobs. I did that. It wasn't so much the family or school. We need children to take personal responsiblity as well.

I am not saying every child has to have my aims or desires. Plenty are happy not working very hard and not earning much. I think it helps if your parents have a good work ethic or you have at least examples around you of people who do which is why having a teacher who inspires you or godmother or family friend can make a big difference.

Xenia, I also work 6-7 days a week and have taken exactly 11 days off in the past 3 years, but I don't even earn 6 figures. However, I love what I do. I don't think you should equate earning power with diligence. However, this is a bit off-topic. Kinda

Not all Oxford colleges seek to form links with schools, and the admissions systems for e.g. medicine and law are so centralised that any such links are largely a matter of encouraging talks. So too with the regions thing, which is also a bit of the vanishing past. Best to make contact with the subject tutor at a college... ANY college... and ask for advice.

Hard work - It depends. If you do 3 cleaning jobs not 1 you tend to earn more. If you work hard at whatever you pick you tend to earn more in it. Not always. Also I would couple hard work with the efforts I put as a teenager into finding out what people earn in different jobs. I wanted to buy my own island as a child (which I now do own) and I looked at what teachers' earned, doctors etc etc to decide which career might help me most with island ownership etc. I am certainly not saying that happiness goes with income or lack of it. I think it's largely unrelated. There are miserable people in all walks of life and I feel most lucky for being healthy mentally and physically.

Also some women work hard, not smart. It happens again and again. Men ask for more pay.Women are grateful to have a job. Girls do well at school As and A*s, get a good degree but then think if they just work very hard to they will do well and be promoted. Instead they need to do a raft of other things depending on the job like asking fo rmore pay, not just being good but telling everyone you are good, speaking to the right people, travelling, moving abroad if necessary, working for yourself even, taking risks.

Agree with all this, Xenia.

Thing is that academic salaries have declined in real terms and in terms of comparability very steeply since I entered the profession, so the trouble is that one needs to choose a profession on the basis of data that will be outmoded as soon as one is qualified. I thought the salary was comfortable, and the lifestyle less crazy, but it's now uncomfortable, and I would have done better to become a GP. This was NOT OBVIOUS 25 years ago. A warning unto ye all...

This point of course leeches nicely into a side discussion about the social impact of women-friendly professions. One of the more interesting pieces of research I looked at recently (will try to find a link, I think it was reported in the Economist) found a link between the rise in female representation in certain roles and the decline in relative income for these roles. Thought to be caused partly by simple demand/supply economics as more people chased the same number of roles, and partly by a perceived decline in social admiration for roles as they are perceived to become more readily available (and therefore less elite) as career choices.

For example Teachers were universally regarded as beacons of respectability 100 years ago, as were GPs, but as their popularity increased amongst the growing legion of female graduates, so the relative respect declined (although of course all of us with young children still think of them both as gods), and allegedly the decline in respect is followed after a time by a relative decline in salary (politics notwithstanding). It will be interesting to see how accountants and lawyers salaries move going forward, but I bet they start lagging behind in the next decade or two.

As Xenia said a while back, wealth creation is where it's at, wealth 'management' (ie working as lawyer rather than owning the law firm) will mean your fortunes always shift at the whim of others.

I agree with SS that wealth creation is the key. I was saying to daughter 2 the other night that I have never felt as secure as since 15+ years ago I started working for myself, amazing though it sounds. I would need legions of people who pay me all to sack me to be in trouble rather than just one grumpy boss.

I have tried to ensure and will try that the children pick work where if they like in due course they can be their own boss in some way, that at least has the capacity for that. Even teaching can be that. Their father had 30 pupils plus his job etc and post as organist too. I earned as much from my own work than my employment in my last year of employment. We also had 2 flats we rented out at one piont. In other words putting eggs into lots of baskets can also protect you.

I also agree about pay. I deliberately picked areas women don't work in . If women are useless as driving pay upwards then those are the areas to avoid.

At at much more working class level there were huge equal pay cases fairly recently between women in the NE and men working for councils - every similar jobs and comparable but men getting all kinds of extra bonuses and extra pay. Illegal but it took brave women to bring claims and I think the result might have been veryone's salary reduced.

I agree that times change and what was well paid then may not be later although in general cleaners and care home workers will tend always to earn less than managing directors whether in 1860 or 2012.

Having wide skillls which can be pplied ni other areas helps too. I took on a small business in 2010 as well as my other stuff. I like having a good few things so if one stops working or isn't profitable there are other things too.

(my " teachers' " is a rather strange apostrophe above...

Apologies to everyone else for reposting - Betty - as you seem unable to search the thread to find my post, here is a repost of my post from Saturday 7pm ish, of the figures you seem unable to understand:

Betty - see figures at bottom of this article given below - from 2008 so not up to date but can't be arsed to waste any more life doing your research for you! - state school numbers have of course risen since then.

But as you can see, a v v long way - on a different planet in fact - from "90% of public school students go to Oxbridge" as you stated, or even the only-slightly-less-daft "90% of public school applicants to Oxbridge get in" - which might be what you meant? Either way: - utter bollocks. Approx. 30% of public school applicants got in in that year - v approx 25.5% of state school applicants. Not a vast divide.

www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6055970

UNDERGRADUATE ADMISSIONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 2008

• Applications received: 14,498

• Maintained sector applications: 6,689

• Independent sector applications: 4,095

• Applications accepted: 3,531

• State school acceptances: 1,762 (59%*)

• Independent school acceptances: 1,277 (41%*)

• Percentage of state school applicants accepted: 26

• Percentage of independent school applicants accepted: 31

• UK acceptances only

UNDERGRADUATE ADMISSIONS, OXFORD UNIVERSITY 2008

• Applications received: 13,388

• Maintained sector applications: 6,123

• Independent sector applications: 4,521

• Applications accepted: 3,170

• State school acceptances: 1,538 (48%)

• Independent school acceptances: 1,328 (42%)

• Percentage of state school applicants accepted: 25

• Percentage of independent school applicants accepted: 29

(Remaining 10% made up of oversees or ?other candidates?).

nd this one, from Saturday around 8pm:

Oh and Betty - on P6 of this Sutton Trust report it states that the overall figure for % of private school pupils who get into Oxbridge is 5.2%. So not 90% then. Glad that's clarified.

www.suttontrust.com/research/degree-of-success-university-chances-by-individual-school/

Still waiting for my apology.

