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.) ...

Not sure I see that as a good thing.

Letting kids into humanities subjects with much lower attainment on the grounds that they are clever and will catch up seems like a reasonable risk. Taking a risk on the people who are responsible for our bodily well being at the highest level is less comfortable.

If students are getting places at Oxbridge through merit, I’m thrilled.

My two are at Indys. I have no expectation of what they will do after that. Hopefully they will find something they enjoy and are good at and go with that. Maybe they’ll go to Uni, or start a business, or go into an apprenticeship. Who knows.

A dear friend’s daughter - single parent, state schools - has had an offer at a prestigious Cambridge college, with a generous scholarship to boot. Couldn’t be more thrilled, as she absolutely deserves her place and will make the most of it.

That’s all. More that binds us than divides us, etc, etc.

Regarding medical schools; the medical schools are always keeping an eye on which students progress successfully through the course and beyond, and refine their entrance procedures accordingly - there is nothing to be gained by taking people who will not stay the course. Newcastle have ditched the requirement to have science A Levels for medicine - this is not because they are dumbing down the course, but because this will enable them to choose the best candidates for the course, and I am sure the same goes for indy/state selection - universities are more than aware that someone achieving good A Levels at a lower achieving school may be the equal or better than someone achieving excellent A Levels at a high achieving exclusive, expensive school with extra tutoring and tiny class sizes.

Is this mainly concentrated in selective state schools and the South East?

Nonetheless, private and states are each mixed in every way, not just academic or not etc. If the shift is towards a system of merit as opposed to quotas / "positive discrimination" then why not?

Its about all other things being equal if there are two candidates with equal merit and one place, the place will be given to the state school child over the private school child. That isn't right

I agree. A draw or something similar should be put in place for these scenarios.

Unfortunately, many realise it's a sum-zero game only when their own children are impacted.

Taking a risk on the people who are responsible for our bodily well being at the highest level is less comfortable

100% agree on this

Positive Discrimination

Positive discrimination is unfair on any field, and should not be allowed. Random selection for equally apt candidates would be more appropriate

Thing is, it's a really, really complex challenge. I don't think anyone with a shred of sense or decency would argue with the premise that Oxbridge should operate on the basis of merit rather than privilege and connections. But how you actually go about achieving that successfully and fairly is incredibly difficult. How do you distinguish between the straight A private school candidate who's genuinely brilliant and passionate about their subject and absolutely deserves their place, and the one who's just been very well supported through their exams and well coached to perform well at interview? How do you distinguish between the state school student who gets an A and two Bs but could have done far better if they hadn't had disrupted teaching and a difficult family situation, and the one who was well taught and worked their arse off and whose results reflect the best they were ever going to achieve? What about the intrinsically very bright student who, if they'd had a better education, would have been good enough for Oxbridge but who has now fallen so far behind that they won't cope with the pace of work once they get there and may crack under the pressure or drop out? None of this is remotely simple. It's perhaps easy to say 'oh well, if a few private school students are disadvantaged then so what, it's been happening to state school pupils for years'. But the thing is, Oxbridge wants to admit the brightest and the best, and plenty of those will be at private schools, and Oxbridge doesn't want to miss out on those students any more than it wants to miss out on the brightest state school kids.

@Greygreygrey

Not sure I see that as a good thing.

Letting kids into humanities subjects with much lower attainment on the grounds that they are clever and will catch up seems like a reasonable risk. Taking a risk on the people who are responsible for our bodily well being at the highest level is less comfortable.

The ‘risk’ is admitting them on the course.

They have to pass the same medical qualifications at the end.

For me, it is a risk leaving our potentially brightest, best, most imaginative and innovative at the back of a privilege queue and being treated by the spoon fed and pampered.

Middle classes gaming the system post is dead on I think.

Interesting to see how the Oxbridge results fare with this (let’s be honest fairly small) change in state school admissions - will the resultant quality of graduate / finals exam results be lower / higher / the same? ie when read in conjunction with the suggestion that less bright but state school applicants are being favoured over brighter independent school applicants.

State school ex Oxbridge here, who married a top public school / Oxbridge. Our kids are privately educated because of what that gives them TODAY as opposed to thinking they are entitled to something else tomorrow. I think the point about certain demographic expecting your fee paying £s to buy you preference at Oxbridge admissions is very accurate. It is all I have heard from in laws who have teenagers coming through (incredibly privileged) school and the assumption is Oxbridge - these statistics are almost an affront to them.

Are parents from private schools complaining about state school kids with three A*s taking their child’s place? I don’t think so.

I think they are complaining about state school children with lower grades than their own children taking places.

