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.

.

[creamteas]

I'm sure people realise, but the division between state/private schools does not map easily onto social class, and in this thread the two things are getting muddled.

Whilst private schools are over whelming middle class, state schools are mixed.

So saying that state school applicants are just as likely to get a place as private school, is not the same thing as saying that applicants from the poorest groups are less likely to be accepted than there middle class counterparts.

[creamteas]

Ronaldo unless they are overseas students then the government still pays (and the student has to pay more back in loans, but the money comes from the same place initially)

[Ronaldo]

Ronaldo unless they are overseas students then the government still pays (and the student has to pay more back in loans, but the money comes from the same place initially)

It was overseas students I was talking about creamteas. They are a source of revenue for most universities ( although to be honest they may not be for long when they realise the colonies and the US willgive them better deals for topd crop education) Someone mentioned how independent schools were bringing in a larger number of overseas boarders. My school has increased its boarding for overseas pupils recently and we have a whole new boarding house built this year for increased numbers. All want to go to Oxford or Cambridge. ( we always get a fair number of pupils into both these universities )

[gelo]

OK five, I've looked at your Sutton trust report. The caveats on that are quite huge imo.

For instance "Firstly, the measure used to reflect A-level performance is an average for the school as a whole.
This could conceal different distributions of A-level results among pupils within a school. Knowing
the individual A-level scores of pupils is likely to explain to a much greater extent the discrepancies
in elite university admission rates."

You absolutely MUST look at individuals (as the study I referred to does). Independents do get more than their share of the super bright due to scholarships and internationals.

Also "the analysis does not take into account the different subjects taken by pupils. Schools may
have high average A-level scores, but if pupils are not taking A-levels in essential disciplines
required for degree courses in leading research universities, then the university admission rates
will be lower for these institutions."

As independent schools claim to be less likely to take General studies/crit thinking and tend to offer more 'facilitating subjects' and fewer 'less generally acceptable' A levels this pretty much renders the Sutton trust study useless.

[Kora]

IMHO the interview is one of the key factors to be changed if the oxbridge unis want to improve accessibility. I know it's anecdotal, but I was struck that everyone I met at Oxford in the 90s who also came from state (grammar or comp) had done the extra entrance exam, apart from one very naturally talented orator and debater who had chosen the interview-only route. I did an interview too, but only after having shown some quality on paper, which I think really helped because the exam was just like taking a-levels a bit earlier whereas the interview was like nothing I'd ever experienced before! I gather that at some point a bright spark persuaded the Oxford colleges to scrap the old entrance exam because it had been criticised for allowing an unfair advantage to private schools who 'taught' to the test, while state schools (even my old grammar) did not prepare pupils for it. But the stats worsened and many subjects have reintroduced tests, particularly as a-levels are considered by many academics to be dumbed down. Private schools are well-known for their focus on confident and articulate speaking. Of course all secondary schools need to provide a solid training in presentational skills but I agree with those who say undue emphasis is given to interview when really it should test simply whether the student has the potential to respond to a largely tutorial-based teaching system.

By the by, I did hear of a few state school teachers who had tried to convince their students that oxford was a closed shop, but luckily they were in the minority compared to those who went out of their way to give encouragement.

[JoanByers]

The article was from 2011:

'of more than 1,500 academic and lab staff at Cambridge, none are black. Thirty-four are of British Asian origin'"

//www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/oxbridge-elitism-oxford-cambridge-race-class

That article was bollocks then and it's bollocks now.

The Grauniad is hardly known for its accuracy.

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewmcfbrown/100067203/guardian-claims-cambridge-has-no-black-academic-staff-why-didnt-they-bother-to-check/

[Dowding]

Fivecandles, if you're going to keep banging on about Oxbridge being racially exclusive, you'd be better off avoiding discredited sources.


According to you, Cambridge employs no black staff at all.


I would like to know who this is? www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/o-odudu/1709


Or this? www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/j-tankebe/3586


The Guardian article you're so keen on is erroneous. Cambridge even has a BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) Network for staff, which would be a bit silly if none of them existed. So, your claims are just wrong.



Regarding Oxford, I found the following statistics from the university's website interesting. You might, too. 22% of Oxford students are non white. (I believe the percentage for the UK as a whole is around 12%.)

Oxford?s research shows that school attainment is the single biggest barrier to getting more black students to Oxford. In 2007, for example, around 23% of all white students nationally gained three As at A level (excluding General Studies), but just 9.6% of black students. Or look at it in numbers, in 2009: 29,000 white students got the requisite grades for Oxford (AAA excluding General Studies) compared to just 452 black students.

Once black students do apply, Oxford's own recent analysis shows that subject choice is a major reason for their lower success rate. Black students apply disproportionately for the most oversubscribed subjects. 44% of all black applicants apply for Oxford?s three most oversubscribed subjects (compared to just 17% of all white applicants). That means that nearly half of black applicants are applying for the same three subjects, and these are the three toughest subjects for admission.

