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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@Frieda My DD1 will apply via both CUKAS and UCAS. Cambridge may be one of her UCAS picks, maybe not (depends on how she does in her French GCSE, if she bombs out then probably not). She may also apply to the conservatorium in Amsterdam (this is what in an ideal world she would like to do but I am very anti and I don't see how we would be able to pay so....) Cambridge might not be her first choice even if she did apply but it's a whole different world for music students - and it would be her first non conservatoire choice. If she applied. Which she probably won't.

?Yes rabbit I think I would distinguish, on the basis that other universities over offer quite deliberately but Oxford and Cambridge can only offer the number of places each has. So it matters.?

What ridiculous twaddle!

I don?t suppose you have even heard of [[http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/crosscutting/healthcare/howhealthcaretrainingworks/
HEFCE]].

?Unlike other academic subjects, the number of places available to study medicine and dentistry is regulated by Government. Current intake targets for England are set as a total of 6,195 students for medicine and 901 students for dentistry.?

Or maybe your sacred Cambridge may be able to convince you:

?It is a requirement of the Department of Health that the University admits students to Medicine in line with contract numbers.?

Well, my dd has much better things to do with her time then more then 4 A-levels! I occasionally say to her "oh, how's X getting on?" and she says "I don't know- she's doing 5 subjects"

GS isn't an actual A level as most universities of high calibre don't accept it as currency for their courses which makes me wonder why schools ask high achieving pupils to sit it. It's normally just for the school league tables.

Habs are very successful at getting their pupils into Medicine, (including Oxbridge for medicine) and they take 4 subjects at AS, then just 3 subjects to A2, unless one of them is FM in which case the 4th subj is continued to A2.

peterenas DS sat his exams in Y12 and Y13 only with no re-sits of even a single paper at any stage. Now I'm no mathematician but that therefore means his exams were taken across two years I believe, not three. I can't see why Maths is relevant either way. In fact I thought that those with a talent for Maths actually found it easier to notch up extra A*s, because of Further Maths.

Either way, this is distinctly unhealthy. I think any success of any DC mentioned on these boards shouldn't be denigrated by others for any reason whatsoever, since those reasons can only be malign.

I'm amazed at what some people think it's appropriate to post.

@yellow even in the old days (when the standard was much higher) Maths and Further Maths A level were a piece of piss if you could do them, and impossible if you couldn't. No middle ground.

?It is not true that it is because of over-recruitment that many med school students don't make it through."

"The number of medicine training places is fixed by the NHS not universities, and the universities lose money if they only teach them for a year. So it would not make sense for it them to have this as a policy.?

Now at last, we have someone who really knows the facts from the farts!

It cost the government/NHS up to £300,000 to train a doctor so you over-recruit if you like.

As London Metropolitan University found out to its cost (and that not even for Medicine) the penalty for over-recruitment.

Frieda all my other DC have only done 3A2 and GS. DS enjoyed his subjects and took the workload in his stride so didn't drop any. It wasn't in any way obvious that he had more work than the others, he just does things with ease.

seeker I'd strongly discourage any of my DC to continue with more work than they could handle easily, consistent with an healthy dose of 'other life'. I'm very relaxed on this stuff.

peterenas would your DS have been one of those to reject Cambridge then, had he succeeded in being offered a place? That kind of makes sense of your anti Oxford and Cambridge stance (tbf not much else does).

As far as I know Frieda pestered me on the point of DS's results. I've no idea where it came from. A little inappropriate I think. All I did was reply. That's neither initiating the conversation nor going 'pear-shaped'. I'm utterly consistent, why wouldn't I be?

London Metropolitan University

I think med school admissions at some med schools may be more opaque than some of you think. But the last thing I would do is name names or reasons, except that of course finance is bound to be somewhere behind it.

I expect my son would have accepted an Oxford med school place over his other offers but he did not apply there as he believed his application contained insufficient GCSEs at A (he has 7 x A 3 x A) and he blieved his predicted grades of AAAA were insufficient. He realises now he was wrong about his reasoning in thinking he stood no chance as friends of his gained admission with inferior on-paper academic profiles. He's very happy at his med school so it's of no consequence to him. But I do think it's unhelpful to discourage people from applying by perpetuating myths: such as "stratospherically high" admissions standards.

Even assuming Yellowtip's son did no other things to attract UCAS points, his UCAS points score from 6 A levels at A grade is 840. Whereas the average points score for medicine at Oxford last year was 611. So for every one Yellowtip son with 840 points, there was one successful applicant to Oxford for medicine wih 390 points, which would exactly meet the AAA offer with no 4th subject/AS grades. Both are extremes and of course don't forget that you can get UCAS points for many many other things.

