Oxbridge actively targeting private school pupils

[mumsqna]

Read in the telegraph this week that oxbridge and some other top unis are actively trying to reduce the number of private school students they give offers to.

Right now it’s 72% to state and 28% private schools in Cambridge. I personally think it’s should be about 65% to 35%. After decades of free education there can’t be that many children in this country that are very bright that can realistically be classed as ‘disadvantaged’ imo. Most should be in homes that are the top 20% of household incomes for their region. Most of bright but disadvantage should be ethnic minorities coming from immigrant households.

I’m quite annoyed by this, it feels like some academics trying to force you into the state system. So put off I’ve just decided that they can fuck off as there are universities around the world.

like my drive to work comes from wanting to give my children the best education available in the world. Just feeling deflated.

Shunning seems to suggest they had a choice and walked away with heads held high. They didn’t. They knew they wouldn’t get in and it stung like hell. Like it did for even more state school kids before the system finally started to change. These changes give me hope for this country.

They are shunning Oxbridge in favour of going elsewhere, just like I am shunning a career as a Hollywood acting megastar in favour of WFH in a terraced house in South Wales 😂

@Dancingdreamer the "evidence" used to back up your claims is nothing more than fluffy anecdote that fuels unhelpful conjecture. You "report" that an admissions tutor says stronger private school DC are passed over for weaker state DC but can't qualify your statement in any way. You back it up with assertions that it must be happening because the DC you know did well at undergraduate level and are now doing PhDs.How does that evidence anything? There are many talented DC who don't get Oxbridge offers and go on to great academic things. Same with your handbag stealing anecdote - you visited a rough school, so what, we all know there are schools like that but that doesn't mean it's the norm in the state sector. "Shunning" is just loaded and silly.

Today I decided to shun Chris Hemsworth in favour of staying with DH.

@hoooops 😂 I shun Ryan Reynolds every day.

Oh god, me too @mumsneedwine
He never bloody lets up, needs constant shunning

@SaturdayPancakes @Dancingdreamer massive problems with theft in boarding schools - phones, clothes, money.
Plenty of the same vices in private school children as state - and plenty in private school parents too - financial fraud, addiction issues, negligent parenting, abuse …I have come to see lots of troubled parents in my time!

My private school children didn't try to get in and it's been fine. I don't think Oxbridge is too out of line - about 20% of sixth formers are at private schools and the % from UK private schools at Oxbridge is not too different from that once you take into account a few other factors so it all seems about right to me. If oxbridge start taking in people who aren't really very good (from any sector) then employers won't hire then and will look to people at other places - the free market works well.

Absolutely @Xenia I have friends with DC in private schools who are under no illusion that their DC are bright but not Oxbridge bright or the style of teaching wouldn't suit them and they have no issue with that. They have gone off to Bristol, Exeter, Manchester etc. and everyone is happy with their choices. I think many parents are balanced like this, it's a minority of parents who think their DC are more able than they are and, to be fair, if it had been years back, their DC may well have got in if they were from the right schools.I agree with other posters that that the media is unhelpfully feeding this illusion. Personally I don't think there is much danger of Oxbridge dumbing down with the current approach, they are purely casting the net wider to get the best candidates.

And I agree that the free market works well if it is indeed free. In my early corporate days in the nineties there were lots of older Oxbridge-educated colleagues in my sector whose ticket in had been the right schools, Oxbridge degree and maybe a stint in the guards. A number of them were spectacularly underwhelming and quite lazy but they were allowed to coast for their contacts. These days such types wouldn't get in the door and if they did they wouldn't last five minutes.

There’s a way to go yet.
Last September, Cambridge University’s private school intake was at 28% when nationally only 7% of school children are privately educated. Though this is an improvement from 29.4% in 2020 and 31.3% the year before that, it falls short of the 2020 benchmark of 24% for Cambridge and 24.5% for Oxford (2020), set unofficially by the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

At sixth form there are more children in independent schools as many consciously choose to ‘game’ the system by transferring to high achieving state colleges and sixth forms having had the advantages of private education up to that point. Others transfer to grammars. It’s not always a clear divide between state and private.

Caron I think at sixth form level 20%, though, are private school so 28% is about bang on the money surely.

How is 20%/28% bang on the money? Still a way to go, no?

At sixth form there are more children in independent schools as many consciously choose to ‘game’ the system by transferring to high achieving state colleges and sixth forms having had the advantages of private education up to that point. Others transfer to grammars. It’s not always a clear divide between state and private.

