Without meaning to sound smug.....

[alfiesbabe]

(well ok just a little bit!) I'm interested to discover that our local 6th form college has 9 students with Oxbridge offers, our local state school has 4 and the private school where dh teaches has....2. What's going on here?? Is the tide turning at last? State school quotas?? I'm intrigued. I've sounded out DH and a significant number of the private school students were turned down. He describes them as very much conventional oxbridge candidates - ie predicted straight As/appropriate amount of sport and music involvement etc. Having said that, I taught a couple of the 6th form college pupils when they were at 11-16 level, and they are extremely bright and predicted straight As. DH also said it isnt just an oxbridge thing - some of his pupils are getting a similar response from Durham, Bristol etc.
I don't want this to become a private/state debate - I'm just intrigued by this.

I think that you are right Nappy.

Not enough state school kids apply.

I went to a college re-union not that long ago and the Dean said that they didn't want to have quotas of any type, they wanted state schools to send them more able kids.

Now this could just be guff, but he seemed to be honest.

private school does not always equal overprivileged and spoon fed, state school does not always equal plucky very bright kid battling disadvantage. there are shades of grey in both directions.

Yes, TC, yes, indeed.

Anthony Seldon was on the radio the other day talking about ways to make state schools send more applicants.

also private schools only have the best pupils. often you will only get into a private school sixth form if you got straight As at GCSE. therefore a higher proportion of students at a private sixth form would stand a chance of getting in at oxbridge than those at a normal sixth form college which normally just asks for 5 A*-C grades at GCSE.

Yes Nappy those figures are correct I believe.
MB - well done! See, i knew I'd crack it!

Interesting. I was invited to apply to Oxford (this is going back a while) but neither my school nor my parents showed any interest and I did feel overwhelmed at the prospect.

As it happens, I'm now doing a PhD at Cambridge and I do think that I would have found it hard going, socially and culturally, at 18 - the gap between my background and most university students, especially palces like Oxbridge, is just too great. I don't geel it at all now I'm older and have been away for a long time.

My students clearly come from a different background - it's just a different world and hard to explain how uncomfortable it can be and just how many things - even small things like what people eat - are completely alien. I can understand if some students from state schools feel that they would be a fish out of water.

Amusing that in the socialist republic of Brown it may be held against you in university entrance that two parents from very poor parents battled through the worst of state schools to get an Oxbridge degree each thus damaging their child's own chance of getting the same. What fun these issues are.

It's strange to me, hearing all this stuff about backgrounds being different/putting some students off. I am a pleb (I think) and when I started work after college I felt it but at college it just didn't really come up. I assumed before I went that people there would be "like me" in that they were interested in learning etc and they were, on the whole. Some people were obviously "posh" and I suppose I didn't really mix with them much, but there were plenty of "normal" people for me to be friends with.
Maybe I should be one of those people that tries to encourage more people to apply to Oxford/Cambridge...

And most people go to university to meet new people from abroad, from other parts of the country and other classes. It's part of the experience. I've 3 children at that stage now and I'm sure that's how they've treated it... although one did seem to end up with fellow housemates who shoot at weekends (they used to pluck the birds and cook them etc) and the other plays lacrosse which tends to be a socially self selecting thing I suppose but they have lots of friends of all kinds.

molly - I have never met anyone either as an undergraduate or postgraduate that had a family background like mine (except one old school friend). I'm sure they exist - but it's clearly not that common which is sad. I do think we should encourage others to try it.

I went to university to extend my education not to meet new people and much to the horror of my family turned down offers and went to a "new" university (two uncles taught at Oxford and a cousin's DP at Cambridge)
Perhaps part of the reason Oxbridge are looking at state schools for future entrants may be that current research indicates the traditional curriculum in many public isn't considered appropriate for the 21st Century???

alfies I have been trying to say gently that you have NOT identified a sea change. There is no sea change. 40%+ of students at Oxbridge are from private schools. Only 7% of children are educated privately and there is evidence to suggest that not only is social mobility in this country not getting any more likely and not only are no more working class kids going to any university let alone Oxford Cambridge, Durham et al but it's actually getting worse. I'm sorry but your experience of 1 6th form college, 1 school and 1 private school (esp given the figures involved i.e. loads more students in the sixth form college than the private school sixth form) is not evidence of anything at all really.

Have a look at this for example,

'Old school 'key to student place'

100 mostly independent schools won a third of Oxbridge places
The school that a pupil attended remains a bigger factor in whether they get into a top university than having good A-level grades, research suggests.'

From here news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7003253.stm

But also this that says,
'Nearly half of all private school pupils' A-level entries this year were awarded A grades, figures from the Independent Schools Council indicate.'
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5284792.stm

The point here is that whatever the Oxbridge admission process is like inequalities in the education system and in society in general are such that things are not likely to get any better soon. We have the worst social mobility in Europe and in US of course this is going to be reflected in our most elite universities.

And the interesting question is whether the problem is that we cut off the state grammar school route or whether private schools are just so much better at teaching that state schools or whether children at state schools are thicker or whether the more money you have the cleverer your children are and more likely you can afford private schools or whether there is class bias (which I doubt - most entrance tutors want pupils who adore the subject and that can be the case whatever your background - although the fact so many state schools don't do languages and until now you needed a language for Obxridge is one issue - the state schools should be forced to offer the hard GCSE subjects rather than be dumbed down so much. My mother couldn't leave her state grammar after GCSE year because she failed one of 8 compulsory subjects and she had to do the whole year again and all the exams again before she could get that General Cert of education and go on to college. The state system does not have that rigour these days. The private schools often do - everyone doing a language, 2 or 3 sciences etc. and pupils being told work is wrong, that they aren't very good, not pussy footed around by weak teachers who daren't say work is bad.

