Selective independants

[poppydoppy]

Do they look better on League tables because the standard of teaching is better or just because they select the children most likely to do well?

No that exactly nit.

I didn't appreciate how hard core that was when I experienced it as a young person - didn't know any better.

But now, having the benefit of an MA from elesehwere,a nd also having teaching jobs both there and elsewhere, I can see it provides a very unusual experience. One that could be very good training for law.

But Copthall, you can't possibly as an undergraduate have the skills you will need to do whatever job it is you are called on to do wherever internationally that might be required. Different roles within the same firm/company will require a different mix of skills and experience. Some roles will involve dealing only with other international people in a far (or near) flung location. Other roles may involve dealing with others within the same organisation, yet others will involve dealing with clients or potential, then there are the roles which might involve dealing with regulators, or government (that's a big thing in China, for example) or say the press, which again require vastly different skill sets, personal qualities, knowledge bases, experience. You can't just look at two graduate trainee appolicant and say 'this one has more of an international outlook than that one' based on any experience they will have obtained in their lives up to that point. Even if they have studied abroad for a year or more (something I personally do like to see because it doesn't show nothing ) it's just not comparable to some of the things that people in transnational careers may find themselves doing.

I STRONGLY think it is misleading to give anyone the impression that a decision about whether a candidate is suitable for involvement in transnational work (which is such a wide ranging thing in itself, it needn't involve living somewhere either lovely or sordid for any length of time, although it can involve that, depending on the situation) is set in stone at the point at which they have their first or second interview for their fist post grad job. Because it's just completely not true, IM extremely wide E. To suggest that these things are set in stone at an early age would be to exclude those who haven't had the opportunity to travel up to that point.

I do agree with you that a lot of British people (and people from other countries too) make a right old hash up of transnational working. But that's a different issue. Many people who might have looked incredibly unlikely to thrive in such situations have magnificent triumphant transnational careers and lives despite have been 'the one most unlikely to....' at 21.

It's not something that can be determined at 21 and its not something that is the exclusive preserve of confident independent school types. Whatever some people might like to spin.

We didn't have that at my gaff - we had lectures and seminars and fortnightly tutorials, and the latter were quite rigorous in a 'nowhere to hide' kind of way... where I teach, though, a tutorial more often means 'a chance for me to come and ask why I got a 2:ii in my last essay and have sentence fragments explained again' . It's a shame - I can't imagine being able to get three of them in my office and force them to talk about poetry for an hour! Lucky Oxbridge tutors...

Word The Law course at my RG uni was run with challenging tutorials as well as mock trials and lots of challenging real life situations. I have a ridiculous number of peers who are partners in commercial law in city firms, several from similar backgrounds to you. Oxfords teaching model may be unique but it doesn't appear to be uniquely effective.

The irony is that at least one of my peers admits his firm only recruits from six unis, and the one we went to is not one of them.

I have never said you cannot be from a state school and at Oxbridge. 50% of children there are from state schools.

On graduate recruitment the initial stage is electronic and I think by UCAS points and whether you got a 2/1. It is filtered again after that. It is just a supply and demand issue. If we get short of brilliant young people there will then be fewer filters.

I was not recruitment the ex poly person. I was just giving a view for someone else as to whether they would take services from that person's business. We were looking at any unexplained things - gaps in CVs. I found someone kind of censure or something - thrown off some market I think it was and then a tiny part of that picture in our assessment are these great people or some kind of scam was his degree from an ex poly and his colleague's probably started but not completed degree so it just looked at bit wrong. Other things like they did not give their company name anywhere looked unusual too. You build up a picture.

Russian- I have never said that poor and/or working class people can't get to Oxbridge. I know that 50% of undergraduates are from
State schools. But the state schools concerned are overwhelmingly the schools attended by the better off middle classes. It is ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

The very fact that 50% of undergraduate come from 7% of the 18 year old population is telling- even before you dig deeper into the figures.

SteamingNit Yes at my original RG uni for a humanity we had a weekly tutorial for each course in groups of about 5 and would expect to be challenged. Indeed one notoriously obnoxious misogynistic Professor reported back to my tutor that "the girl has spirit" so I must have argued with him . Actually at our uni, it is also a weekly tutorial per module and though groups are bigger the students are challenged to comment and have opinions on the reading and get a debate going. The only difference is that readings tend to be provided in a prebound book so no more racing to the library with the reading list and finding them all gone One of my professors who taught a module on my masters actually told a Chinese student that if he didn't have an opinion of his own on the topic to be discussed the next week he needn't come back....

Were you 'feisty', copthall ?

