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

Someone has got their nose in a crimp!

Teachers can be a massive influence. DP teaches special needs, kids with emotional & behavour problems. Some of the most challenging and disruptive are really very bright, but have often missed years of school and have no self-esteem or aspirations.

He speaks to these ones as if it is already decided that they will go to unversity and study "proper subjects" (he means science or maths!): they nearly all buy into this eventually, and demand to be put in for higher tier papers even though it means extra classes. The effect of having an adult actually believe in them can be life-changing.

I work at a state school, where we encourage all students to aim high. Several of our students have gained Oxbridge places, all because they were both very able and determined. Although they also had supportive parents, the drive came initially from the child.

Feedback from the top universities is that they want their applicants to be passionate about the subject. Passion often comes during the GCSE years, when the subject is being delivered by specialists, who, believe it or not, are as abundant in comprehensive schools as private or selective.
I would not be too worried if my child was not encouraged to apply to Oxbridge by his primary teacher, or his teacher in year 9. I would be worried if his A level teacher had low aspirations.
However, I am most worried by those parents who tell me that their above average child in year 7 is determined to go to Cambridge. It strikes me that the aspiration is the parent's rather than the child's.

To all parents who have the misfortune to have their children 'taught' by a bunch of government-paid unionised left wing twats:

tell them to f ck right off, and SUPPORT ANY government minister who stands up to them and the teacher's unions (ie Michael Gove, Andrew Adonis, etc)... and be vocal about doing so...

dont' believe me?????? WHATEVER they say about 'learners' 'child-centred learning' 'exam stress is bad' blah blah blah blah

the problem is not 'privileged' private schools. The problem is all those 100s of 1000s if not millions of Indian and Chinese kids who DON"T have left wing twats 'teaching' them, who have 12 hour school days who are taking over the world economy and against whom your kids - YOUR KIDS - have to compete, woefully, inadequately prepared. (The private school kids HAVE been prepared, why? Because the private schools respond to market forces not educational ideology). Privilege ain't got anything to do with this.

Whatever your political beliefs, believe this: this is bigger than the UK, and the biggest millstone around your state educated children's necks, are the left-wing trained teachers in charge of them. And I am not exaggerating the point. I really am not. You can hate me all you like, but look at a tiny fraction of any Indian/Chinese class on the internet. Then, get frightened.

Bottom line? Whatever Michael Gove proposes, SUPPORT HIM. 100%. He is simply carrying on the measures of Tony Blair/Andrew Adonis (Labour), who really got it [that the UK under unionised left wing twat educational ideology, are falling further and further behind internationally]

please note, I haven't talked at all about the uniqueness or potential of the children, simply to say the UK private school kids are taught/prepared to rev at all cylinders of their potential (which is why they aren't slipping on the international league tables) and the state school kids aren't (and they ARE slipping).

This is about the teachers, and the attitudes of the teachers. One set are geared to market forces, and the other set are shielded from them (Sutton Trust) ... which has to stop.

If I were education minister, I would require* a National set of exams at 11 for selection to secondary school, at GCSE and at A level. All children to set, including the private sector. Top performing kids, to go into Eton Harrow Winchester etc all expenses paid. With a vocational option from 13 onwards, to re-start Britain's manufacturing tradition.

*and stuff the unions!!!!!

I teach BTEC, most students are going to be nurses, some physios or OPD.

The courses they are going on to at uni are not taught at many Russel group unis, and as they are BTEC not A Level students they probably won't get in anyway.

Some of my students want to study while living at home for financial and cultural reasons.

Having worked at a hospital attached to an oxbridge uni I would advise any student studying medicine to do so in a big city, London, Manchester, Birmingham. Oxbridge grads IME often don't have the skills to work with anyone who is not white and a native English speaker.

Worriedbetty- Thanks a lot for your posts.
I do not know well the teaching side of it, but for research there is not doubt that funding is almost the ONLY criteria to get the best 'researchers'. You only need to look at ads for vacancies these days.

You can find post for 'Research Professors' (0.2 Full time). This means they are recruiting people not to teach or contribute to the academic profile of the place, but to count their publications (written elsewhere) as their own research output. Academia, as it is now in the UK, is like football. The best clubs are the ones with the best players, not because the club trained them but because they bought them.

harbingerofdoom, I also went to uni form a very working class backgound and statistitcs are shifting slightly but on the whole class is relevant. I was unusual in 1983, students came from middle class backgrounds.

ABWN - you will find your posts ignored - shame because you are absolutely right about the international context that the teaching unions ignore because it doesn't fit in with their agenda

Abitwobbly - you are mistaken in that public school kids are prepared to compete with Chinese and Indian top performers. 1. Public school kids are skewed towards humanities PPE etc, chinese and indian strengths are in maths, science and engineering 2. Public school kids do not have to fight for places equally, there is a resource bias, plus an application bias, plus an acceptance bias, plus a subsidy bias, plus a relative strength of the economies bias plus a cultural bias that favours them, so they can be relatively secure in their likelihood of entry to UK universities, and the top end of those universities..PLUS a bias in their favour at graduate recruitment level in UK and US. Why try harder??

1. You are mistaken in viewing the conflict as being left wing v market - if market were the driver and universities were not funded by UK and EU collectively and socialist collection and redistribution of wealth, your little free-market darlings would be paying more than £100K a year for their Oxbridge experience honestly why are free market economists also the most dumb (actually scratch that - that is why they like the 'ug.. money.. ug.. market.. ug' simplicity of that faux darwinist BS.

