Private schools getting fewer oxbridge offers II

[MurielSpriggs]

The story behind this full thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/education/4166618-Are-top-private-schools-getting-fewer-oxbridge-offers
plus a quote from a poster here, have made it into a lengthy article in today's FT.

(Of course, I read the FT by accident. Clearly I live in a static caravan, my kids are educated by the local feral cats, and I would never consider paying to try to improve their chances at fancy-schmancy so-called universities ).

www.ft.com/content/bbb7fe58-0908-4f8e-bb1a-081a42a045b7

(Just to add to the unjust exclusivity, FT is behind a paywall.)

How Britain’s private schools lost their grip on Oxbridge
As state-school admissions rise at elite universities, some parents who shelled out for private education regret it

<span class="italic">“Five years ago, my son would have got a place at Oxford. But now the bar has shifted and he didn’t,” says my friend, a City of London executive who has put several children through elite private schools in Britain. “I think he got short-changed.”</span>

I’ve been hearing this more and more from fellow parents with kids at top day and boarding schools in recent years. Some of it sounds like whining: most of us like to think the best of our progeny. But my friend has a point. After years of hand-wringing about unequal access to elite higher education, admissions standards are finally shifting.

A decade ago, parents who handed over tens of thousands of pounds a year for the likes of Eton College, St Paul’s School or King’s College School in Wimbledon could comfortably assume their kids had a very good chance of attending Oxford or Cambridge, two of the best universities in the world. A 2018 Sutton Trust study showed that just eight institutions, six of them private, accounted for more Oxbridge places than 2,900 other UK secondary schools combined. When the headmaster of Westminster School boasted at an open evening that half the sixth form went on to Oxbridge, approving murmurs filled the wood-panelled hall. (I was there.) ...

It's a bit chicken and egg, I think. My dd is in a state comprehensive and she is very driven. Had she lacked that drive and self motivation, I think we might have been more inclined to pay for a slightly "pushier" environment but there just wasn't a need for it. I actually think that private schools probably add the most value for those kids who aren't very self motivated. The ones who are will be fine wherever.

I think the issue of how much to help comes up wherever you are @DoMyBest - it's just so tempting to smooth the way and make things nice for them, isn't it. I struggle with it too. But if they don't develop those independent learning skills, it catches up with them sooner or later. Unless you're going to continue through higher education 😂

(I'm sure I read on here about parents who moved house so that they could be near their DC, who had chosen a uni quite far away from home 😱)

@DoMyBest it is easy to generalise and it really depends a lot on the child but anecdotally I have seen differences between the two sectors.

My DC went to grammar after our local state primary and a number of their cohort came from a variety of preps. I was amazed on one occasion how some (not all) of the parents of the prep school kids collectively complained about how teachers should be co-ordinating homework and make more of an effort so it was all spread out evenly and their DC didn't need to cope with overloaded evenings. The form tutor's response was that your DC are likely going to apply for competitive courses in top universities where the pace will be fast and the workload spiky . Do you think we will be doing them any favours by not preparing them for that reality?

I have a friend with a DC in a SE independent day school who was failing -through laziness more than anything else - and the approach was much more how the teachers could make it more interesting for him to become more motivated with ridiculous amounts of fluffy emails between her and the school. It wasn't resolved and he ended up missing his grades and going to a much lower university than he wanted. I think a better approach would have been to make him wake up to the opportunity he was throwing away.

I think there’s quite a lot to say here. From my personal experience having been to both private and comp (see my previous post) and also having two children myself at grammar IMO it’s lots of things:

• there is something about coming from a background that you want to escape
• there is something about an individual’s natural drive
• there is something about peer pressure

as well as something about having it all handed to you on a plate and being spoon fed

it’s not all about stuff we can influence as parents I guess is what I’m saying. There’s an element of the child’s nature, as well as background, schooling & parental involvement.

I wonder if the “you can take a horse to water” cliche doesn’t apply somewhat here? In that ultimately it has to come from the child whether they are at Eton or Bash Street comp?

Dd1 currently working very hard for GCSES as did Dh and I. Our other Dd does the bare minimum as did one of my sisters!

Dh was very driven and got to Cambridge literally on his own from a bog standard comp ( with the help of some amazing teachers). His parents left school at 16 and were manual workers so he was really on his own. His head was so excited someone got to Cambridge from his school Dh had to open his exam results on the local radio station and became a minor local celebrity 😁.

@SFisnotsimple spot on, a dc's natural nature will be a big influencer. We recognised that ds was naturally a hard worker, had he not been we might have made different decisions about secondary education. By 6th form he knew his own mind but we felt it fair to give him the option .

@Fudgeball123
Your friends sound very sensible not to opt out of the education they pay for through taxes when they have a very good state funded school on their doorstep.
There is a big difference between 'having the money to pay for school fees' and actually 'being able to afford it'.
We have the money to pay for our DC, and of course the marketing is tempting - how could it not be when schools throw so much money at glossy ads and PR. But when we look at our whole lives and our childrens' whole lives, we can see many other things we want to pay for. To help keep Uni debts down, for house deposits, travel, supporting grandchildren (if we are lucky enough to have any) any medical emergencies in the face of a crippled NHS, our own pensions, and leaving something behind for our children.
Your friends will no doubt be saving the state some money at a later point if they, like us, plan well for all of the above. If nothing else there will be more paid to the state from their wealth through inheritance tax as they haven't spent all their money on fees. What goes around comes around, we all put in to the pot in different ways.
So I am sorry but you can't criticise them for doing what they are completely entitled to do. We live in a country were every single child is entitled to an education provided by the state, and they didn't opt out of that. You did, and you are pissed off with the fact that choice might lead to your children being discriminated against at some point (which is, frankly, laughable) - but that was your choice, that you made on their behalf.

I have no issue with being middle class, well-educated and choosing to send my DC to grammar schools. The ethos of the schools matched the values we instilled at home and the schools felt like the best fit for them. My DC were not tutored and I don't consider them having 'stolen' anyone's place. They earned their places and have made the most of the opportunity. They have thrived in their schools academically and have made great and longstanding friendships across socio-economic divides and cultures. Yes, they do have some wealthy friends but they have others who live in small, cramped apartments. In any case, when you meet those DC, you wouldn't be able to tell who had which origins - they are all modest, articulate, well-mannered, hard-working and generally lovely. The school environment has been such that a strong work ethic has been deeply instilled and my DC are going to need that in the careers they are choosing. They may well have had the same richness of experience in another type of school, private or state, but I am not concerned about that because the choices we have made have worked out very well and I stand by them.

One observation I do have about selective schools (state and private) is that they do seem to promote academic modesty. Even when the DC are very high achieving, they still think they are nothing special. There can be a tendency, if a DC is very able in a less academic context overall, for them to emerge thinking they are a superstar only to find that there are many others every bit as bright.

I know people perfectly able fund private but haven’t because they themselves were bloody miserable at their own private school - you can’t generalise it’s a very personal choice.

And there are also quite a lot of us who could afford private but don't see the point as we were very happy at our state schools and did well at them!

One more thing (apologies if already mentioned). Many of the private school kids who’d have previously focused on getting into oxbridge now focus instead on US universities (partly because they know it’s harder to get into oxbridge, partly because the education market is increasingly global and partly because - as one parent explained - UK universities are so expensive now there’s less of a gap with the US. No idea if that’s true). I note Eton boys, for example, in 2019/20 got 41 offers to top US universities. So that frees up more spaces at Oxbridge. Win-win, I guess.