Jeez, I can't even tell the buggers not to turn up if they haven't read the book - let alone failed to have an opinion on it!

Russians Perfectly understand that a 21 year old is far from a finished product but my point is that if you have a job that is likely to involve operating internationally and you have a candidate who has any or all of having travelled / lived abroad / studied another culture / has other languages and the other candidate as you say has NOTHING then you have more evidence of the qualities that may well enable them to be effective in an international role, although obviously it goes into the pot with all the other evidence and the qualities needed for the job.

It isn't just true of law, banking and commerce, I was talking to someone from an ad agency the other day who said very few of their new recruits haven't spent significant time abroad.

I think that sadly the indies actually do prepare / equip DCs much better to value and be motivated to study other cultures, and equip their students for that job market, and it is something that should be addressed in order to make UKPLC more competitive. It is one of the supreme ironies of Gove's drive to make our education system supposedly globally competitive that apart from making a language one of the Baccalaureate subjects (which 9 times out of 10 will be European) he hasn't done anything benchmarked with all the initiatives being taken by education systems worldwide, especially the ones in Asia that he is so fond of, to ensure their students are equipped to operate in a global marketplace, in Singapore at least currently their primary strategic aim. To be a language teacher in a state school currently is to feel especially vulnerable to the effect of cuts, I know several who have had their hours cut.

I should add that is probably because Gove bought the same cultural sensitivity and understanding to his visits to overseas education systems as Cameron does to trade and diplomacy...........

Nit Very.... but also "pleasant"

As the West seems to be in decline it will certainly help our young people if they can work abroad. Quite a bit of my work is from abroad.

Copthall studying another culture does not necessarily equip you with the skills you might need to engage in transnational work. It depends both on what aspects of the culture you studied and what the nature of the work might be. And, of course, where that work might be located and with whom the worker might be engaging. There are just far too many variables for anyone to claim that what will necessarily be a limited and possibly artificial experience (if it has been completed before the age of 21 ish) is certain to engender or enable the demonstration of the sort of skillset a given prospective employer will be looking for. It's just not credible. Having languages does help, immensely. If they are the right languages. The right languages change every year or so, of course.

My peers may well frequently recruit graduate trainees who have spent considerable time abroad. But its not in the top 5 criteria we look for and we don't discount people who haven't done that if they have the things we want. Often people who have worked or lived abroad are the ones who want international roles. But I think that claiming that aspiring graduate trainees looking at potentially internationally facing/transnational careers shouldn't be put off by not having had a privileged childhood and youth and not having had the opportunity to travel. Experience can be obtained at any age. Ability and other personal characteristics are innate.

Copthall one thing which really would be incredibly retrograde in terms of access to the professions would be narrowing the pool of interviewees in the way you suggest.

Anyhow, plenty of those who are posted abroad live together in huddles and reject all engagement with local culture. That existence is all too often incredibly cloistered. It shrieks privilege though, so I'm not sure I'd even flaunt it.

russians I agree that lots of young people won't have had the oportunity to travel/live abroad and DH certainly wouldn't hold that against them.

That's why I used the , admitedly cack handed, term 'international looking'. I meant an applicant who understands the nature of the global in an interntaional law firm in as much as any 21 year old can do that. And is ready and willing to engage with that even if they've never had any opportunity to date.

I guess what DH is trying to weed out is anyone who he feels doesn't 'get' it.

Yellow That's just one of the reasons why extensive 'abroad' experience in early life isn't always a Good Thing by any means. It really does depend on what sorts of things one might be called upon to do in the future. The biggest asset any potential graduate trainee can exhibit other than being CLEVER and INTERESTING (these words always have to be typed in capitals. I don't know why) is flexibility.

Russians I totally disagree, a training in understanding the perspectives of people of other cultures, will equip any 21 year old with a skill set that will be of benefit in any job that involves dealing with other cultures, indeed any job involving people with different ideologies. Obviously just travelling and even study doesn't necessarily equip a student with that if they don't have the intellectual capacity and empathy and a 21 year old can develop that later but a study of the history, culture, language and ideologies of other countries wakens up the students mind to the possibilities that someone from another culture may approach issues and social interactions differently, and equip them with the motivation to understand and respond. I actually feel quite evangelical about what students from my uni and third country kids like my DDs can offer the world in terms of improving international understanding, the lack of which is at the root of a lot of the world's problems.

My job was marketing so you can see why not having a full understanding of the history and culture was like working with one hand behind my back. Martin Sorrell is very outspoken about the need for the people working in emerging markets to have a thorough understanding of local culture, and indeed that it is easier to equip a national with marketing skills than a marketing professional with the cultural capital.

