If you can afford private education but remain in the state sector cont.

[happygardening]

Thought I repost the OP although the debate has moved on a little .
It's going to be hard to avoid this becoming another state v private thread, but what I'm interested in is a slightly different take on that debate. It's not "which is better?" but "if you think state school is better even though you could afford private education, then why is that?"

The question is based on the assumptions that the DC in question is/are reasonably bright (so might benefit academically from academically selective education), that the state school is non-selective (as most people don't have access to grammar schools), and that you hope for your DC to go to a good university (to make the £££££ fees worthwhile!)

I've been mulling this over ever since I heard some maths professor from Cambridge talking on the radio about the age-old private v state inequality of Oxbridge admissions. He was all for improving access for state school applicants but said that the simple fact was that for maths, even the best state schools generally teach only to the A-level syllabus, whereas the best private schools take their maths/further maths A-level candidates well beyond the syllabus and so the state school applicants are at a huge disadvantage - they simply don't have the starting level of knowledge required for the course.

This made me wonder: with this sort of unequal playing field, if you have the choice of private education, what reasons might you have not to take it?

Would be interested to hear from those who've made this choice - how it's working out, or if your DC have finished school now, how did it work out? Did they go to good universities/get good jobs, etc? On the other side of things, if you paid for private schooling but now regret it, why?

My DC go to a state school by the way.

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"Sorry - there's a limit as to how fair you can possibly be. I have the feeling you want someone to get in despite not meeting minimum requirements based on where they are from.

Basically, you have to admit it: you're calling for affirmative action/positive discrimination."

No I'm not. I am calling for institutions to be sure that their admissions procedures are transparent and non discriminatory- that's a very different thing. If they are, then fine. And I am also calling for schools to have higher aspirations for their pupils- and for something to be done for kids whose parents can't or won't provide the support that rich and/or privileged kids get. Schools- or someone -needs to fill that gap.

I think this is the key sentence from mafisa's post
"But NOT ENOUGH STATE SCHOOL CANDIDATES APPLY. Their teachers don't encourage them to apply, and their parents don't encourage them to apply, and they don't apply, and then lots of mediocre candidates from independent schools do. And it's a crying shame."

seeker You don't seem to get it.. and sorry, but Mafisa hasn't had a chance to look at the figures more thoroughly. Candidates will ONLY apply if they think it's likely they'll meet the admission criteria. 1 in 10 state school candidates met that last year versus 1 in 3 in the private sector.

If ALL students meeting that criteria got in... whether state or private, it would still be skewed to privates. The only way to increase state school intake is through (1) affirmative action, whereby admission criteria for state school kids gets lowered, and private school kids are discriminated against; (2) somehow make state school students get the same grades as their private counterparts at A-levels regardless of background.

I prefer (2) but that means... building from the ground up as happy noted before.

happy I'm not sure what you mean about perspective: the parent body at top grammars is different from the parent body at top independents. presumably you agree with that and therefore with my statement?

seeker if you read back to the start of this discussion about Oxford and Cambridge you'll find the point about the wildly differing application rates was made loud and clear. Several times.

... in addition to the above, seeker, you then also expect Oxbridge to discriminate against grammar schools in the state sector - many of which happen to get good results.

So in your ideal world... all kids with the right grades from disadvantaged comps should get in automatically. Guess what... private school kids get rejected. Grammar school kids, too. It's just that they probably produce a higher proportion of kids with the right grades relative to the entire student population at their relative schools.

Yellow of course i agree with your statement; 'The difference between top grammars and top independents is overwhelmingly about differing parental ambition" but what I was trying to say obviously not very well is that they're may be as I think seeker asserts primarily MC parents at top grammar schools contradicting your statement "Which is interesting, since that alone would suggest that grammars aren't the exclusive mc ghettos that you'd have us believe" but I don't think the vast majority of parents at "top independents" are middle class in the conventional teacher/nurse/high street lawyer sense of the word or even unless we're talking about the Duke of Westminster the landed aristocracy farming sheep and shooting pheasants all day long. These are at the bear minimum seriously wealthy (Im not talking £100 000 PA way over than amount) mega successful mega ambitious people and who equally ambitious for their DC's as they are for themselves.

