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.) ...

Good to read some insightful posts this evening. @mids2019 regarding your final point, I would just add that analysis of provenance of truly brilliant students over a long period of time will almost certainly be skewed by the fact that Oxbridge would have been pretty much inaccessible to anyone but the upper classes. Not to mention considerations of gender or race.

Not read the entire thread but some.

FWIW I was privately educated from age 7-14, latterly at a well known boarding school. From age 14, I went to the local comp. Not in a bad area, but not an outstanding school either.

the difference was HUGE. The spoon feeding and attention given to students was baked in at private. I was comfortably top of the class there.

I fully expected to be way ahead at the comp, instead I languished mid table. With a lack of attention, the bright kids at comp did the work for themselves. They did it because they wanted to, not because they had to.

I’d guess this is the reason as oft quoted on this thread for sometimes better outcomes at Uni for the state educated.

@SFisnotsimple thank you, interesting. My ds attended a state school and we considered private for 6th form as it was clear he showed great promise academically. In the end he really didn't want to move and so stayed for A levels. It wasn't a 'bad' school but not outstanding either and only occasionally sent any dc to Oxbridge/Durham/Imperial etc
We had a conversation the other day about what he thought about that decision and if he/we regretted it. He told me he has some mixed feelings. He worked very hard because he wanted to and sometimes up to GCSE year got a hard time from his peers. At A level things were better but he/we didn't get much support from school for Oxbridge admissions but again he worked hard and understood what it was he needed to do in terms of super curricular, PS and admissions tests.
What sticks in my mind about our conversation is that a few years on he can say that navigating school/university admissions has somehow given him what he describes as as 'edge'. He had to learn to be super organised and self directed quite young and this has served him well at Oxford. He is also able to juggle academic work and paid employment having done so since age 16.

School friend of mine who went to private school and Oxford (and her husband) and now they have a joint income of over £300k per year, their child has just got a place at grammar school. The middle classes will always game the system. The contextualisation will have to be very heavy duty to sufficiently screen applicants?
I admire anyone who can get to Oxbridge from a bog standard state school without tutoring etc.

@Fudgeball123 the contextualisation is likely to be very heavy duty in said grammar school, if it is a super-selective then probably not very different from a very selective private school. The achievements of the DC will be considered within their high-achieving cohort, although these results were achieved with much lower school resources and much higher class sizes.

RedMoleskine indeed the school in question, the families will be as wealthy as those at the local private school..

@Fudgeball123
Have a read up about contextual codes. All uni’s do it slightly differently. I would be amazed if that Grammar had a contextual code - look it up and let us know. More likely to be based on FSM or similar at that school. Be interested to know so do report back to us.

www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/applying-to-oxford/decisions/contextual-data

For all students who are UK domiciled when they apply to Oxford and who have been educated in the UK secondary system, we consider:
1. Information about the applicant’s school
This helps us to understand the whole school context in which an individual applicant has achieved their grades. To do this, we access information from the Department of Education in England or, where available, equivalent data from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales:
The performance of the applicant’s school or college at GCSE. The applicant’s attainment will be considered within the profile of attainment within their school or college.
The performance of the applicant’s school or college at A-level or equivalent level
The percentage of students eligible for free school meals at the applicant’s school or college at GCSE or equivalent level.

So indeed they look at the school stats rather than whether its state / private etc.

School friend of mine who went to private school and Oxford (and her husband) and now they have a joint income of over £300k per year, their child has just got a place at grammar school. The middle classes will always game the system.

How is that gaming the system?

Do they ask the state school candidates if they had private tutoring? Surely that needs to be taken into consideration?

stoneysongs I am sure they will have invested in tutoring to ensure they got the grammar school position. All to avoid paying the £20k pa of the local independent which would be chicken feed for them..
Abra1d1 who would tick the 'yes' box? Also a number of MC parents I know became SAHMs when their kids started school to 'do the school run' which turned out to be one hour of tutoring by the parent a day...

My DD's experience is that some of her friends qualify for contextual admissions due to their postcode or FSM but the school being a high performing state school quite rightly doesn't 'give a flag'. Difference in grades offered at some unis is significant e.g. Bristol ABB reduced to BBC - that doesn't happen for Oxford - or I believe Cambridge.

Maybe they felt the grammar school was a better fit for their child? Or maybe they feel that private education contributes to inequality in society and are against it in principle? They are not obliged to choose private education just because they can afford to.

stoneysongs nope the other child is going private as they are relocating and the other child is not entering yr 7 so going private. Neither child has SEN etc. I think they're just looking to save money.
I've got several friends with holiday homes in the Caribbean and kids at grammar school - I'm afraid their concern is not for social equality..
If you were concerned with social inequality would it not be better to leave the grammar school places for children who are bright and can't afford private school? Would that not be the most altruistic thing to do?

