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 get very tired reading the anti-teacher rhetoric. Please stop it.

Many teachers support their children all the way to do their very best. Many are possibly classist like society.

Parental influence is also huge. Working class families were often not encouraged to consider education as an option - I am a docker's daughter and the first to go to uni. My school, an ex-grammar did not particularly encourage me from my background, I had to be determined.

As a society we need to treasure education and encourage it for all who want it.

I wanted to do biology at uni, my teacher told me to try nursing instead. I now have a post grad degree from a top uni in computer science and I've just started a psychology degree. I had the ability to do biology, I got an A in a level, but the teacher had no faith in me... In the end I didn't go to uni straight after school as my dream was shattered so I became a secretary for a few years. One of my bosses told me I was completely wasting my potential, so I went to uni. All it takes sometimes is some support and encouragement. I still have regrets about listening to that teacher, but to be fair, I had no choice, they weren't going to help me get into uni or apply as they thought it was above me. This was at one of the top grammar schools in the country.

She was my biology teacher by the way!

In my very bog standard comp, I was asked whether I wanted to apply to Oxbridge. As the idea of university was only very recent for my family, I balked at the thought of Oxbridge and decided not to apply as I wouldnt fit in.

The two kids that did apply didn't even get an offer - despite one girl attaining 4 As.

I now work in just an ordinary school and we tend to get about one student per year into Oxbridge. We encourage ours to the hilt, but, just like me, most are held back by their own perceptions of themselves.

Sadly, most of our kids prefer to go to a uni close to home, to save money, regardless of how good that uni is.

Of course there are state-educated students at Oxbridge, but this isn't proportional at all. Those from private schools are vastly overrepresented.

BBQ
the Oxbridge stats while headline scary are not actually as bad as they might at first appear.
Once you take into account selective schools (state and private) and the state to private transfer that happens at 6th form, the "correct" would be nearer 1/4 private rather than 1/2
which is MASSIVELY different from the 6% private that we all know and loathe

WorriedBetty Oh come on, how can you justify that statement: 'The best students do NOT go to Oxbridge'. There may be exceptional students elsewhere, but there's an astonishing pool of young talent at Oxford and Cambridge, why pretend that there isn't?

in my state school i was old to come back after gcses to resit as part of my career advice and i got 5a's 3b's and a c they never gave me any hope at all to anything tbh and nether did my parents
i do hope that helps

I was at posh private gels schools all the way through
my mother was well hacked that I did not learn typing
and after RG uni I gt asked after passing certain exams if I was now up for "helping" the qualified accountants : I WAS one FFS

"We encourage ours to the hilt, but, just like me, most are held back by their own perceptions of themselves. "

This quote illustrates perfectly why I think Year 9 is too late to start creating the aspirational culture that helps students believe in themselves enough to make a successful application to a university that only accepts the best. It's not just a matter of making the right GCSE choices. It's something about feeling that you are perfectly entitled to aim for the op and have every chance of getting there. It must be tragic for teachers that do encourage children to have those aims, to see them held back by a lack of belief that it's "for them".

This is so depressing. My school, a typical comp actually discouraged me from applying, not because I didn't have excellent predicted grades, but they said they didn't know anyone there and that private schools had 'contacts' to help their pupils get into certain colleges, perhaps I could go straight into the 'pool' (left over candidate selection)? This was utter bullshit as it turned out, when I actually went for interview, I got a very low offer and was encouraged to go, which I did and did very well whilst there.

I just feel sad that although there's many good comp schools, there's still a real issue around aspiration. Whoever said that these pupils probably come from the best state schools, this is rubbish. In a typical large comp, there should be a few pupils who are trying for Oxbridge, and many many more trying for good universities. Our teachers were really good at teaching, but utterly intimidated by the Oxbridge mystique. The shame is that once there, me and many of my friends from comps did extremely well although we were in a minority (once you counted, as worriedbetty said, the grammar/other types of state schools).

A big issue re. Oxbridge is the sheer freakery-outery. It can be enormously intimidating to go into a don's office and be expected to spew forth wisdom about Stuff. I think if schools could drum just one thing into kids applying to Oxbridge, it'd be this: the buildings, the bizarre vocabulary, the tradition etc - all this is great, fascinating, inspiring etc, but don't pay it any attention during your interview and don't let it overwhelm you. The only thing that matters is the thing you're talking about to a tutor.

And (this is thing no. 2!) Oxbridge is riddled with insecurity - really, really riddled with 18 -21 y os who are terrified that at any moment someone will 'find them out' and they'll be chucked out for utter stupidity. This is very hard for young people to cope with, so they most insecure manifest their insecurity in pomposity / arrogance / intellectual aggressiveness - but arrogance is, often, just the flipside of insecurity, which means that the most flamoyant, bolshy students are the ones with the most insecurity. So pay no heed.

So any 17 y o with a decent brain, and enough nous to filter out all the external impressive stuff, and enough emotional well-being to deal with the insecurity within, has a good chance. Those, I think, are the real issues, and these are the things that kids need to know.

As a Head of 6th form in a small rural school with lots of poverty, I genuinely believe that this is more about parents than teachers. I have 38 students in yr 13. 19 have applied to UCAS. Every single one of them applied to at least one of our two "local" universities (neither RG). Most applied elsewhere as well, but some only applied to the local two. I have students who will achieve the magic AAB but the majority come from families with no experience of university education and a scared off by the stories of debt they hear in the news. I have taken them to visit universities, supplied them with as much info as possible, brought in talks from UCAS and a variety of institutions, had one-on-one interviews etc etc but still my best students are determined to stay at home and go to the "local" university. It's both frustrating and heart breaking. But then, this is the sane school where a yr 12 girl, having made a really positive start to her 4 A Level courses dropped out in December to work on a supermarket checkout with the support of her parents- when I called home to air my concerns I was told "you and I both know that if you can get a job at the moment, you should take it"

HolofernesesHead Your last paragraph backs up what was said by areyoutheregoditsmemarg on page 1.
Family is very important.

