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?

Not a great riposte seeker. Your angst gets tedious and you can't do much more than misquote, 'misinterpret' or say 'Jesus wept'.

Perhaps it's time for you to execute your cut and paste threat. Which poster claimed that Oxbridge candidates (applicants) were automatically through to the second stage? Go on seeker, cut and paste.

Well it depends whether anyone automatically puts Oxbridge grads through, or just notes oxbridge as a positive which is impressive, and then weighs it against the rest of the Cv, I guess. Which are we talking about?

I also utterly refute the idiotic suggestion that an applicant needs to know how to 'work the system' and 'be specially prepared for the process'. (I love the cowardly 'probably' btw). If you could explain your particular personal insight into the 'process' seeker then I might understand your bigotry a little bit more.

I'm talking about the latter TOSN, as was utterly clear from my post on the subject. seeker chose to misunderstand, or in the mist of her middle class self loathing couldn't help but misunderstand.

Quite apart from which in the hugely competitive world of vac schemes etc. there are far too many impressive Oxford and Cambridge applicants to shortlist as it is. So it couldn't be a given.

Yellowtip- so, are you saying that private schools and selective state schools do no special preparation of their Oxbridge candidates? That applying to an Oxbridge college is no different to applying to any other university?

Oh, and incidentally, I did notice your reference to my posting history.Coming from someone happy to throw about accusations of misquotation, twisting, and making things up, it was curious, to say the least.

Seeker

Have you ever looked at reviews before watching a movie, booking a restaurant or holiday? Maybe you don't, but lots of people do. I don't have all the time in the world to watch every single film in the world, the stomach capacity to eat at every single restaurant there is or even to spend my precious few days of holidays at a crappy resort!

Well, what do you think are employers doing?!? They do not have the time or manpower to interview the 5,000 or so people that interview for 50-odd places (some more, some less) a year. Having gone to Oxbridge (and a list of other unis) is like a 5 star rating. Everyone knows how difficult it is to get into those universities. In a way, they're already pre-filtered... the cream, let's say, of graduates.

In sport, you might win a race here and there, but everyone would be in awe if you got a gold medal at the Olympics beating Usain Bolt. Nobody would even THINK about suggesting that beating Joe-next-door at a random race would be the same as beating Usain Bolt at the Olympics! Now, if I were to bet as to who would win a race... would I choose the one who beat Joe-next-door or the one who beat Usain Bolt?

The whole Oxbridge thing that you so despise is just the academic version of that. If you are attending such good unis, you are essentially pegging yourself against the best. This impresses employers. Not too different from the Usain Bolt example above.

Yes, it is unfair - but wake up call: the world... is... not... fair. People are not born equal, no matter how much you want them to be so. Our genes alone make us different.

I don't think Oxbridge is sabout special preparation. I think there are parents whose children are not very bright and in state schools who like to think the reason their little darlings did not get an Oxbridge place is because they did not have special coaching at Eton to get in but lots of children get to Oxbridge from state schools and many children at private schools don't.

Life is about competition. If you choose not to work as a teenager and plenty don't then it is harder to get most good jobs although even then you can ressurect yourself later and start a business etc. If you go to a rather poor poly you may not find the other students very interesting and the lectures may not be as good and your CV may not be as enhanced as somewhere else but some people still get through. It is just harder. It is the same with being 25 stone or so shy you can hardly talk. May be some disadvantage there too in terms of some jobs.

There are just so many applicants for graduate jobs at present. No HR person can look at everyone. I remember being sent flowers by someone I hardly helped at all as regards his son (I had just sent the father a few vague emails about the career concerned). That boy had just about the best A levels you can get, double first from Oxford, looks good, done just about everything you can do to look good in sporting terms and very nice. The reason he got the job he was after was pretty self evident.

I think it might have been me who said that a decent degree from a decent university (Oxbridge obviously included) would get you through the first filter.

And of course it would.

The first filter of applicants is a paper exercise for appropriate intellect as evidenced by qualification. And yes, of course, there may be some gems applying from ex polytechnics who couldn'tgo anywhere more selective for a thousand reasons, but how are recruiters meant to get to them on a paper exercise?

You don't seem to have an answer to that!

The only other alternative would be for my DH and others to interview all candidates and try to winkle out the gems. But this is unworkable! Have you any idea how many people apply?

And that's the rub. There are far far far more applicants than positions. The pool is large and of good quality.

and that is what we want. for jobs which are difficult to do and we only want the best people such as medicine we want it very very hard to get into and most to be rejected and particularly those who are not up to it. So it is a really good thing for society that is pretty hard to become a doctor and most people would not be able to manage it. Ditto to get on to the England football team or play tennis in the Wimbledon final.

