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* **

@DahliaMacNamara

You can always look around for an average comprehensive if you feel that would confer more advantages.

Absolutely. Yet we hear demand for private schools continues to rise (reflected in ever rising fees). So clearly parents are seeing advantages to paying for education whether it be an elevation in grades for average students or shooting for the top university spots. If going state is such a huge advantage, come on in!

"private school kids who have never achieved less than a 9 or an A in public exams can't get into Oxbridge because they have come from a private school"

There are more applicants than places.
Some won't get in. That s life.
You cannot give all places to all private school applicants.

It won't be the end of the world for them.
Your bright ds has a chance for oxbridge whichever school he goes.
Dont make it the only outcome and all else a "failure" . Maybe he goes LSE and that s his route

Choose the school that suits his personality.

If the school has bad points don't go there?

@scentedgeranium latest figures from ISC chair a month ago show 1% decrease in uptake of private schools. There is an increase in preps but significant decrease in senior, not helped by drop in foreign borders due to Covid. I can dig it out if you like it was on another post a few weeks ago.

There are far more straight A students than Oxbridge places. Private schools still get more than their share of places relative to their share of straight A grade students. There really isn't anything unfair about rebalancing that.

@scentedgeranium
Here we go it was from November. The budgets sound very worrying TBH.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.tes.com/news/private-school-funds-shot-pieces-mergers-expected%3famp

[quote thetell]@scentedgeranium latest figures from ISC chair a month ago show 1% decrease in uptake of private schools. There is an increase in preps but significant decrease in senior, not helped by drop in foreign borders due to Covid. I can dig it out if you like it was on another post a few weeks ago.[/quote]
Thanks. I guess I'm looking at a longer trend. Fees increasing accordingly. Plenty of threads here to that end.
A recent one per cent drop is probably very explainable in the current climate.
The point remains tho - if people paying for education think it's unfair in any way they do have a choice. Sadly those who cannot afford to pay don't.

[quote thetell]@scentedgeranium
Here we go it was from November. The budgets sound very worrying TBH.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.tes.com/news/private-school-funds-shot-pieces-mergers-expected%3famp[/quote]
In line with so many other businesses. Covid is a special case. People aren't deserting private schools because of a perceived unfairness in Oxbridge places or horror of the masses getting contextual offers at RG universities. They're deserting because the devastation Covid has wreaked on the economy means they cannot afford to pay for education. Completely separate arguemnt.

@scentedgeranium I think the long term trend for increases has been due to foreign customers and Big Bang facilities to lure them in - but that looks to change now I think- it might mean that once schools have put fees up short term to help bolster budgets shot to pieces by Covid reimbursements that the fees might come down significantly as middle range privates try to attract more UK customers than foreign customers? Especially now there are no guarantees on getting those very top UK university place- might put some customers off paying so much?

My dd has got fantastic GSCE grades from a bog standard comp that was (rightly) graded OFSTED "requires improvement" until she was half way through year 9. She has a very good friend from primary who attends a local, highly selective private school that regularly features in lists as one of the top performing school in the country. He also got spectacular GCSE grades. To suggest they have had a similar experience is laughable. I don't think dd learned anything new in maths for the first 2 years of secondary. In every lesson teachers had to teach kids of very different abilities, including those with very significant special needs and behavioural difficulies. By comparison, her friend at private school's lessons from the word go were targeted at developing the highest level academic skills to classes of the brightest, most motivated kids. While dd's friend is very, very bright and would probably have achieved similar grades at dad's state school, it was unquestionable much easier for him to achieve the grades he did at his private schol than it was for my dd at her state school. I think it's fair that these kinds of differences are acknowledged at university entrance.

V similar story with my children @Neolara
There are of course excellent comps and sixth forms (and state grammars) but most are having to do just as you describe - look after a huge range of abilities, and the bright ones just have to alternately tread water and sort things out themselves.
Well done your brilliant DD. Deserves every success!

@Neolara

My dd has got fantastic GSCE grades from a bog standard comp that was (rightly) graded OFSTED "requires improvement" until she was half way through year 9. She has a very good friend from primary who attends a local, highly selective private school that regularly features in lists as one of the top performing school in the country. He also got spectacular GCSE grades. To suggest they have had a similar experience is laughable. I don't think dd learned anything new in maths for the first 2 years of secondary. In every lesson teachers had to teach kids of very different abilities, including those with very significant special needs and behavioural difficulies. By comparison, her friend at private school's lessons from the word go were targeted at developing the highest level academic skills to classes of the brightest, most motivated kids. While dd's friend is very, very bright and would probably have achieved similar grades at dad's state school, it was unquestionable much easier for him to achieve the grades he did at his private schol than it was for my dd at her state school. I think it's fair that these kinds of differences are acknowledged at university entrance.

I completely agree.