I find it incredible that some posters appear obsessed with cash and equate it to both brains and class. I'm afraid no amount of money will buy you brains, only allow you to mix with people who may be useful for social networking in the future.

Xenia, we have established on other threads that since neither you nor your students have been through the state school system you really don't know a vast amount about it and your assumptions about weak teachers pussy footing are laughable.

I also think it's worth pointing out that the fact that some of you are getting all worked up about how many students from what backgrounds get to Oxbridge is really part of the problem because it assumes that an Oxbridge education equals the pinnacle of success when in actual fact it doesn't.

At my 6th form college we have an Oxbridge programme which identifies students who have Oxbridge potential on entry and then talk to them about whether Oxbridge is for them and then support them in their application through weekly sessions etc.

Needless to say it is a minority of students who get selected in the first place since they need to ahve mainly A grades at GCSE and have a realistic chance of getting 4 As at A Level. Then we find that not everyone wants to go to Oxbridge. Some because they have their heart set on other universities because of location, connections, courses etc or because they have scholarships etc.some because they want to stay at home for financial, family or cultural reasons and so on. Some because they don't like what Oxbridge stands for or don't think they'll fit in. These students still go on by and large to top universities and get the jobs they want. Their lives are no less rich for not having gone to Oxbridge.

Xenia I was a state school teacher, and if work was not up to my standard they got it back to do again in detention. I don't think you can class a 42 year old bolshy individual like myself as 'weak'. I bite, and hard.

I am worked up about the fact that fewer children get to Oxbridge from poor homes now than did in the 1960s (Sutton Trust and others have found this and it's why the Governmment is concerned and me actually because I want poor children to have opportunities) when there was the grammar school route because the comprehensives fail them. If the state sector were more like the private with schools directed for pupils of particularly kinds of ability that would change.

Good, scaryt, and I think my ex husband was like that in the state sector too.

The cutting of the grant and the introduction of loans has had an adverse effect on children from poorer homes going to university.

Families who do not have any experience of university education may not fully appreciate the long term benefits that a degree may give to lifetime earning potential. Getting into debt for an unknown 'return' may be very off putting to these students.

I teach large numbers of students who come from this sort of background and they are very reticent to get into debt. So if they do go to university, they stay at home and go to the local one to reduce costs.

True. The inequities of the funding are bizarre for a socialist Government to bring in. Now you get children like mine graduating without any debt compared to others who have all these loans. In my day none of us had loans.

However from my son's year which would be nearly 2 years ago now if you're very very poor you pay smaller fees I think it is or something is smaller and no one from my son's year has to pay any tuition fees up front unless they choose to, just when they start earning. But I can see how that is off putting if you have no background or experience of being able to earn enough to pay off those debts. We should return to 15% of children only at university and full grants.

Agree totally re funding mb and xeina

it has put off so many people i know who are fully capable of going to universtiy and getting a better eductation. But instead the thought of £18'000 of debt at the end is too much for some people to comprehend. Also most of my friends have stayed at home to keep the cost down and therefore arent going to the university that is best for them.

The fees for most courses are now 3000 per year, given in the form of a student loan. On top of this you can apply for a loan of approx 3500 and if your income is below a certain level you get an extra grant. Thi is a lot of money for people, even though it doesnt have to be paid back until you are earning over 15000pa.

Yes, in fact it was £3000 in year one and this year is a bit more - £3070 I think I paid for my son and it will rise each year. And let's not forget interest runs on the student loan I think too once you graduate. I have one off my hands - her future employer is paying her fees at the moment and a maintenance grant. The second off my hands this summer and the third next year. In our case they cost me about £10k a year which was virtually the same as their day school fees so in a sense it's painless but it's like another 3 years of private school we woudl not have had if you went back to 1979 when I went to university.

nappyaddict - yes, that's correct (the 40% thing). Obviously the correlation isn't exact year on year but it's near enough.

Stare schools do not always have a tradition of sending people to Oxbridge. Mine was actually a state grammar, not a comp, and it routinely did - it gave people the extra tuition and the "inside" knowledge from teachers who had actually been there. One thing they were able to do was advise on which colleges to apply to for which course. Not all state schools have the time or resources to do this.

I'm quite proud of the fact that I'm able to hold my own education-wise with any privately-educated person, and yet my parents never had to shell out any fees for my education. (I got full grant as well.)

My interview: I had four in total - two at the college I ended up at (one for each language) and two at the one I put second (again, one per language). The college I put third didn't ask to see me. I gather they rarely do! It was almost entirely about my reading and coursework, and I was asked to read a passage and comment on it. I'm sure they were looking for other factors which showed what a well-balanced human being I was, even if they didn't ask directly about any of the extra-curricular activities I had on my UCCA form!

But even if they get into Oxbridge from state schools I am not sure that over the course of their lives they do as well in terms of career success and earnings as if they went to private schools but I may be wrong and of course that doesn't matter to a lot of people anyway, nor does Oxbridge. My younger siblings went and I didn't try and it certainly didn't bother me or have an effect on my subsequent life and work.

What a nasty comment xenia