Take Medicine. After Economics & Management, it is the most oversubscribed subject at Oxford. There are about eight applicants for every place available, all predicted top grades. A massive 29% of all black applicants to Oxford apply for Medicine ? compared to just 7% of all white applicants.

And this for interest:

Knowsley in Merseyside, for instance... is the worst area in England for school achievement. In 2009 only 212 students in all of Knowlsey took three A levels ? of these, only three (1.4%) achieved AAA or better. Of those three, two got offers from Oxford. That's a pretty outstanding success rate. And the area of the country with the highest Oxford success rate is Darlington in the north-east.

[Dowding]

Sorry, Joan, cross-posted with you!

[JoanByers]

The real problem with private school versus state in terms of Oxbridge admission is that expectations are so much higher from a very early age in the average private as compared to state pupil.

My children were told to sign up for music lessons (one-to-one, at £17/30 minutes) at age 6.

My son (10) is hopeless at sport but still plays competitive sport against other schools every week, as do every child at the school. He is good at maths and has moved onto the next year's work in his maths lessons. He has an ASD/Aspergers and is getting private therapy to enhance his social language skills to improve his ability in English, etc.

You should note that not all of this is a result of simply buying a private education, but includes other things such as me coaching him personally for his 11+ exams - from what I can see there is at least a 90% correlation between highly motivated parents and private education, and while there of course plenty of motivated parents in the state sector, they will be a much smaller proportion of the total.

You don't choose to fork out £32k/year for Winchester because you are indifferent about your child's education, whereas the perception that something is free, and therefore valueless, means that a good number of parents in the state sector are indifferent to it.

Obviously children fail to reach their potential, as measured by the standards of say Eton or St Pauls, in the state sector in very large numbers, but by the time they reach 18 it's way, way too late to do anything about that - I'm working now, in the primary years on my son's weak areas, and of course you could do that in any school, but the competitive nature of private schooling means that I perceive that I'm wasting my money (and it's definitely not cheap) unless my son achieves to the best of his abilities. In a state school he might be (and was, when he was there) deemed to be doing just fine, but for me and other parents I know 'fine' is not good enough.

I think until you have experienced this, it's ridiculous to complain 'but 40% of Westminster boys get into Oxbridge, and only 0.1% from Huddersfield Comprehensive'. Well of course they do, they are the brightest and the best and competed against other very bright children to get in in the first place.

Anecdotes about motivated parents at some North London liberal hotspot don't really help much either - there are x,000 state secondary schools out there, and on the whole they aren't all that.

[Yellowtip]

@ five: 'gender bias' = sexism, no? (replying as I read down).

[Yellowtip]

Apologies for responding piecemeal but yes, I do believe that teachers should carry the burden for inspiring pupils, recognising talent and encouraging those pupils to aspire to the best fit academically that that pupil is capable of. It's a lazy teacher that doesn't do that. I think teachers are at the heart of this tbh. Any teacher worth their salt would be able to identify an Oxbridge level student and then say: go for it and I'll help you. Stop shifting the blame onto the institutions five; the institutions are open to all intellectually qualified comers.

[Yellowtip]

Three or more cheers for Dowding.

five, sorrry, but you do appear to be a complete nit compared to Dowding.

[Yellowtip]

Joan there's a vast range of quality between the 164 remaining grammar schools. Vast.

[Yellowtip]

DD1 had a black Law tutor five. Where do you get this stuff from?

[Yellowtip]

five by definition (raw grades) one of my DC was the brightest in the year (straight A* taken a year early) and hugely artistic and talented but also hugely unconfident (yes, great mothering :(). The eight interviewing tutors over four interviews moulded the interviews to encourage her to show some level of spark and she's now on track for a First (although of course I've told her it couldn't matter less what she gets). You really do seem to buy into myths. I prefer the real stuff myself.

[Yellowtip]

Try out a Medicine interview at Oxford or Cambridge five where no tutor gives a what sport or instrument you play or what drugs are your drugs of choice, except in that they provide relief from the stress that you're bound to endure.

[Yellowtip]

There were several asterisks in that last post, between 'a' and 'what'. Strangely deleted.

[Yellowtip]

Oops, so many cross posts, but glad to see that five hanging on to empty and discredited headlines has had her credibility hugely reduced.

[Emphaticmaybe]

Responding directly to the OP's question to those who have chosen state over private when they can afford to pay and their reasons taking into account the unequal playing field angle.

I suppose for us we were lucky that our principles were never really tested, as though we are ideologically opposed to private education we had two outstanding comps on our doorstep. In no way after visiting them did we ever think our children wouldn't reach their potential or at least if they didn't it wouldn't be down to the school. Our principles would have been much more tested if our local school had under a 40% pass rate or was swamped with social problems so I don't feel I can take the high ground on this.

