Are top private schools getting fewer oxbridge offers?

[Ijustwanttoask]

Just read in the papers about the drop in Oxbridge offers to Eton in the last few years. Is there a same trend for other big name public schools and top London day schools too?

In the past years, these schools generally happily announce the numbers of Oxbridge offers they get around this time of the year but I haven't seen much for 2021.

* Title edited by MNHQ by request* **

My dd is at a comp and predicted A*AA but didn't apply to Oxbridge. This is partly because other top unis have courses more geared to the world of work but the only people she knows who went to Oxbridge are Boris Johnson, David Cameron etc who are not the sort of social circle that she's after.

I was educated in the private sector at a school that was Oxbridge or nothing. When I googled my sixth form I noticed that there were a lot of US universities in the leavers destination list.

@OverTheRubicon I agree with you about the "filler layer". I was at St Andrews in the 80s and came across several privately educated students who would have been lucky to scrape CSEs at your average state school!

@houselikeashed Do you really not get why people are intimidated? Oxbrdige is frankly weird and removed from most people's lives. It exists in the form and it does precisely to intimidate and perpetuate a particular system. For example, I say Oxbridge and so many associations spring to mind. The UK is a class based system...Oxbridge is some way is a ticket to that....its more than just a uni. I mean if you wanted good unis you could just go to London ones - oxbridge is about more than that and rightly peoplenon the outside feel alienated.

Someone said grammar is even more over represented than independent. Essentially, I think many kids that end up at Oxbridge have parents who tend to push them and encourage them at an early age. Whether they spend money on private school education/tutors or just sit with their kids to do homework (because they themselves are clever and or educated) does not really matter.

What I would like to see ideally is a system where very bright children from disadvantaged backgrounds are logged onto a system as having academic potential. Then they should be put forward for bursaries at top private schools and places at grammar schools and top streams at comprehensives, these kids should then definitely not be disadvantaged because they haven’t gone to a poorly performing comprehensive. We used to have the notion of gifted and talented but that seems to have disappeared.
I have a friend who is a half black man. He was in and out of foster care as a child, very difficult upbringing. Luckily a devoted teacher spotted his potential and insisted he applies for a bursary at a selective independent school and after that he made it to Oxford and is now a City professional. He himself will tell you that he could easily have ended up in prison if it were not for that teacher.

The state school kids I knew at Oxbridge from eg Midlands or the North of England tended to have parents who were eg physics teachers. They are not the ones that really need the help.
Part of the problem is that Oxbridge look just at GCSE and A level predictions plus interview/exams in certain subjects. If they actually got to look at the whole student and family background like bursary children are assessed then those who just got help to pass exams well wouldn’t get a place over those who are genuinely able with no real help or anyone looking out for them.

Musicaldilemma I can see the point you are trying to make but I disagree with you when you say that 'bursary children' have 'no real help or anyone looking out for them'. The bursary children I know have parents who are very, very ambitious for them, and are very much helping with prep at home etc. If they didn't have those kind of parents, then the idea of applying to a fee-paying school would never have crossed the parent's mind, and would have been dismissed had it come via a teacher.

The kids who need help are the ones whose parents aren't interested.

@Musicaldilemma there aren't enough bursary places in the system for that to work unfortunately (not even close). Also there are loads of parts of the country that have no private schools.

That's why contextual offers are important as well as outreach and providing pupil premium funding alongside lots of other initiatives to level the playing field.

@somethingonthecarpet - sorry if I wasn’t clear. I was trying to describe how I would like a bursary system/grammar school system to work. My main point was early identification of children with higher learning potential at primary age by teachers, whose parents cannot or will not help those children. What we have in place just doesn’t seem to work properly. I think these kids are let down much earlier than Oxbridge level so I would like changes to happen when it matters ie as early as possible and I would say mid secondary school is the latest point, if we really want to as a society let the real raw talent make it to Oxbridge.

Otherwise Oxbridge are just letting in certain state school kids to tick boxes, just as independent schools are handing out bursaries to well behaved children who are quite bright (but usually not troubled, as that would be too much hassle and the full fee paying parents would complain).

@SouthLondonMommy

Isn't 36% close to a 1/3rd?

37.7 is nearer to 2/5ths (for Oxford), so the 17% of A level students in private schools are over represented by 222%.

{pedant mode off}

What I would like to see ideally is a system where very bright children from disadvantaged backgrounds are logged onto a system as having academic potential.

This used to happen - there used to be a scheme called 'assisted places' where if a child passed the entry exam for an independent school the local authority would pay for them to attend the independent school rather than pay the local comprehensive. My DH benefitted from it.

It was abolished under New Labour

@Ifailed I see. I provided a rough range as Cambridge's 2021 state school number will be 70% so when you look at both Oxford and Cambridge together it is roughly a third.

www.itv.com/news/anglia/2020-09-03/proportion-of-state-school-pupils-at-cambridge-reaches-record-high

[quote sarahloopy]@Muchtootall I think kids turning up at uni feeling like they have massive gaps in their knowledge is literally what universities are for. In fact, if all of my students dont feel like that, then I'd consider it a failure on my part. So the way you felt was just right. Thats the whole point of going to uni, to stretch your knowledge.