Good post, HH.

WorriedBetty - you've kind of got the wrong end of the stick. Oxbridge have an international reputation because of the quality iof the students initially - of course the value added by the uni is bugger all. I had 1.5 hours of 'tuition' a week = reading my essays aloud and having maybe 10 mins of discussion. What I learnt was what I taught myself - how to read huge amounts of material, and extract the essence pithily and concisely, how to get on top of huuuge new topics every week, how to construct and deconstruct an argument... But I couldn't have done this without an initial ability. I wasn't so much taught this as left alone to get on with it...

Id did waay more work than friends at other (RG) unis and learnt correspondingly more. My degree definitely deserves higher prestige than the others. It was a damn sight harder work.

I took a group of our highest students to Oxford last year. They met a very lovely admissions officer who gave them loads of information and encouraged them to apply, stating that despite the fact that none of them would be anywhere near the normal grade requirements, it was worth it because coming from such a deprived area they would be extremely likely to get an interview. She illustrated this point by getting one student to talk through her background and explaining that having seven languages (English is her seventh) was actually really impressive. No the child would not get an A in her English A-Level, but even a C grade in those circumstances would be great. *

On the train on the way home (and it's a direct, speedy train route- you can possibly work out where I teach) I urged the kids to apply. It was met with a, 'Meh. It was a nice day out, but who's heard of Oxford?' reply.

Similarly, Cambridge came to a careers fair and ran a fantastic workshop for our students. At the end our students were dangerously polite to the Cambridge team and I knew there was trouble. I asked the kids what the problem was when they'd left: 'Miss, it's all posh white people.'

The majority of our parents have not heard of Oxford or Cambridge. Seriously. Warwick, York or Bristol are as alien to them as Russia. We do do our best, but it's a bit of a battle.

*On the basis of her advice, two students from the school are currently studying Medicine at top universities. They did not get 3 As. We phoned the universities in question, asked for advice and they seconded the view that the postcode plus personal statement would be enough to get the kids an interview. As one of the kids has been through the care system it makes me (and his social workers) cry a little bit because it's so heartwarming.

EvilTwins - but maybe that's true? Working one's way up or going back to study as a (motivated) mature student are both valid ways of getting on in life - the trad school-uni route need not be the only one - and with uni fees will increasingly become less popular, I suspect.

It is not just family but our culture. Ordinary folks don't believe they can be high achievers and don't pursue activities to nurture high achievment because it is not part of their family tradition. Keeps people in their place and the rich in power.

I agree you really can't lie it all at teachers door. 18 year olds can make their own choices. And it might not be that

Even though my Father went to Cambridge and my sister to Oxford, both from state schools, I didn't apply. Why ? 1) The course just wasn't very interesting: who wants to spend a whole year doing Anglo Saxon Literature? And wait 2 years to look at anything written within the last 100 years? 2) I also thought they were a load of snobs and taht I would spend 3 years as a social outsider. Yes, I was probably also a little afraid of failure but it wasn't the main reason for rejecting it.

daffodilly You are wrong, My GF came from the backstreets of a Northern city. His parents realised that he was 'bright'. Did his time as delivery boy etc.Then after the War was sent to UNi!

You are right Yellowtip, that statement does need more qualification. I am sure that some students going to Oxbridge are amongst the best. What I mean is that Oxbridge does not take the top slice in terms of ability - i.e. if Oxbridge takes say 1% of students - they are NOT the top 1% in terms of ability, contrary to what is assumed. Oxbridge takes nearly 90% of public school pupils, across all ability ranges - as public schools are selected more by income than by ability, the ability distribution is roughly similar to the population as a whole - with some skew for scholarships (though this too is debatable).

If approx 50% of Oxbridge have an ability distribution across the range of abilities, and the rest are the "best" from a self-selected group (self-selection is dominant at Oxbridge) - the non-public school intake population applying to Oxbridge consist not of the best in the country, but those who perceive of themselves as the best in the country outside public schools (which may coincide but is unlikely to), or whose school need the results, or whose parents perceive of as the best in the country or who have not selected another Uni for other reasons, or did not have a better opportunity outside the sector .. or are gamblers, or self-selected because of class/prejudice etc). The ability distribution, given the numbers who don't apply to oxbridge and the numbers of the top 1% in the rest of the 99% (i.e. 1% of 99% as compared to the public school top 1% of 6% of the country), means that Oxbridge 1% is wildly different from the top 1% of abilities in the country.

Oxbridge professors have trouble understanding this - so apologies...

Well I have a similar difficulty Betty, it sounds utter bullshit.

And what's your specialty Betty? Just curious.

And B&B I don't have the wrong end of the stick - Oxbridge's reputation is based originally on a class based and family -influenced entry (my grandfather is included) then latterly on research - which is really more predicted by how much funding a University has and has had over time than anything else - and this is true globally (the oxbridge/top 100 globally bias in publishing is also a factor because of the way universities are funded in the UK) though of course reputation and funding also attract funding which magnifies this effect.

Quality of undergraduates contributes little - what does contribute to the University is the number of Oxbridge graduates who are recruited into influential positions in the country which further magnifies funding models that favour Oxbridge - this is something the RG and other groupings were set up to lobby against.

Graduate recruiters are also to blame - they follow the government funding ratings in order to decide which unis to target for graduate recruitment - with the clearly mistaken belief that this reduces the need for them to filter because unis have already done so - big mistake!!

Well arrogant dismissal of arguments that don't fit your view IS very oxbridge YT... Don't worry I see it all the time!