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

EvilTwins the regionalisation programme seems alive and kicking as far as I can see. The college I'm thinking of regularly invites pupils from the region's schools to two day subject specific sessions, providing college accomodation and meals. The Medical School has a separate initiatve running, taking first year lectures into state schools via video link. Contacting the relevant college and requesting help from the liason officer seems a good starting point for a Ho6 aiming to raise aspiration generally across the school.

Second Yellowtip on that, Oxbridge looked back 3 years. They must figure most parents won't risk switching Bertie from public to crap comp school at the start of year 11...

So crap school genuis rightly enjoyed his hard-won successes when he applied, and his public school notched up his results. Guess the only loser was the crap comp.

@ EvilTwins again (apologies for the staccato posting, it's the only way my computer can currently cope).

Grimma seems to me to be exactly right: feet through the door. Probably the single most important thing to show your pupils and their parents that this is more than idle talk.

It's still not too late to book any Y12s into a college or colleges for the university wide Open Days at the end of June. Provided you're some distance away the college will provide free accomodation including all meals for both students and you, as their teacher. Once there they'll be looked after by enthusiastic students who've stayed on after the end of term precisely to debunk myths and enthuse. Booking has been open for a while is the only thing, so you'd need to act fast. And you might need to drive them! If they hate the place - nothing lost.

The Oxford website has all the info you'll need on every aspect of applying and with pointers to all sorts of help. The entrance statistics section is interesting too, with the 2011 entrance statistics up, drawing attention to the fact that state schoolers apply in disproportionate numbers for the most heavily subscibed courses and make disproportionately few applications to the least subscribed to courses. Obviously that has an effect on relative success rate too.

I'd just like to reiterate what was said way up thread about the costs of going to Oxford and hope those of you like EvilTwin who are trying to encourage people to go there, will pass it on to the pupils.
You absolutely do not have to be rich to afford Oxford. My old college and many others can provide very reasonably priced and decent quality, in college accommodation for all 3 years. Along with that goes cheaper meals and a location that allows you to access all areas by foot or bike. There's also usually cheap beer and laundry facilities as well.
Due to the historical wealth of the colleges and recent fundraising, Oxford can also offer generous bursaries to families on low to middle incomes - far more than most other unis are able to offer.
Nobody thick but rich gets into Oxbridge these days and there really are people from a huge range of backgrounds. I come from a northern mill town and spent all but the 6th form at the local comp before going to Oxford.
I found some of the poshest people to be some of the nicest and the least snobby. Meeting people from different walks of life and incomes was one of the joys of being there.

Yellowtip - I looked it up and have made initial contact. I'm new to post of Head of 6th, and this is exactly the kind of thing which could made a difference to my students. Thanks for the tip!

Great that some weirdnesses above have been put right.

I really do urge you all to make contact with Oxbridge colleges - I am just off to meet a pre-GCSE group from a London Comp today, and I think that can be a smart time for a tour, before misguided GCSE choice becomes a potential problem. All I care about is attracting the best applicants academically speaking...I did not btw go to a posh private myself and neither did my subject colleagues, and I have no wishlist of schools or classes or ethnicities. I just want eager minds.

The reason people from all sectors get rejected even if good on paper is because we get lots of good applicants. It is that simple.

So B&B far less (fewer) students apply from state schools AND a lower proportion of these get in yet you say more than half Oxbridge students are from state schools?? Your numerical awareness is shocking!

I haven't read this thread but I came across this table www.ox.ac.uk/about_the_university/facts_and_figures/undergraduate_admissions_statistics/qualifications.html

in the admission statistics showing that Oxford actually turns down many people who get very high grades and accepts some with quite low grades. Can anyone at Oxford break that table down by school type so we can see if they genuinely make allowance for schools?

I did have similar figures for Cambridge but I can't find the web link at the moment.

link again www.ox.ac.uk/about_the_university/facts_and_figures/undergraduate_admissions_statistics/qualifications.html

And some more contributions to the debate - able children don't do any better at grammars

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/brightest-do-better-at-comprehensive-schools-739509.html

and selective schools give no advantage in social mobility www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362166/Grammar-school-education-gives-children-advantage-comprehensive-pupils.html

Ellisbell thanks for the interesting links. I would so like to believe it to be true. However, looking closely at the third one it bases those findings on a 50 year study of students from 1958. The world has changed massively since then and I'm not entirely sure those findings are relevant now.

Oh Betty, please stop. B & B has given exemplary and comprehensive stats. If you refuse to/cannot understand them and wish to persist in your delusions beliefs in the face of all evidence, then do so privately.

sieg is goiing to a London comp. The London schools seem to be doing pretty well. There was one which got something like 5 or 7 students into oxbridge last year from one inner City school. London is near Oxbridge.