Neither Oxford nor Cambridge make contextual offers for medicine, but most other med schools do. They run a scheme whereby they offer a percentage of their places to promising candidates from poorly performing schools (or poorly performing postcodes). The A level offer is substantially lower than the standard medicine offer. Many med schools also offer Medicine wih a pre-med year but this is still counted as medicine for university league tables purposes. YOu need to bear all this in mind when you are looking at university league tables and comparing UCAS tariff averages from one university with another university.

Www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2012/may/22/university-guide-medicine

Given the formula Oxford uses to shortlist the GCSE A count as a proportion of the total number of exams taken is important Frieda. That mark is contextualised of course. And then there's the borderzone where context is used again. Are you sure the points score you're looking at isn't the BMAT/ GCSE A combo though Frieda? Cambridge also has its Access scheme.

Some very bright children who want to do more A levels than others. Mine have been content with 4 AS and 3 A2 or whatever they are not called in upper sixth. I think it is better to do what you can manage reasonably well than take on too much but you will always get a few children who quite easily can and want to do quite a few more exams than others.

Not quite sure that the thread is saying. We all know those who go to Oxbridge are pretty bright and it's hard to get in but not so hard you should not even try if want to go there... and that London Met is at the other end of the scale.

I always say the most important thing is to pick work / a subject you will enjoy for the rest of your life to all of the children. It's crucial. I like what I do as much as hen I started 30 years ago and I expect happily to do another 30 years of it and there genuinely is none of the hobbies I do which are any better than work. I am terribly lucky that that is so. I suspect it is also partly because I work for myself. Own, don't be an employed worker and you might well find life is easier so to that extent I encourage them to pick something where ultimately they could own rather than be someone's employee.

Xenia there's been some strange extrapolation from the fact that DS scored well in his A levels. But by others, not me. And I was pressed for the info by Frieda; her request was a bit odd in that it pretty much out of the blue.

I absolutely agree about quality of life, as each of my DC would too.

in that it came pretty much out of the blue.

(my not, was now...)

Some job applications my graduate children have done require your UCAS points for the on line applications. I've had children in here wanting all music exam grades from 6 - 8 in all instruments in their 20s as that goes on to the application form and adds to the UCAS points score.

Frieda the Admissions Stats page for pre-Clinical at Oxford is useful. it shows the spread of pAs for those who got offers for 2012 as well as those who applied. Likewise the spread of BMAT scores. The overwhelming majority scored all A, contextualised. The page explains the context you think is missing as well as giving info on outreach.

"No matter what contextual information there is on a candidate they will still need to meet the standard conditional offer for a place and be within the top 80% in any preinterviewm tests before they are invited to interview."

From here: www.ox.ac.uk/about_the_university/facts_and_figures/undergraduate_admissions_statistics/index.html

Oxford merely use contextual data to identify students for shortlisting. But if they are offered, they still have to meet the minimum offer for the course, so there is no UCAS points lag in that respect.

Yellowtip - it would be really helpful if you could priovide links to your claims.

I told you where to find the info. Oxford Uni. Pre-Clinical. Admissions Stats 2012 Entry. I'm not your secretary.

The graphs are interesting though, don't you think? A 6 or 7A* applicant would on the stats be very, very unlikely to get an offer for Medicine. Especially if he or she attended a school such as Habs.

That isn't the page I'm referring to, that's just the general stuff.

The mean proportion of A GCSEs for 2012 to medicine at Oxford (acceptances) was 0.94 but there were people with a mean proportion of A grades of 0.6 also accepted.

And it changes year on year. I think in 2013 the mean p A* grade GCSE for medicine may well fall from 0.94. But we'll see.

"The graphs are interesting though, don't you think? A 6 or 7A* applicant would on the stats be very, very unlikely to get an offer for Medicine. Especially if he or she attended a school such as Habs."

You don't know that, you can't rate an individual's chances based on that information. That's dangerous. That document also says:

"The applications of candidates who do not make the initial shortlist are then reviewed in detail by tutors, taking into account any individual circumstances - both academic and non-academic - that might indicate that GCSE and/or BMAT performance is likely to have underestimated their potential. Any applicants deemed worthy of further consideration are then reviewed by a cross-college panel, alongside applicants immediately below the initial shortlist. As a result of this process around 40 additional applicants are added to the short-list."

So someone from Habs who offers only a 0.6 proportion of A* grades at GCSE could very easily offer something else deemed of value to the admissions tutors. Especially if coupled with a stellar performance in the BMAT.