@Neolara me too

I agree with the above, but equally there will be plenty of kids at private school who are exceptionally bright and would also have got their spectacular grades in a more disadvantaged state setting. The challenge for Oxbridge and others is presumably working out which straight-A private school kids are truly exceptional, and which are the ones who are not quite so able and might not have got the same grades without the advantages of a private education. I'm all for levelling the playing field in order to recognise the potential of less advantaged students - but it's also unfair to disadvantage those in private schools who have genuinely equal academic potential.

but it's also unfair to disadvantage those in private schools who have genuinely equal academic potential.

Academic potential is going to follow a bell-curve across the population (unless you believe the children of the wealthy have inherently higher academic potential). The challenge is see through academic achievement and other selection processes to see that potential.
I'm afraid the current method of encouraging applicants and selecting new undergrads at Oxbridge is still flawed, as the data still show a bias towards to those with wealthy parents.

Is this little more more than cutting the numbers of middle class children from high achieving private schools and replacing them with more middle class children from high achieving state schools ?,Im sure parents at Peter Symonds,Hills road etc are pleased but thats not really widening admissions..

There is no bottomless pit of Oxbridge offers. Exceptional candidates are rejected every year. Luckily there are many exceptional candidates, especially in state schools, who don't even consider Oxbridge as an option. There would be even fewer places to go to top private schools if they did.

A thing about Oxbridge that's rarely discussed is that it's cheaper to attend than the other universities. This point should be made more forcefully in the way it markets itself to working and lower-middle class students.

True, you're [uniquely] not allowed a part-time job during termtime [and also you'll be living cheek by jowl with in many cases absurdly priveliged folk, who obtain ] but, crucially, you can nearly always get university accommodation, which you only have to pay for in sets of 9 week terms.

@nolanscrack

Is this little more more than cutting the numbers of middle class children from high achieving private schools and replacing them with more middle class children from high achieving state schools ?,Im sure parents at Peter Symonds,Hills road etc are pleased but thats not really widening admissions..

And middle-class children from less well-performing state schools who have had private tutors, undeclared on UCAS forms as not required.

apologie, incomplete post above, which I'd meant to delete.

@nolanscrack does Peter Symmonds get contextual offers??? You can’t do GCSE’s there can you, I thought lots of uni’s based their contextuals on GCSE’s. Whose CO list are they on?

@user149799568

it's very well established that state educated kids to better at uni than privately educated kids with the same A level grades

If you would read beyond the newspaper headlines and look at the actual paper you would see that the actual conclusion of HEFCE's paper is:

"For all but those with the very highest A-level grades, state school graduates tend to have higher degree outcomes than independent school graduates with the same prior educational attainment" (my emphasis)

If you would look at the data, you would see that the paper reports no statistical difference in the 2:1 or better outcomes for those children with AAA or better. As about 13% of university applicants were getting AAA or better, and Oxbridge educate closer to 1.3% of UK university students, it's a pretty safe bet that nearly all Oxbridge students fall into the category of AAA or better, so this particular study has little relevance to students at Oxbridge.

Ha, I wasn't planning to really get under the bonnets of thes relatively old numbers, but since you did so let's have a quick look at the actual numbers:

You can see:

(a) State educated 'AAA' pupils did indeed obtain slightly better degrees than privately educated 'AAAA' pupils [this point is really the only one that's super relevant to Oxbridge specifically, the rest related to other universities mostly];

(b) State educated 'AAB' pupils seemingly obtained worse degrees than privately educated 'AAA' ones [with state educated 'AAA pupils doing about as well]; and

(c) In all other cases, state educated pupils did at least as well, usually better, than privately educated pupils with one grade better. It's gapingly obvious at the lower grades - BBC state pupils did about as well as ABB private pupils, which is extraordinary.

State educated people who've been to mid tier universities [me included] have this experience of being educated alongside really quite extraordinarily thick privately educated people, and they take this prejudice with them. They sometimes semi-wrongly apply it to Oxbridge, where the numbers show a much smaller effect but, still, in 2013/14, state AAA students were doing slightly better than private AAAA, and if that's not a reason for publicly funded universities to tilt the playing field then I don't know what it is. frankly, I'd support a small amount of tilting even if it was the other way round, i.e. if state educated kids with the same grades were in the end doing slightly worse than privately educated ones, because i'd reason that there'd be some kind of intergenerational fairness/levelling up going on. but when the discrimination is actually against state educated kids, it's beyond outrageous, and justifies very serious intervention.

How do Oxbridge differentiate between schools?

The university I work at (which is not particularly high ranking) only gives contextual offers to applicants who either live in. Polar Quintile 1 area OR live in a Polar Quintile 2 area plus attend one of the bottom 40% of schools (for either GCSE or A Level results, can't remember which).

So there's no difference in offers for applicants attending a private school and a good comp or grammar, unless they also live in an area with far below average take up if higher education.

Do Oxbridge look in much more detail at schools?

"State educated people who've been to mid tier universities [me included] have this experience of being educated alongside really quite extraordinarily thick privately educated people"

Do you want salt with those chips?