"happy I'm not sure what you mean about perspective: the parent body at top grammars is different from the parent body at top independents. presumably you agree with that and therefore with my statement?"

In what way different?

Tasmania- yes of course it will still be skewed. Just less skewed.

Your figures are interesting. If 1 in 3 people in private school get the required 3 As or above, and 1 in 10 in state schools, considering the relative numbers, surely that means in terms of actual potential "bums on seats" there are more qualified state school people than private? Or am I missing something?

Well, as I've already pointed out, I went to a grammar school and there was no calling in of the brighter students and suggesting they apply to Oxford or Cambridge, simply a nod of encouragement towards those who asked if it might be worth their while, or the suggestion that they might be wasting their time if it wasn't thought to be worth their while. Nor were there extra classes or any other form of extra preparation, although they did let you take a couple of days off school to go to the interviews . You generally applied only if the school was very confident you stood a very good chance, having led yourself to the point where you were considering it, rather than spending 7 years at school being built up to it. Mind you, it is also true that a lot of people applied to do medicine, or relatively practical science/engineering degrees, which actually often had better courses on offer at other universities, including the London universities. However, the school did generally encourage students to apply to the other RG universities, which is possibly a step further than some comprehensive schools go. I think the problem with this was that it did make Oxford and Cambridge out to be special cases, rather than another two excellent options for all bright students to consider. And I guess the fact that Oxford required me to take two days off school to go and take a written test and be interviewed also helped to mark it out as different and I remember now being a bit irritated by it at the time, albeit that in retrospect I decided it was good that I'd had a chance to spend a night in a freezing cold room, to see what the college I'd applied might be like to sleep in, and to get more of an idea of what a collegiate university was actually like - and I also enjoyed meeting the other interviewees!!!! In other words, it might have been helpful if a more positive spin had been put on it by the powers that be before I went up there.

8Seeker* I've just carefully detailed in what way I think the parents at these top schools are different. They have completely different set of norms/ambitions to most MC parents. Cholmondley going off to Oxbridge is all part of the package.

In 2006, of the A level candidates who achieved 3 or more As at A level (excluding crit thinking and gen studies), 36 % were at independents, 17% grammar, 27.6% comprehensive, 15% sixth form college, 4% FE/tertiary/other.

I think about 42% Oxford admissions are from state applicants and Cambridge 41%, so 5 or 6% points higher than you might expect based on grades alone.

Yes, it's broad brush but it's absolutely true that the parents at the very top schools are buying into Oxford and Cambridge in a particular way. 'Part of the package' is right. I recognise what rabbit says too but the attitude amongst the very top grammars is far more positive now. Some of the less good grammars seem significantly more cautious. Of course success in applications begets success: it's seen an completely do-able so younger students follow suit when it's their time and apply too. It nevertheless remains true that the more selective a school the higher the numbers applying and succeeding will be. But that's how it should be of course.

This is a real problem, so getting at the facts is vital. You have to look at who applies, for exactly what course, and what their qualifications are.

Stats like the ones in this report www.ox.ac.uk/about_the_university/facts_and_figures/undergraduate_admissions_statistics/index.html (download the actual report)make interesting reading.

Some snippets:

1. "Nationally, although independent schools educate just 7% of the total UK school population, they account for 15% of all A-level entries, 30% of all A grades, and 33% of all those getting AAA. [Source: Harris report]"
2. "On average for 2010, 17.5% of state school students getting AAA or better (excluding General Studies) applied for courses Oxford doesn?t offer. [Source: UCAS]"
3. UK domiciled state school students apply disproportionately for the most oversubscribed subjects. On average, 35% of UK domiciled state school applications between 2010 and 2012 were for the five most oversubscribed subjects at Oxford. This compared to just 29% of independent school applications." The same applies in reverse for the least oversubscribed courses.
4. Grammar and independent have almost identical success rates, comprehensives slightly lower.

I think the detail here is vital - I found some of the figures quite surprising.

So, the 'package' effect probably means more of the highly qualified candidates apply which goes some way to explain the bias towards independents. There is also the issue that the very best candidates with high grades are slightly more likely to come from independent schools than comprehensives too as these figures from 2010 show:

In 2010 34% of children achieving A*AA or higher (exc. CT&GS) were from independents, 30% were from comprehensives and 18% from grammar.