1. Even if that is the case, it may still be justified. There are arguments to make.
2. I haven’t seen any stats that show this is actually the case. I’d like to know the actual facts and the see the data longitudinally.
3. Doing what it takes to pass national exams that are set and graded centrally is not gaming the system. It’s simply playing the game as it has been set out.
4. Subjective adjustments to objective grades that are standardised nationally make the whole system less transparent and more open to accusations of corruption and bias.
5. People said not long ago that Oxbridge interviewers were unable to see the value in state school pupils and were biased against them. Now suddenly these same dons can see state school value and winnow out houses private school pupils. I Doubt it. They are responding to incentives like human beings do.
6. We are going into our third year of disrupted education with grades that have not been standardised. Everyone is uncertain and insecure.

Its about all other things being equal if there are two candidates with equal merit and one place, the place will be given to the state school child over the private school child. That isn't right

If they are two candidates with the same academic profile, surely it makes sense to give the place to the one who has managed to achieve that without the benefits of a private education? They must surely be the better candidate if they can match someone who has had better educational opportunities than them.

I think they are complaining about state school children with lower grades than their own children taking places.

I don't think this happens (but I might be wrong.) I think you are more likely to get an interview if you have circumstances that trigger a contextual flag, but even then only if you are predicted their standard offer and perform well in the entrance tests. Basically I think they want the best people, they realised that many of the best people were not applying, or were being missed because of the nature of the admissions process, so they've changed things to fix that.

All of the above arguments are also true for grammar school admissions. It's heavily dominated by the middle classes who pay for 2 years of tutoring to get in.. my friends with local grammar schools all did this with their children and now they tick the state school box. We have no grammar school near us and the local comp is very poor so we pay for private.. should ourC grammar school friends be given preferential treatment over us?

One of my friend teaches lowest set maths at a grammar school and says most of the kids shouldn't be there, they were just trained for the entry exam..

Gaming the system starts in about yr 4 for the middle classes..

Its about all other things being equal if there are two candidates with equal merit and one place, the place will be given to the state school child over the private school child. That isn't right

Of course it’s right, the kid at the state school has probably worked much harder with way less personal/academic school support to get the same grades.

For me, it is a risk leaving our potentially brightest, best, most imaginative and innovative at the back of a privilege queue and being treated by the spoon fed and pampered.

Agreed

Taking a risk on the people who are responsible for our bodily well being at the highest level is less comfortable

The student had to do an extra year at uni before starting the medicine course, and then sits the same exams/placements etc as the rest of the cohort.

I think the debate is also coloured by our views on what we want higher education to achieve. All education is for the benefit of both the individual child and society at large, but at school level I would argue that that balance is weighted towards the benefit of the child (ie how can we ensure that each child gets the most out of their education that they can). At HE level, I think that balance swings more towards the societal benefit. Oxbridge basically wants to produce the next Sarah Gilbert (or equivalent) - not for her sake, but for ours. Now, the next Sarah Gilbert might be at a Requires Improvement comp in Workington, or she might be at Benenden. Oxbridge needs to have an admissions system which will attract, identify and select her, whichever school she's at.

the kid at the state school has probably worked much harder with way less personal/academic school support to get the same grades

Perhaps the 'disadvantaged' kid had a very stable and caring home environment which the 'privileged' child didn't? It's wrong to prejudge like this

Spot on pocketcalculatoroperator

Also, how do you decide that two kids have 'equal merit'? You can have two kids from the same private school who both achieve 4 A*s and apply for the same course, but they won't necessarily have the same merit. This was part of the whole nightmare that teachers had to deal with during last year's predicted grades shocker: if you've got 20 kids who are all genuinely predicted a 9, how do you go about ranking them in order from best to worst without a definitive exam?

Perhaps the 'disadvantaged' kid had a very stable and caring home environment which the 'privileged' child didn't? It's wrong to prejudge like this

Oxbridge has figured out that its admissions process was preventing them from finding the best people because private school entrants were at a huge and unfair advantage, so they are trying to manage that. It's not wrong. Plus the privileged child has the opportunity to explain any extenuating circumstances on their application.

Oxbridge basically wants to produce the next Sarah Gilbert (or equivalent) - not for her sake, but for ours.

And for theirs, I reckon!

The thing is, the choosing private for 'today', is a valid argument for using it, it therefore only seems fair that other people then get a go at having a spectuacular education later on.

The brain drain effect of clever children with motivated parents out of the state system has a terrible effect on state education for the bright children who are left (unless you can game the system by moving etc).

Semi off topic, but yesterday I read a modestly persuasive piece arguing that the biggest unfairness/divide isn't between the 7% of kids who are privately educated and the rest, it's actually between the [roughly] 0.7% of kids who went to [nearly all private] boarding schools and the rest.

A breakdown of the Johnson 30-person tory cabinet is astonishing.

If all social classes were equally represented you'd expect something like 0 people who'd been to a boarding school, 2 people who'd been to a private day school, and 28 people who'd been to a state school.

The actual numbers are 11, 13, and 6. The 6 and 13 are indeed both at least moderately ridiculous, but it's the 11 that's utterly mind-boggling.