Wonder when Betty will be back?

B&B -maybe she's moved on. Like the thread has. And you should.

Ok betty got her figures wrong haven't read much of thus thread so only going by what you say BandB maybe what she's commenting on is the % from independent school who take up places at Oxbridge 31% and 29% but only 7% of children of all ages attend independent school. Im not commenting on the rights and wrongs of this and ok betty got a her figures wrong not exacly a crime against humanity but maybe she thinks this appears a little one sided.

Also if private pupils have a slight advantage which is not accounted for by parental higher IQ and more money which is also in evidence in private schools, that means the state schools need to learn from the private schools and adopt what works in the private system rather than our skewing university entrance to people who have not been well taught.

% from independent school who take up places at Oxbridge 31% and 29% but only 7% of children of all ages attend independent school

I would love to know the true situation here. It's comforting to think that independents are full of Tim Nice-but-Dim but it's not really like that. They have to provide something to justify the fees, so (non-selectives aside) they tend to be academic places who pick academic children to get academic results. D'oh!
In addition they give scholarships to the very few, extremely bright children i.e. exactly the sort who are likely to be Oxbridge material in time. Is it really surprising that these schools are [allegedly, apparently] over-represented at Oxbridge?

I have a friend who lives on a crap estate in a crap town. Her DC went to the local crap school, GCSE rate around 30% IIRC. Despite that DC got good GCSE and won a scholarship to the poncy private school for sixth form and, from there, went to Oxbridge. Does DC count as one of the 93% State (which was true for all but two years of their education) or 7% Independent (which is what they were when they left the system)?

IN that example senua that boy counts as independent. He may be discriminated against because he is a posh private boy and children from his ex comp with worse grades may well find it easier to get to university in the mickey mouse land of university entrance political correctness in which we live.

As senua said he went to Oxbridge, it might be safe to assume that he wasn't discrimated against. Interesting situation though, and illustrates that things are far more complex than they originally seem.

happygardening - no, you completely misread the figures.

The 29% and 31% aren't the % from public schools that go to Oxbridge - it's the percentrages of those who apply that get in. So between a quarter and a third of public school applicants get in. That is v approx a quarter - 25% or 26% - of state school applicants who apply.

So not much in it - very slightly easier to get in to Oxbridge statistically from a private school, but only fractionally.

The reason for the proportionally far higher numbers getting in from private schools than state is that proportionally FAR LESS APPLY from state schools. Hence this thread.

NB You are also wrong re the percentage of all kids at private school - at 6th form level, as has been stated above, it is 18%, NOT 7%. That refers to across all ages - don't forget far fewer kids are educated at private primary/prep schools.

As stated above, only 5.2% of children from private schools go to Oxbridge, acc to Sutton Trust figures - hardly as if all pupils from private schools are just swanning into Oxbridge without a care in the world...

It's very much a minority destination, whatever type of school you go to.

that means the state schools need to learn from the private schools and adopt what works in the private system
yes... if only that was the solution. The schools are only part of the equation - the largest differentiator is surely the parents. Their expectations, support etc etc. The sheer practicalities...

My neice was doing the rounds of universities recently - including oxbridge. DB took a few days off work to drive her all round the country. I suppose it might have been possible by train or coach but even then there's the fares, and I'd guess a 16 year old from a deprived background mightn't be confident to travel alone to a strange town. AFAIK private schools don't provide this sort of service... so if state schools are to level the playing field to just get their kids through the door, they often would need to do far more.

Considering the miniscule gap between state school applicants and private school applicants, despite all the advantages that ealth/contacts can bring enjoyed by the latter, I'd have said the state school applicants were doing rather well, actually, Xenia.

I think the real issue is not that state school applicants aren't getting in, it's that they are not bothering to apply.

But as stated before, that is far less of a problem now than say 30 or 50 years ago, when you really did need an Oxbridge degree to open doors that remained resolutely shut otherwise.

i was struck at a Civil Service Fast Stream Open Day how few of the current crop of fast streamers had been to Oxbridge - a decade or two ago that would have been de rigeur. Now any halfway decent uni was apparently quite sufficient. Likewise, plenty of lawyers, accountants etc from a range of unis or none - accountancy of course having always been open via on-the-job training.

Oxbridge is good for those genuinely interested in the academia but a bit of overkill for those just after a high-paying, but unrelated job, IMO.

No Xenia, the boy's GCSEs will be judged against those from his local crap school, which is as it should be.

It always strikes me that it's not private schools that are being discriminated against, it's more a case of universities taking poor schools into account.

Those from private schools, grammars, outstanding comprhensives etc will stand on an even playing field. They don't need a leg up.
Those students who attended poor schools will be given just that little leeway. A recognition if you will of the disadvantage they will face.

Considering that the vast majority of students at Oxbridge still come from the schools in the advanatged group, I don't think anyone need feel aggrieved. Perhaps those disadvantaged students should be given more leeway?

And I say that as a Mother of DC who fall squarely in the advanataged bracket.

Yellow - in terms of publishable statistics the boy would count as privately educated.

In terms of what matters, he'd count as crap school though titchy.