Well, so long as you think that being clever and being reasonably well off/middle class are the same thing, that's fine.

Still, I suppose enough not well off/working class people slip though for complacency to set in.

And before somebody comes along and tells me that I am being negative, then possibly I am. The problem is that if you don't have the step up that being well off/ middle class gives you it is soooooo much harder. And it's even harder if the movers and shakers as represented on here don't perceive a problem.

I have a child at a school which sends loads to Oxbridge. And another at a school with plenty of bright children but which never has. It has sent very few even to the despised ex polys. I know, as they say, whereof I speak.

Anyone getting to the Wimbledon final has to have talent, has to have started focusing on tennis from a pretty early age and has to have had vast amounts of money spent on them to train them up appropriately. Obviously, therefore, some of those who are not up to it are not up to it due to lack of training, not due to lack of talent. So it goes back to when and how you identify talent and how you develop it. In sport, this has to happen at a pretty young age. A good doctor, on the other hand, is not generally someone who was identified as good doctor material at the age of 5, because the skills required by a good doctor are far more wide ranging and cannot really be developed by telling someone to focus on becoming a doctor from a very early age. There are far more possible routes through to becoming a good doctor. So comparing the two is a bit of a red herring.

But what is your solution seeker?

And I mean a proper workable one...

Train everyone up in the values of the Elite Class, so that they know what their masters expect and are looking for?

You're talking about two schools in a single town in Kent where the top 25% go to the grammar. It's hardly surprising that the secondary modern doesn't get its pupils into Oxford or Cambridge; there's already been an academic sifting.

Of course there might be the odd brilliant 11+ refusnik at the secondary modern but on the whole those at the top of the secondary modern who just missed getting into the grammar would most likely not have been in the top quartile of the grammar so very likely wouldn't have made the cut for Oxford or Cambridge anyway.

But the state school Oxbridge undergraduates are almost all from selective state schools.

Which means that selective state schools prepare the kids in a way that comprehensives don't- there is no difference in actual results between a comprehensive and a grammar+secondary modern combination in similar areas. So bright kids in a selective area have a chance of going, bright kids in a non selective area, who will have similar grades largely don't. How can that possibly be fair?

Wordfactory- I don't know what the solution is. But it sure as hell isn't saying everything's fine the way it is. Because it isn't.

Yellowtip- I realise that my personal anecdote counts for very little. But I thought it was worth pointing out. You would have thought that at least some of the secondary modern children would make it to Leeds Met, wouldn't you? Obviously they are very unlikely to make it to Oxford!

Then whose fault is it seeker? Parent 's of children in GS or the comps and parent 's of children in comps not teaching children to aspire to greater heights?

I don't entirely agree that bright children in a non selective area don't have a chance of going to Oxford or Cambridge (hope not, anyway!), although I can see the grammar system may be more geared to it.

In terms of 'fault' - I guess I would say it's the fault of a divisive system, and would hope that employers would be sufficiently reflective about what they're seeing and why, wherever possible.

I think things are fine if they mean only the very cleverest get the best jobs. That is brilliant. The rejection of those who are not up to it is exactly what we need in a competitive society.

Those who go to comprehensives in say Newcastle and Hull have a much smaller chance of Oxbridge than the London inner city comprehensive. That might not be fine but it may just reflect the fact children of immigrants in London work hard and children in some other towns may not work so hard. In that case it's fine - let us give the university places to the hard workers with high grades.

University is by no means the end of it for the kind of careers we are talking about here. It is what careers people go into after and ensuring all children know what will help them in those careers. As said above in many careers at the moment you could fill your few job places over many many times just with Oxbridge and the recruiters even so recruit more broadly than that although not to broadly the process becomes unmanageable.

The children of parents who are in a position to understand the system and help their children through it are fine. However, many parents aren't able to do that. And I think it's up to the schools to pick up that slack. However, the problem is that the system is geared to maintain the status quo, which is why very little has actually changed over the years. Somebody needs to do some brave and radical thinking.

seeker in response to your comment that 'almost all' state school undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge come from grammars, it's probably fair to point out that 37.6% of the overall total for 2012 entry to Oxford did not.

Sorry, I didn't say they had no chance, did I, TOSN? I didn't mean to. Of course they do.

But the vast majority of state school undergraduates at Oxbridge come from selective schools.

How does the 'devisive ' system (bearing in mind that most places have no grammar school) stop or prevent comps from preparing their top sets for oxbridge / Russell group university? Just struggling with this line of thinking.
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