This is a common misconception but it is not possible to game the system in this way. Achievement at GCSE is contextualised by the individual school where GCSEs were taken, not by school type or sector.

Also, instead of getting into the irrelevant "is it 7% or is it 20%" argument, it's more helpful to look at where the highest achieving children go to school.

~75% of DC achieving Astar Astar A or better at A level go to state school.

"opoponax · 12/11/2022 21:03

How is 20%/28% bang on the money? Still a way to go, no?"

If the difference is 8% only i.e. 8% more private school pupils go than is represented amongst sixth form populations it is so small a difference as to be negligible. As to what the factors might be that if you are in a fee paying sixth form you h ave a very small additional chance of getting into Oxbridge the reasons could be parents keener on education as they choose to pay, parents of very bright children usually having bright children even though IQ tends to be inherited towards the mean and parents who are bright tend to earn more so can afford fees, many immigrant families pay school fees and they work very hard (my son was in a minority of his day private school - only white boy in his class at one point as the immigrants prioritise education more than the local UK residents (and of course quite a few of those non -white children were born in the UK too but still had a newcomer's work ethic); private school pupils might speak better and present better as probably are more likely to be from homes with more money, books, debates etc. All those factors might account for 8% difference.

It is a bit like the fact BAME people are over represented in the legal profession in the UK compared with the fact they are only 12% of the UK - might mean they should be actively discriminated against on one view but in practice the difference is not too over the 12% that it is worth taking steps against.

However if the number of sixth formers in fee paying schools were 8% and they got 25% of Oxbridge places then the argument is completely turned around as my list of factors above might not be sufficient justification for the difference.

If only 7% of DCs go to private school initially, but that rises to 20% in the Sixth Form, are loads of DCs switching to state for Sixth Form in an attempt to 'game' the university application system. @hoooops if that isn't possible as per your post above, why is the number of privately educated DCs going up so dramatically? Genuine question, I have no idea.

Incidentally, based on this year's figures that 8% difference equates to 88,542 applicants, so that is definitely not insignificant, as @Xenia claims.

By 'game' I suppose I mean increase not only their grades but their speaking and presentation skills, their confidence, and all those other factors which people think (rightly or wrongly) private schools offer and state schools do not…

Can't find the numbers at the moment, but I always thought percentage rise was more to do with children moving out of establishments that counted as "education" (e.g. onto apprenticeships) - predominantly from state schools, than an actual rise in independent school numbers. Although of course students do change sectors at sixth form level (in both directions).

Thanks @sheepdogdelight that would certainly make sense. Just interested, that's all.

DD2 had the GCSE grades to switch from her not terribly good secondary modern to either an all-girls grammar or a private school (which we could have afforded for 2 years) for Sixth Form but she chose not to as she didn't particularly like the vibe at either when we looked round.

Also although the law may have changed to force children to sty at school to age 18 (used to be 16) a lot of them do leave anyway or do not continue academic studies so that might account for the change too (if my 20% is correct as % in private schools at sixth form).

8% is substantial and I don't think it can be explained away with speculation about gene pools and such like! I know some very smart people with some very non-academic children and all the school fees in the world wouldn't make them Oxbridge material. Probably the smartest person I have ever worked with got a double first from Oxford and came first in their year on their Harvard MBA. Their mother was a cleaner and father worked in a factory?! Qualitative rather than quantitative I know but certainly flies in the face of such stereotypes. And as for parents being keener on education because they choose to pay, I have no words for that.

@thing47
It's not that the private school numbers are going up but that loads more state school students don't stay on for sixth form, I think. So the proportion of private school goes up.

So around 20% of all sixth form students are in the private sector and around 25% of the highest achieving students at A level are in the private sector.

That difference no doubt due partly to private sixth forms being a bit more selective, plus whatever it is about private education that makes it easier to achieve well. Class sizes, expectations etc etc.

Ah right, yes, thank you @hoooops . I hadn't considered it that way round! Duh.

On a slightly different tack, I believe that research has shown that class size isn't as significant a factor in educational achievement as parents like to think it is. It is often quoted as a decisive factor in parents opting for private education, but (neurodiversity notwithstanding) actually the most significant factor has been shown time and time again to be the quality of teacher/teaching. A pupil will do better in a large class with an excellent teacher than in a small class with a poor one, all other factors being equal.

I take it no one here, with the possible exception of one or two rather biased posters, thinks the private sector has the monopoly on good teachers?