looking down on state school kids......

[brimfull]

dd who is 15 attended a conference in Paris this past weekend.It explains it \link{http://www.roundsquare.org/here}.Theirs was the only state school in attendance.
Despite having a wonderful time and meeting loads of new friends from all over the place she was quite shocked at the way some of the kids looked down on them because they were from state schools.
She was also extremely shocked with the way the girls from girls only schools were throwing themselves at the boys.

I have been reassuring her that it was the lack of maturity in the particular students and the petty name calling would more than likely be towards the privately educated if the tables were turned.They were the odd ones out ,so ripe for the picking so to speak.

No advice wanted ,just a bit sad that she's come away feeling like they are better than her for some reason.

s'good to have hobbies, greeny

Xenia - is that true, I don't believe that state school kids get any breaks on grades.

Also, don't Oxbridge interview candidates, which tends to discriminate against state school candidates as they tend to be less able to perform, not having had that private school training and maybe feeling intimidated by the whole Oxbridge thing.

Also, isn't the interviewer more likely to give a place to the pupil from there old school. Most interviewers are c**p and lazy and are always looking for an execuse to give someone a place.

Also those figures of yours are not inspiring really are they and just demonstrate that one of the reasons for going to a private school is to buy advantage not necessarily to nuture and extend your child.

titire tu patuale recubans sub tegmine fagis and all that?

patulae obviously

"Also, isn't the interviewer more likely to give a place to the pupil from there old school. Most interviewers are c**p and lazy and are always looking for an execuse to give someone a place. "

No Kaz, that is total rubbish

I totally disagree - having worked in the city, which is a total old school network - I really don't believe that Oxbridge academia is any different.

I don';t see why buying advantage is any less morally wrong than nuruturing the child (or cramming it depending on which term you want to use). They are both financial things really - either mother or father doesn't work and crams the child or they both work and pay for someone else to teach the child.

Yes, all this fuss over having to declare if your parents went to university so that next year if they did you';re less likely to get into Oxford or whatever is really only just formalising what has happened for years. The Oxbridge tutors adore to teach bright children. Bright children emerge all over the place including from comps. For a good few years if you got BBB from the worst school in the land where everyone else gets DDD you would certainly be moved up the pile at many an Oxbridge college. But I don't think you're damaged by a private school sixth form and I think the added value in all kinds of ways helps.

Err, kaz, I've done more than my fair share of UCAS interviews over the past 10 years, and we're not lazy or looking for an excuse to give someone a place.

As an interviewer, the main criterion is: Do I want to teach this person for three/four years? Does he/she have a genuine interest in the subject? Is there evidence of intellectual curiosity and the ability to think?

Wrt favouring state school kids, it isn't nearly as cut and dried as the tory press would like to think. I would be more likely to work a bit harder with a state school pupil to try and draw out evidence of the above in case they are just shy/inexperienced/overwhelmed, whereas I would assume a candidate from an academic private school should be able to hit the ground running. We might make a slightly lower offer to a really outstanding candidate if we really wanted him/her to come to us, and I guess knowing that they came from a tough school in a disadvantaged area might factor into that.

It would be completely barking to choose a hopeless candidate just because he/she came from your old school. The whole object is to avoid picking duds who are not capable of benefiting from or contributing to the course, and will take up a disproportionate amount of everyone's time with retakes/dropouts and late coursework.

Kax, you've seen some different bits of the city than I work with which is often female and Asian and state school but I certainly agree for older people in this country in positions of responsibility being white and middle class and male has been an advantage.

Well Kaz, for a start the academics are quite likely to be state school educated themselves and academia is, I believe, a rather more left wing environment than the City.

Plus no-one would willingly teach spoilt rich kids if there is a choice between that and teaching brighter and self-motivated ones from state school. Believe you me, academics want to teach the best students, not the richest.

Would second kathy that actually many academics find some that the slightly over-confident/ arrogant attitude of some private school pupils grating rather than appealing.

But in the end you're selecting the candidates that you think have the best chance of benefiting from the course and successfully completing the degree. I really don't give a stuff what school they went to.

Exactly Frogs.

To befair to the people that interviewed me at Oxford they tried very hard to make me feel welcome and that was nearly 15 years ago and tried to compensate for the fact did not have the knowledge of some of my privately educated peers.

In my first daughter's application we had to be really careful. As most people get AAA the only distinguishing things if it's not Oxbridge and no interview is the school's report and the personal statement on the application form. We deliberately toned down the statement first version which was full of music exams, show jumping, skiing wealth sort of things because the thought impoverished academics might think it was a bit too much so tried to play up her work for the Catholic church and play down the the sailing exams etc. Interesting balance to try to get right as to an extent it depends what sort of person is going to be reading the form.

My Oxford interviews were horrendous. Particularly the one I had a St Catherine's (I didn't ask for that one, it was a surprise - I got my first choice college in the end thank God) with a female tutor who was apparently known as the Black Widow for her amazing skill in making sixth form interviewees feel like shit. Supercilious bitch.

< Franca. I did a dig once in Italy with some Italian students and I didn't speak any Italian and some of them didn't know English so we ended up communicating mostly in Latin - bit slow sadly, and we weren't really familiar with the right vocabulary!>

many oxbridge academics work very hard to be as inclusive as possible when interviewing prospective students. My old supervisor has made it a specific study of identifing able children in ways which do not involve class bias

I was interviewed by Tom Wright who is now the Bishop of Durham and he did work hard to try and make me feel welomce although he did tell that I was badly educated but he wanted to fix that!

what is a round square school? is that for real?

It's a just a group of schools which seem to be some of the less academic ones, that's all. There are various groups of schools private and state. Girls Public Day School Trust schools is another group.