Gove's proposal to eliminate the study of history of other cultures from any perspective but that of empire is further evidence of how blinkered he is in terms of needing to equip our young people with these skills. Of course the indies have been very outspoken about the fact that they will not be following those aspects of the proposed curriculum.

yellow I am advocating we make sure every student is equipped with these skills, and that currently it is an area where indies are doing a better job than state schools but you are right as long as state schools are failing in this you could not discount an applicant because they haven't had the opportunity. It is precisely the mindset that leads to expat ghettos that I think is wrong, the FILTH (failed in London try Hong Kong) who are too arrogant to be motivated to gain the cultural capital to operate in another culture. . However I think that old expat scene is changing, some nationalities were always more predisposed to embrace the culture they lived in, now there is much more of a social, and meritorious mix, amongst those in Brit expat communities they do tend to be much more part of the life of their host community, learn the language, absorb the culture etc. The Americans however seem to find that very hard.

russians then you and DH are not too far apart.

For him clever is a given and after that, as I said last night, the first thibng he's looking for is flexibility. Then excellent communication skills. Then the international thing...

Copthall, again, sorry, but coming from the perspective of someone whose job is transnational, while I agree with you that knowledge is a magnificent thing (and I myself studied European history and politics both at A level and in my Part II) it's not a pre-requisite to a graduate trainee being able to access the sort of career I have. I feel more than a little evangelical myself, about dispelling the myths that only those who come from privilege have any chance of a fabulous career, actually. Myths which you seem very invested in perpetuating in this thread. Perhaps you are right about marketing though but that wasn't what either Word or I were talking about, she was talking about law I was talking about finance, commerce and the legal and regulatory environment. So maybe marketing is restricted to those from privilege. I must admit none of the marketing bods I know fit that description, our main guy is a bluff Yorkshireman who comes from roughly the same sort of background as I did. But I don't know very many marketing people, none of my peers went into marketing, so....

I should add that said bluff yorkshireman has been extremely effective globally. Not just with other yorkshiremen and/or women.

Russians You know that I also believe that we should try and make all jobs and uni courses accessible regardless of privilege, but I am not advocating that pupils be equipped with skills they need privilege to access. They should be accessible and encouraged in state schools, my local comp should not be allowed to offer no MFL at A level and Gove should not be allowed to derail History curriculums that have already developed to enable pupils to have a greater understanding of different perspectives. On another local thread another poster did an analysis of MFL results between the local indies and top sets in comps (which are outstanding and with nice affluent leafy catchments) and the difference just in numbers, let alone results, was appalling. This thread is about whether indies do better because the teaching is better or because of selection and largely I would agree with the latter but indies do provide better opportunities in some areas and, sadly, and wrongly, this is one of them. As *word" says it is about whether candidates to any International job "get" it and the current situation makes it more likely that a state school pupil won't.

I can highly recommend the recruitment of bluff Yorkshire types, dead adaptable, us.......

Actually Russians that exact same strategy that Martin Sorrell promulgates applies to finance and law too. I am not aware of any bank or law firm that don't have a strategy of recruiting nationals in their regional offices and seeking to develop their professional expertise precisely because of the value of their cultural capital. The fact that they so far haven't entirely succeeded is down to the fact that their education systems have significant weaknesses in giving them the skills to operate in International companies, mainly in terms of creative thinking and their ability to adapt to different hierarchies and ways of networking, weaknesses which are priorities for the development of their education systems, albeit with significant political obstacles. Gove however just seems intent on sabotaging our strengths in those areas.

Copthall - you clearly haven't understood the points I have been making. Obviously marketing is a very different animal to other types of transnational business - 'Martin Sorrell's strategy' is not in fact anything new or even revolutionary. But anyway, I don't see how it is in any way relevant to the fact that on the list of attributes you need to be able to work well in a transnational environment in many (perhaps not all) professions that are actually global (and are actually professions) having lived or holidayed abroad while young is really not even close to being at the top. Having studied abroad is a bit closer to the business end but still below other more important attributes. I don't see my own profession changing its view on that any time soon. But clearly marketing and the like are different, and that's good to know. If any of my kids want to go into marketing I'll tell them that I scuppered them by making them holiday in Cornwall. :(

Well, if you want to know which palms to grease and how to work in a corrupt system in a corrupt foreign country, it helps to have local knowledge and contacts. Even in the law...

Rabbit - and that's exactly the sort of knowledge that students pick up studying for a term at the sorbonne, or working in a gite, or dodging the packs of dogs in Bucharest .....oh wait. No it isn't. It's the sort of knowledge that I suppose certain types of people looking to pursue certain types of life would pick up once they were working.