Only one of our four DCs has been all the way through the system and if success means getting to a top ten uni and studying what you are passionate about than we have no regrets about state ed.

DS did apply to Cambridge, was pooled and rejected - would this have been different at an independent or even a grammar? I don't know - he may just not be exceptional. I would be interested to know though how different his preparation for interview would have been at an independent or grammar. His prep consisted of a 30 min session the day before his interview with a non-specialist teacher - who actually gave him totally inapropriate advice for his subject. No advice on which college to apply to was given originally and in fact the wrong information was given regarding the amount of A*s at GCSE needed to even apply, (Cambridge don't actually specify - we were told by the school at least 5 were needed which put a few of his friends off applying.) His class sizes for maths and sciences were 15-20 dropping in the second year down to 10 in some classes - is this much larger than independents and how much of a disadvantage would that really be?

Even if our experience is massively different to those in the independent sector regarding preparation for Oxbridge I think I would only regret our decision if he had some how not managed to get to a great university when he obviously had the potential. For me it is much more about clever kids from all backgrounds getting to good universities rather than just increasing the number of state educated students at Oxbridge.

However I still think the biggest challenge for state schools is making sure kids of all abilities and backgrounds reach their potential - not just getting the clever kids to decent universities. My city has pockets of high achieving schools - but over half of the state schools here struggle to get a 50% pass rate for 5 GCSEs.

[LaVolcan]

I have known pupils of good independent schools apply to Cambridge, be pooled and then rejected, so it's not just a state school phenomena.

[Emphaticmaybe]

LoVolcan - yes I am aware it's not 'a state school phenomena'. I was responding to the OP's interest in outcomes for state school pupils and wondering if it would have made any difference in our particular case if DS had attended an independent school, had better advice, interview prep, smaller class sizes etc - the 'value added' stuff basically. Of course I agree it may not have changed the outcome for DS at all in relation to Cambridge I was just addressing the issue of unequal playing fields.

[happygardening]

"The real problem with private school versus state in terms of Oxbridge admission is that expectations are so much higher from a very early age in the average private as compared to state pupil."
"Joan* this is a point I made earlier. Those top few independent schools who send so many will have a culture of what is best described as Oxbridge expectation from the moment the children walk in the door. Going to Oxbridge will be considered the norm. At my DS's school younger boys talk to older boys listen to their Oxbridge plans you can see how they could assume rightly or wrongly that its a far gone concussion. Parents also assume that their children will go onto Oxbridge one parent had taken his son (at 12 yrs old) to his Oxford college and told him this is where you'll come when you leave school. Another parent was talking to me and saying how convenient Oxford will be for her home again her DS was only 12. Many boys I suspect talk about going to Oxbridge like some children talk about going to university in general. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Your parents expect it, your super selective school expects it and has extensive experience and infra structure in place to enable you to make an excellent application and perform well in a interview and the child too expects it. The outcome for children at these schools; 30 - 50%+ going every year.

[LaVolcan]

Emphaticmaybe - impossible to tell in individual cases, I would have thought.

I think happygardening's post following yours does explain the expectations well.

[rabbitstew]

happygardening - I love your "far gone concussion."

[mam29]

What about oxbridge and cambridge aside looking at russell group unis instead.

My ex went to private boys school he gots all as gcse /a levels ent onto study at york oxford dident want him.I think he failed at interveiw stage as he wasent very confident.

His freind went same school but much ealtheir background he went cambridge but he had very confident persona.He was very clever too and tad lazy as he never really had to work too hard to get great grades.

What happens in usa how many state schools get into ivy league harvard and yale is it problem exclusive to uk?

Theres been threads in past about private primaries.

lots kids go state primary then switch.

But a few do private primary cheaper then try find good state secondry as its assumed the groundworks done and they have the work ethic.
Is11+too late to change course if primary not been great,
But in relation to unis thats of course more impacted by seniors.

Re exams and curriculum-what do private schools do?
I dont think they have to follow nation al curriculum or do satts.

Do most chose gsce /alevel or choose some other exam.
Inst there new one called u level which garry linkers son failed.

If a levels devbalued then uni entrance tests bit like american scores sounds fairer.

My sister had to sit mcats to study dentistry and think doctors possibly vets do.They dont just go on grades alone.

Is the advantage now what qualification the schools choose to do.How do top unis offer with international bacc?

I think most unless had very good schools locally probably ;pricey iving in pricey area anyway and had the money would pick private.

Theres also topping up state with extra currcicular and tutors.

I must admit cost of uni in uks bit worrying and eldest being 6 have no idea what path she wants to follow yet.

speaking to parent otehr day who move state to private she has no regrets says the preps been fab for hers .