If you look at those achieving AAA* or higher (exc CT&GS) then 39% from Independents, 25% comprehensive and 21% grammar.

gelo - my figures on page 17 are from 2012. Oxbridge made a lot of progress, and Cambridge, in fact, already recruits more state school students based on grades alone.

should read A A A* in the last para

Mind you, the terms "less good grammars" and "top grammars" are a bit loaded... some grammar schools are more academically selective than others, that's not the same thing as being "better," unless the quality of a school is judged by the average IQ of its attendees. I'm sure the super selective grammar schools are more confident about pushing their students to apply to Oxford or Cambridge, but most East Kent grammar schools are not super selective - although as the number of privately-educated-to-the-age-of-11 students in all grammar schools rises (and this is an undeniably higher proportion of students now than was the case when I was at school), no doubt accompanied by parents with particular expectations, I'm sure all grammar schools' attitudes have changed a bit in the last 30 years.

I think I found it tasmania (I have a single page), did you have the latest percentages getting above whatever grade combinations for 2012 too?

It still doesn't give the whole picture due to effects that twoterrors highlights, but it suggests to me that there isn't a huge bias.

It is loaded rabbit but I used the terms for want of better. I'm not distinguishing purely on intake actually, though the superselectives do seem to have engine rooms all of their own. It must surely be widely accepted that the 164 grammars are a very varied bunch indeed?

Another interesting thing would be to go into the details of the individual colleges, since you apply to a college, not to the university. When I was at Oxford, certain colleges had a reputation for being state-school friendly and others for being most decidedly not (eg Balliol and Wadham - state-school friendly; Worcester - decidedly not...). I wonder how much these reputations affect applications, offers and final degree results??? And whether a greater degree of insider knowledge about the people likely to be doing the interviews and the colleges themselves makes much difference to the likely success of an applicant (eg steering them away from a possible bad choice?).

I think the 'worse' the reputation of the college for a public school bias the more the college is now courting state school applications.

A very seasoned law tutor at one of those two colleges you mention says he couldn't care less which school an applicant has attended once it gets to the interview stage, that it's not the applicant's fault that his parents might have chosen to send him to toff school.

I'll bet that was Balliol...

Gelo, I agree. I don't think those figures support a huge bias at all. I think they suggest that admissions tutors are making fairly canny allowances for the type of school an applicant hails from.

That report includes a breakdown by college, btw.

The problem lies earlier in the process I think. I was struck in some of the GCSE options threads at how many schools insist on compulsory GCSEs that will not be well regarded by "top" universities. Grammars and independents and partially selectives rate themselves and are rated at least partly on leavers' destinations, not the number of points that can be squeezed out of a child by stacking up GCSEs in ICT in year 9 or whatever.

Gove makes me shudder, but I do think that tipping the league table balance back in favour of encouraging bright, academic children to focus on a core of academic subjects may help start to tackle inequality, partly by highlighting the importance of these subjects in this context.

What really starts annoying me about this thread is that there seems to be an approach of cocooning kids in Britain way too much. People are accusing Oxbridge of not being fair at first. Now, schools are being accused of not motivating their students to apply.

Do you not expect more from 17-year-old kids? Like any kind of self motivation? Or any sort of smart thinking?

Look - I've met kids in other parts of the world WAY more disadvantaged than the most disadvantaged of comprehensive school students who show a LOT more drive. Why? Because in those societies, there is no such thing as welfare. The difference between being driven and not could mean the difference between life and death. No other motivation from teachers needed. I always used to wonder what such a child could achieve if given an opportunity in the developed world where we blame institutions and authorities if someone has no drive. Because although the disadvantaged here may not have all the privileges of wealth... they still have more opportunities than others in different parts of the world. Free schooling up to 18? Free school meals? Ha! No matter how you try to turn the table, they suddenly have "privileges" other people don't.

If you're determined to get into Oxbridge, and are reasonably intelligent, it doesn't take much to think about which subjects you're likely to get into based on popularity, and apply to that one if you're that single-minded. However, some people might actually want to study a subject they really like... some of which might not be offered by either those two traditional institutions, i.e. Oxbridge is the last place you'd go to for fashion design - you'd rather go to Central St. Martin's which I doubt is part of RG.