WB, your post taps into the queston of what universities are actually for - Oxford and Cambridge are both v. resistant to the idea that universities are 'competitors in a market place' offering a 'product'. Someone from Oxford (can't remeber who) said last year 'the language of the marketplace has no place in a university ' (except in economics lectures, maybe!) - I agree completely with the sentiment that education cannot be dictated to by market forces. I can't link for some odd reason but this is something that universities are thinking hard about.

Of course they are resistant! They want the taxes from the majority to pay for the privileges of the minority - being market oriented means less free cash.. negotiated from humanities students routed into privileged government jobs .

The worry - to expand the point - is that Universities confuse good organisational management practice with 'the language of the market'...ho hum

Very cynical, WB! And actually the opposite of what is being said by Oxbridge; I can link now; Oxford. THe line that stuck out for me is, "We don't want to end up as a finishing school for rich students from around the world."

It's like this; the Royal Opera House could make a fortune by performing nothing other than La Boheme; the Royal Shakespeare Company could stay afloat by performing Romeo and Juliet twice a day - but neither does this because it wuold greatly impoversh the arts if they did. Oxbridge could just offer marketable courses for wealthy overseas students, and rake it in, capitalising n their international reputation, but if they did it'd be a massive loss to education. The point being made is that education must have an instrinsic value other than the job it gets you at the end - if education is judged only by what are earning when you graduate, things like Philosophy and Classics would be hard to justify.

Not everyone at Oxbridge is 'privileged'. There are a lot of wealthy kids, yes, but also lots who are hugely gifted / obsessed / mighty determined.

No Way! You mean Oxbridge say something specific to address the overwhelming concerns about them! Whilst doing something completely different! wow.. they really are so brilliant .. heart them loads!!

Lets say this again...6% of the country's young adults go to public schools, and this forms nearly 50% of Oxbridge intake

Oh and by the way, the diversity in arts and education IS a market driven argument - in the sense that funding rules enforce diversity... Also how would all those woolly arty public school kids get routed into top jobs if there wasn't arty routes through oxbridge??

betty, maybe that just means that private schools are better at educating kids and get them to a higher standard?

Should the aim not be for State Schools to be able to compete with them? ie State Schools need to up their game?

Abit say it is as it is. We are hugely privileged where I live that our children are in private schools with Chinese and Asian/Indian children. It massively improves things. The children work hard and are committed. In addition if your child learns to speak properly (not something most state schools are that good at but private schools do better) and English is their first language they have an even bigger advantage.

Some state schools are good. Some are bad. I wouldn't send a chidl to one and I didn't go to one but obviously some people don't make wise enough career choices as women to be able to afford fees and their children suffer. This is a competitive world and our private schools are the envy of the world, not something we can quite say about our state schools....

I was told by the careers advisor at college not to bother putting my preferred degree on my ucas form, as "candidates who have not been to private school never get in"
Yeh, thanks for that

People are niave if they think teachers don't have a massive influence on this. Nobody in my family had gone to uni and none of their friends had. My parents wanted me to go to uni but knew nothing about it. I had never heard of the term RG for example.

I wento to uni because of my parents. But not 1 teacher suggested it to me. They were all leftw ing and although great in some ways, would not have encouraged anyone I am sure to go to Cambridge or Oxford. I always got the impression that places like that would not have welcomed someone like me, even though I did have the grades to stand a chance of getting a place.

And as I came from a very poor area, I probably would have got a place. I regret not even trying to get in there now and instead applying for an okay university.

Worriedbetty: no, I am not mistaken.

Your information is somewhat out of date. The public schools now push maths and science. Pupils are responding to market forces by now doing a judicious mix of science and humanities.

Zombie, what a shame! And you illustrate perfectly, the problem.

PGCE training is shockingly ideological. Nothing would drag that lot and their graduates into reality faster than privatising education, grrrrr

• where is Maggie Thatcher when you need her! [like her or loathe her, that woman had balls]

I find this whole 'teachers don't encourage kids' bullshit deeply offensive as well as inaccurate. And Abitwobblynow you ae the most offensive of the lot. I don't think you have any idea what state schools are like and have a chip on your shoulder for some reason you are not sharing.
I have worked in a range of state schools in different parts of ENgland and Wales and have never come across the attitude some of you are suggesting. Of course teachers have a huge influence. THat is why I, and the vast majority of those I have worked with, spend hours with no extra pay tutoring children in our subjects and advising them to aim for the best they can achieve. Why else would we get out of bed every day and go to work?
I am sick of every failing of the country being laid at the door of the teaching profession.

Xenia - what planet do you live on? 'I wouldn't send a chidl to one and I didn't go to one but obviously some people don't make wise enough career choices as women to be able to afford fees and their children suffer'
Seriously? Seriously? THere is no point in arguing with someone so ignorant and arrogant.

Abitwobblynow - have you done a PGCE? If so, clearly not everyone on them is left wing. If not, how can you make judgements on what goes on in them? I know teachers from a variety of political viewpoints.

And whoever said State schools should 'up their game', perhaps you would like to lobby for increased funding so I can have a class size of 10 instead of 31. You don;t think this might have an effect? State schools achieve great value added, and research I have seen suggest state school pupils fare better at university as they are more used to having to do some work themselves without intensive support.

I agree with cardi

Have checked my UCAS tracker this morning and despite mine (and colleagues) time and energy, our Head Girl, who is a straight A candidate, has put our local university down as her firm acceptance. Why? Because her mother doesn't want her to leave home.

abitwobbly- I find your posts offensive and, frankly, quite hysterical. You clearly don't work in education and have little clue what it's about.