Can we not have the rougher comps in the NE where I am from where grammar schools were abolished in about 1970 doing the same at Durham? May be they do but I don't get that impression. I feel there is a bit of a divide between South and elsewhere. Someone might have mentioned above the immigrant effect too -lots of parents of immigrants want the chidlren to do well. I am sure one of the reason my older children's schools do so well is there are so many people from abroad over here. In daughter 1's class at Habs she and one other were the only girls with 4 English born grandparents. Hug work ethic. If you have got off your bottom to move countries to better yourself you tend to want your children to do well in school. We need the same umph amongst white working class never worked for generations North Easterners

Durham has a good outreach programme in the NE Xenia and works hard to attract 'local' students, with designated bursaries etc. You may be underestimating the university.

Some of the success of those families is to do with hybrid vigour too Xenia; and some were pushed rather than jumped.

I agree and some of it is Chinese type tiger parents and 6 hours of homework/coaching a night, although it does no harm to be in a class with children who work very hard. The Ugandan Asians have done very well in the UK. They pushed out by Amin years ago.

interesting links ellis thanks. The trouble with these studies is you can find ones that show the complete opposite very easily. It's hard to know what to believe.

The oxford A level grade thing was interesting too. Not a huge correlation between A level grades achieved and likelihood of offer. the 67.3% success rate for A A A* people may be wrong too as on the figures they give it should be 44%, but it may be that the figures are wrong.

Xenia, I'd be happy to go anywhere... just this school asked me. I've also been to Birmingham schools and to schools on Teeside. If there are any NE comp heads or subject tutors here, just ask! From memory Keble is the regonal; college for the North, but anywhere would be willing. Sorry for any iphone mistakes...

Oxford have moved the first table from their page now as it was an old partially edited one and contained errors, so you can no longer see how many applied who then went on to achieve the specified grades, just the percentages of accepted candidates within each category.

New to thread.
I don't have a problem with what WorriedBetty said, even through all the wrangling over statistics. Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't her point that it is harder for a state-school pupil who fits the Oxbridge criteria, but who is not exceptional, to gain a place than their non-exceptional privately-educated peers. This being due to the 'value-added' in the private system ie better interview preparation and techniques, professional parents volunteering help and advice, access to work experience, summer schools etc.)

My eldest DC attends an above average state comp in a northern city. It is considered outstanding by Offsted and has specialisms in the arts and science. DS's interview preparation for his Cambridge interview consisted of 30 mins the day before with a non-specialist teacher, (History - he was applying for Nat Sci.) The rest of his prep he did himself researching on-line, organising a visit himself and extensively reading around his subject. He still found the interview extremely daunting and felt ill-prepared. Needless to say he was pooled then rejected. He is however, perfectly happy with the offers he did get.

Out of the 8 from his year group that applied, 2 gained places. One of these is what you would call a child prodigy - above exceptional, the other very capable and from a severely dis-advantaged background. I know this is an extremely small sample but it does appear that coming from a state background you do need to be exceptional or be so severely dis-advantaged you are positively discriminated for, otherwise it's very likely your privately-educated peers will just be so much better prepared and groomed to such a high level of confidence you will very likely be out-shone. Oh by the way, all the group were extremely good applicants on paper with predicted A AA at least, but maybe not all exceptional. However my worry like Betty* is that I doubt very much that all those privately-educated students who gain a place are exceptional either, but the 'value-added' will sway it for them.

It's not a level playing field and I'm not sure the admissions teams are as good at seeing beyond this as they seem to think. Perhaps this is why state school teachers feel so dis-heartened when offering advice regarding Oxbridge - the time and resources available to prepare students is so pathetically poor maybe they don't think they'll stand a real chance of getting their students to a level of confidence where their abilities could be properly assessed by an admissions tutor.

Interesting raft of stats, thanks ellis.

I noted, for example, on the quals page, what a relatively large proportion of people doing IB quals rather than A levels failed to meet their offers. Also, how biased it semed to be aainst applicants from certin ethnic backgrounds, even taking into account that students from certain ethnicities tend to apply for the most competitive courses.

Also, interesting to see how relatively easy it is to get into Oxford for some of the sciences! - almost a 50/50 chance in Chemistry, say! Knew that Oxford had a better reputation for arts but still surprised.

Ignore last point - misread table! Aargh - too many stats!

interesting that the table has gone - the correct figures could have been published if there were errors. Why, I wonder, do Oxford not wish people to see how successful they are at identifying potential, at least as defined by A levels?

Perhaps that is also why I coudn't find the Cambridge figures.

Boowerbird if you are going to do a long term study then you don't get quick results. . I know I've read somewhere that social mobility is not improving but I can't remember where.

Emph, that will be true to some extent although some private schools are not for bright chnildren and don't do Oxbridge preparation. It can have the opposite effect too - my recalcitrant but reasonably bright daughters would not try Oxbridge (not that the lack of it has held them back) because it involved extra work - you had to go to the oxbridge extra classes at school - far too much effort for a teenager apparently. Of course universities are perfectly right not to want students like that.

"Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't her point that it is harder for a state-school pupil who fits the Oxbridge criteria, but who is not exceptional, to gain a place than their non-exceptional privately-educated peers. This being due to the 'value-added' in the private system ie better interview preparation and techniques, professional parents volunteering help and advice, access to work experience, summer schools etc."

I think tactical applications to places can help too. I suspect my oldest got into Bristol because her subject was not that popular. It was being there that in part got her her job (the £60k one mid 20s) and had she tried say to read medicine there might not have got in.

This is not just a state schools issue. no one has ever been to Obridge from my school ever. I suggested I try and the school said as I would be 17 when I went to university I was too young (!). It hasn't mattered one iota but there was very small girls schools which in my year didn't suggest it. I am not showing off to say I had the best exam results in the school by quite a long way etc. If I had pushed harder I suppose I might have gone. I was determined to get a scholarship to university for some reason so I wrote to lots of them and then sat 3 x 3 hours of papers and got one. I did all that myself.

I just had a look at one my duaghter's old school

"Congratulations go to all of our 38 pupils who have been offered places at Oxford and Cambridge universities recently for 2010 or 2011 entry.
These offers are testament to the hard work and application of pupils and staff alike. Pupils will read a wide variety of subjects including Architecture, History, Classics, Economics, Engineering, English, Medicine, Modern Languages, Oriental Studies, Philosophy and Law. There are about 120 Old North Londoners currently studying at Oxford and Cambridge. Two former pupils are History Fellows at Cambridge colleges."

This a very selective school, 86% AAB A level. (5th FT tables)

Then I picked QE Barnet - State selective girls, 80% AAB (8th, FT)
www.qebarnet.co.uk/new_and_noteworthy?newsid=56

Actually none of this helps. It is just showing if you put chidlren in selective schools (which most children however rich their parents cannot go to as they are not bright enough) the finished product is ilkely to do pretty well at university entrance.

"So, which schools generally have the best record in getting pupils into Oxbridge? Here is the top ten based on the latest available figures:

North London Collegiate School (40) (42%)

St Paul?s Girls? School (40) (42%)

Westminster School (50) (39%)

Magdalen College School (25) (32%)

Haberdashers? Aske?s School for Girls (30) (29%)

The Stephen Perse Foundation (20) (29%)

St Paul?s School (45) (27%)

Guildford High School (25) (26%

City of London School for Girls (20) (26%)

Wycombe Abbey School (20) (25%)

There isn?t a single non-selective state school in the top hundred .42% of the end of KS4 pupils in both North London Collegiate and St Pauls Girls gained entry to Oxbridge, which is extraordinary. Eton, for the record, sent 60 boys to Oxbridge representing 22% of their cohort."

The Eton thing probably shows their slightly broader entrance criteria - eg that they would let Prince Harry in etc which would not happen at schools like Haberdashers. Manchester Grammar etc.

xenia - I suspect your point about tactical applications may have some weight.

The college my DS selected was actually one of the most over-subscribed, although this is not supposed to make a difference in the Cambridge system due to pooling of good applicants for other colleges to consider. Realistically though if you are an admissions tutor why bother getting to the bottom of the pile if the first few applicants are great?

We received no information on which colleges would have been better to apply to in any tactical sense from DS's school - I'm sure Eton and Westminster had no such difficulties advising their pupils.

Regarding the point about selective schools being selective and therefore the filtering has already been done before university applications begin, does not mean that all their pupils are exceptional in any meaningful sense. Tutoring and cramming are fairly reliable ways of passing entrance exams, and are not necessarily a sure fire way of identifying natural ability.

The above statistics do not surprise me at all - just make me sad.

Emph raises some interesting points. The 'value-added' bits are key, but I think in general they work against private kids. Given the level of prep I think everyone would agree that of two children who got identical grades (whatever those grades might be), the one whose school was lower down the league tables would be considered brighter than the one whose school was higher up, simply by dint of relative performance.

The key thing though - apart form grades - that any child can get must be the supporting statements from teachers. Which of course takes us right back to the original theme of this thread - low aspirations. If your school isn't rooting for you and knocking it out of the park in terms of references, then you aren't going to get in. That I think is where the private schools have the upper hand. Good ones know their pupils inside out and will steer each one to the right degree choice and usually toward the right uni choices. They will also reference the pupil appropriately (not over-selling of course because their success long-term depends upon universities trusting their recommendations). That kind of thing really makes the difference

I was kicked out of school at 15 and had to do a BTEC before going to uni. I had zero chance of getting into Oxbridge of course (you needed O level French back then or were not allowed to apply!), and I thought I had zero chance of getting in to any uni at all. But the head of my course at college (an Oxford grad himself) thought differently. Despite my background I got into 4 of my 5 choices (all Russell Group) and 2 of the offers were pretty much unconditional. And it was 100% down to the supporting docs my lecturers wrote (what it was they wrote I have no idea). That's where aspirations, knowledge and support come from and that's where the private schools in general can whip the ass off the state schools.