@Fudgeball123 parent's all have different reasons for choosing schools depending on where they live, their children's needs and family / work constraints so we all need to be careful judging other's choices. Our DS was at a grammar school because it was the best school for his academic needs (there are no academically selective independent schools within 1.5 hrs drive of where we live). Our DD went to a good comprehensive - again better performing than all reachable independent schools. We were acutely aware we could have paid for private education so made substantial donations to our DC state schools from primary onwards. The difference in available financial resources of private and state schools is eyewatering - even for the best state schools which do phenomenally well.

While coming from a primarily private education experience myself my view now is that all children are better in state schools and that if more MC/professional parents took this approach then school funding would be better supported politically. It is though tough as understandably no parent who has choices will choose for their child to be in a poorly performing school to be part of an improvement experiment and we are fortunate in having good state schools. Of course children of professional parents will often have a leg up anyway due to cultural capital but the principle of children being in schools with a reasonably broad diversity of kids must be good for kids and society.

Overall we require more government funding for education particularly in areas of multiple deprivation.

I absolutely echo your post. So many brilliant pupils at my secondary school lost out on Oxbridge places because the school didn't have a clue how to prepare them for the admissions process. The one that did get a place had a father who was an academic.
My DC will be going to comprehensive schools, however work in HE and have Oxbridge connections. There are people I can turn to to help DC with the admissions process and if necessary we would pay for private tuition for admissions.

@Fudgeball123
I mean I suppose you could say that anyone who has the temerity to own a second home in the Caribbean should be charged for education, but I don't see anything wrong with people who can afford private school choosing not to send their DC there. Rich people have a right to free state education just the same as everyone else, and the same right to choose how to spend their money. I wish more people in that position would do the same.

@stoneysongs Totally agree with your last post

Undoubtedly but there will be some who definitely aren't. There is still going to be more social mix in a grammar than a top private school. You may not like the fact that wealthy families are benefiting from it but that is not the point. The point is that a school such as this will be heavily contextualised like a top selective private, if it is highly selective in its intake.

I disagree.. wealthy families paying for tutoring to get into grammar school in order to save money seems unfair to me!

Personally, I would get rid of grammar schools altogether but that's a different thread!

We could have sent dd private, but we chose state (comprehensive - thankfully we are in a non grammar area!), partly because we didn't feel that the private options were worth it and partly because we wanted dd to grow up in a more socio-economically diverse environment anyway. I absolutely believe that we would have a fairer society now if more of our politicians had been exposed to greater diversity in their formative years. I have seen for myself how my dd's own awareness of different people's circumstances has grown and developed over the years.

@Swayingpalmtrees 'swop' is a valid alternative spelling of 'swap', actually, particular to British English.

I absolutely believe that we would have a fairer society now if more of our politicians had been exposed to greater diversity in their formative years. I have seen for myself how my dd's own awareness of different people's circumstances has grown and developed over the years.

Agree, and we made the same choice for our DC, for the same reasons.

Having grown up in Europe though in a predominantly state based education system with selective secondary schooling, I just do not think it was that different there. All the privileged kids also ended up together at secondary school and some of those headed into Politics too. It was catchment based selective schooling and you pretty much encounter the same issues as in the UK (coupled with far worse racism than I have witnessed here).
So even if you had just state schooling here privilege will assert itself and where would the money come from for that anyway. At least you have universally accessible healthcare in England, that is more of a leveller than education. It is the most important thing to be free, even if it has its quality issues.
Even the comprehensives around us all have “grammar” streams anyway. There is division within them too and these are high performing comprehensives. So I am always sceptical about the top performing comprehensives because when you dwell deeper there is usually a privileged catchment and lots of streaming anyway.

I’m finding all these insights really useful, especially those about how children at state schools are more independent/self-driven with studies and that this shows at university.
My 3x DS’s are in the private system and only 1/3 are self-driven: the 13 year old is currently cramming for big exams and we’re tearing our teeth out waiting for him to just ‘manage’ his revision schedule rather than wait for us to help him (although admittedly perhaps few 13 year old boys do this: friends with older kids in state and private all tend to say it comes later).
I have friends from both the state and private sector who went to Oxbridge and they all seem pretty self-driven, but having read all these mumsnet comments I now question which were driven ‘by someone else’ and which were ‘self’ driven. Either way, there’s a risk that the private school sector (or parents in it, like me) do help their kids too much and that’s only going to hamper them long term, so I’m going to try to take a step back and let them… sink or swim. So, thank you.