You are also assuming that those who had got in from private schools didnt feel as you did, you dont know because you didnt go, but i would hope that all undergraduates feel like that - I certainly did and I went to Oxbridge and a few other top unis.[/quote]
No I’m talking about turning up with huge gaps in my knowledge because the school hadn’t taught me basic stuff at GCSE and A level.

can I quickly ask….Do you all think academic brightness is hereditary?

@houselikeashed

can I quickly ask….Do you all think academic brightness is hereditary?

No

can I quickly ask….Do you all think academic brightness is hereditary?

I'm not a geneticist, but I'm pretty sure having wealthy parents does not affect your DNA.

@houselikeashed I guess it depends on what you mean by academic brightness and how this relates to this question.

I think it has been established that IQ levels may be partially hereditary (but there are huge issues with IQ as an analytical measure etc) but I dont think this has much relation to the question regarding university access particularly in the context in which the UK lacks social mobility.

In order to be academically bright one needs many qualities/personality traits such as a good memory, quick processing power, ability to focus, patience, diligence, and a certain level of competitiveness. Certain schools/environments favour/encourage the development of some/most of these qualities whilst others discourage them at least when it comes to school subjects.

Raw intelligence is very hard to define and therefore hard to test for.

Some really interesting points on here. I work at an inner city state comprehensive in the E Midlands with a vast range of pupils - from those who come to us in sixth form from private schools to those in care. I teach A level and have taught sixth form careers. We have a reasonable record with Oxbridge applications but more interest/success with applications to other top universities for courses such as medicine.

Some of the issues we face:

-Kids who don't want to move too far from home/want to live at home - cost often figures here so go for Birmingham or Nottingham and commute.

• Able kids with no family history or support for university. One of my form group who was bright enough for uni had a mum who was an unemployed addict and a brother in prison. Just couldn't make it. One of my current A level class is living in a bed sit.

• Kids who don't 'see themselves' at a particular uni - might be more of an ethnic or social mix at Manchester or Leeds so appeals more.

There seems to be a lot of angst from some quarters about contextual offers from Oxbridge. I believe there are plans to admit a number of students onto foundation years in the future, but haven't heard of contextual offers being made currently for admission to standard undergraduate degrees. Are there statistics for any such offers?

Makes sense, I'm manage university admissions and we don't treat all As as equal. It's more impressive to achieve good grades when you've had fewer resources and a less privileged upbringing.

And we must remember state school figures are skewed by the comparatively larger numbers of students from a small number of grammars as opposed to comprehensives (where the vast majority go). Sorry I don't have figures. Just the observations of comp educated son who four. The absence is students from his life d of school startling when he got to Cambridge. He was fine. He did well. But it shocked him that the state cohort that is much trumpeted seemed to come from actually quite a small slice of experience (and geography - remember huge swathes of the uk have no grammars)

@houselikeashed it’s irrelevant for the point at hand. Plenty of state kids make the grades and still disproportionately don’t attend. When they do attend the state kid like for like outperform private school kids whose grades were easier to attain because of the funding private schools have.

Lack of intelligence isn’t even remotely the issue...

The funding gap between state and private is the same reason why top indies outperform all the top grammar schools despite the grammar schools being just if not more academically selective. It’s money not brains and the IOE research establishes this pretty clearly controlling for intelligence using GCSE data.

Even with the resource disadvantage state students achieve 75 percent of the AAA grades or better.

My MA was all about this. Anyway, Toby Morris has done some interesting cartoon style strips about this. Don't get me started on the obnoxious ideas of Bourdieu.

@breatheslowandtrust

Our local, Ofsted outstanding, 6th form college in very middle class leafy SE suburb (where average house prices are £600k upwards and most within a mile are £1m+) is on the list for contextual offers from some RG universities, based on the fact that there is one council estate on the edge of their catchment

I find this hard to believe. Generally speaking to get a contextual offers you have to satisfy at least 2 criteria out of three: deprived home postcode, deprived school and in receipt of FSM. No one is going to get a contextual offer on the only basis that the school backs onto a council estate.

My son did. No FSM, we live in the 1st quintile with an IMD score of 4.6 so the least deprived. His former school is currently in the 3rd quintile with an IMD of 21.6

I used tools.npeu.ox.ac.uk/imd/ to get the figures.

Another one with a comp Dd who got over the normal grades offer to go to Oxbridge but didn’t like the courses on offer. She didn’t like the atmosphere too- she wanted a bustling city, clubs and independence of making her own food.

What was interesting is that, in my old public boarding school she would have been in the Oxbridge group from day one. The teachers’ Oxbridge Colleges they attended were listed on the pupils’ diaries. And they had contacts to each of those colleges. The pupils had extra tuition from the first week in Year 12. There was very much the expectation and tradition that Oxbridge was the pinnacle.

I don’t think Oxbridge is right for someone who wants “a bustling city, clubs and the independence of making her own food”

Oxbridge is right for someone who is highly academic, is prepared - nay, enjoys - working like a Trojan and appreciates the atmosphere of learning and the company of like-minded souls.

My dcs are comprehensive all the way and they got in. Their primary focus was their subject, not to have a Love Island experience.