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.

There was an interesting article about 2 Polish girls in the sixth form of Cheltenham Ladies' College in the Sunday Times last weekend. One made the point that CLC was a somewhat easier learning environment then her old school as there she had about 40 pupils in her science "A Level" class whereas in CLC it was about 8.

It's not difficult to see why private schools dominate and I don't think it's got much to do with genes (Xenia, I seem to recall in another thread that you referred to your ex as an "idiot" and I'm sure you don't consider your children to be "half idiot"!). The underlying factors are surely to do with poverty or lack of it, culture and opportunities.

The average girl at for example, CLC, probably has a number of advantages before she even starts school, monied background with all the music, ballet, ponies, skiing etc that goes with it and broadens the mind; educated, academic parents and extended family; a nice house with stability and a "learning" culture; a good diet and health etc. I'm not saying this child won't come across divorce, bullying mental health issues and all the rest but there are certain undeniable advantages.

Then when this child starts school, they are in class sizes of about 15 max, have over qualified, competitive (often Oxbridge) teachers, pushy parents who want their monies' worth, plenty of sports etc.

Now, with the university tutition costs the situation becomes even worse. How many poorer, state school chidren are going to aspire to be doctors if it means signing up to 5 years minimum of debt? I'd love (or not) to see the statistics in 10 years time.

"collage" mb?
did htey do art?

Yes, we've done that gag. Quite a bit.

Can't spell. can do biochemistry

So once again it's the state schools (and by implication, teachers) being blamed for not getting enough students into Oxbridge.

As I've said, we can only encourage the students who have a mainly A profile at GCSE and A Level and have a particular ability and enthusiasm for their chosen subject to apply.

This is a minority of students even within a large 6th form college and this is replicated across the country since

'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

Now if you have views like Xenia's you could also blame the lack of A grade profile students in the state sector relative to the private sector on state schools (and teachers) but if you actually have any insight and are aware of the research into this sort of thing you will know that it is neither the fault of the schools or the teachers.

No amount of schooling and no teacher can compensate for the negative influence of poverty, low aspiration, unsupportive parents blah-di-blah.

And again, there's another way of looking at this which is instead of blaming the state schools why are we not blaming private schools for giving students such unfair advantages which means they are much more likely to achieve A grades and go to Oxbridge? And blaming a system which continues to allow parents to buy a private education and all the advantages this brings with it??

As I've said on other threads many times if you allowed state schools only to accept only children who passed an exam and only the children of parents who could afford and were willing to pay expensive fees, to teach these students (already supported at home by parents who have identified themselves through their commitment to pay for education as having aspirations and being supportive of their child's education) in small classes, to chuck out any child who was misbehaving or not making the grade etc etc you would probably find (SHOCK) that the school's grades would improve as would the number of students who applied and got in to Oxbridge.

There really is no mystery here.

And, amazingly enough, in countries where there is limited private education and less of a hierarchy in universities you find that social mobility is higher, that there is less exclusion and snobbery, that there are fewer children who leave school with no qualificaitons, that more students from all social classes go to university...

I have just come back to this thread. It has been fascinating reading... To be fair to the state system (which I have criticised a great deal in the past, especially with regard to primary schools)by the time you get to sixth form I think it does pretty well - but maybe I have just been very lucky. DS1 is is a state sixth form college, doing Alevels this year. There are only about 12 people in his classes.

DS2 is doing AS levels this year in a very good comprehensive, there are only about 12 people in his study groups - (he is doing maths and sciences). I have no idea if this reflects the national picture.

His school is very supportive and encouraging his peer group to apply for Oxford/Cambridge, and I am sure the colleges are very encouraging and welcoming, it just seems to be a perception amongst the kids themselves that they might be out of place, and, TBH he has only attended one open day so maybe he will change his mind.

I would like to see the state school system be as successsful as it used to be academically and in terms of lifting children out of poverty as it was in the days of the grammar school. Look at the leaders in any business or politics and chances are they went to a state grammar school (if not a private school). Both my parents did very well out of state grammar school education and the 11+. There wre no grammar schools where I grew up by teh time I was 11 in the early 70s.

The system's fault is in not taking clever poor children out of their environment and into high achieving academic schools. Only parents who can afford that or in the very few areas with state grammars can do that now. That's a shame. That woudl not stop me buying the advanage for my own children of course because no parent really wants to make their child a sacrificial lamb on the altar of their principles.

There are lots of reasons certain children do well and others don't not least genetics and I would never suggest it were entirely the school but the cutting off of the grammar school route and a general dumbing down arising from a system which is comprehensive means that parts of the state sector has lost advantages which the private sector has kept.

The sad thing is tha tthe thread is entirely wrong - state pupils are doing worse at Oxbridge than they used to and that's what needs to be addressed. If we don't believe in weeding out bright children at 11 then why not do it at 16 - move all state school pupils who are on target for AAA into free places at local very academic state schools for example.

fivecandles -- as UQD says, though, a student from a state school who actually applies to Oxbridge is exactly as likely to get in as a student from a private school who applies. If more state school pupils would actually apply then the 40% would probably drop down.

May be worth mentioning too that when I was at (state) school the local private schools definitely targeted the top academic achievers in the local state schools at O-level and offered them 100% (or nearly 100%) scholarships for the sixth form -- so their successes were chalked up to "private" schooling (looks good in the schools' prospectuses, looks bad when they get counted as private school entrants to Oxbridge) even though the vast majority of their education had been state. I had principles in those days so stuck with the state option myself.

I do think losing the separate entrance exams was a mistake. From talking to tutors, in many (most?) subjects what they were looking for in reviewing the answer scripts were flashes of brilliance (reflecting innate ability) rather than a solidly good paper (which could be the result of intensive coaching). So I think that gave less-prepared candidates a valuable opportunity. It wasn't seen that way in the media, though, so I suppose if it put state school pupils off from applying then it had to go (given that the main thing seems to be to encourage more of them to apply).

1.) Xenia and co we DO 'weed out' bright students. They ARE supported in the state system. Recent research has confirmed that a bright, middle class child WILL do well even in a badly performing state school. I've already said that at my 6th form college which educates far more students post-16 than any other institution in the borough we have a clearly defined Oxbridge programme which identifies and supports students who have a good chance of getting into Oxbridge and many DO get into Oxbridge. This will be the case at most other schools and colleges. We also have a gifted and talented programme and a scheme whereby A and B profile students are given extra sessions each week and encouraged to apply to top universities.

2.) As I've said there are good reasons why bright students may CHOOSE not to apply to Oxbridge or other Ivy League universities ranging from ranges of course available (Oxbridge courses are still very traditional and off putting for students who want a more up-to-date and flexible programme of study) to financial and cultural reasons. Who are any of us to say that these students have made the wrong choice or are missing out when they are happy they have made the right choice for them even when encouraged to apply to Oxbridge? This is patronising and snobby.

3.) portandlemon I agree that the Oxbridge admission system has become increasingly fair (although this is a relatively recent thing and there are still inequalities which put off state school students e.g. the need for a modern language at GCSE) and is not generally responsible for the low number of state school children who actually get in relative to the private school kids. I think this is missing the point which is that private schools are always going to have proportionately higher number of A profile students because:

• they select
• children either come from relatively wealthy backgrounds (except for the exceptional few who win bursaries because tehy perform so highly in selection exams which already suggests they have supportive parents)
• parents of children who go to private schools are by definition supportive of their children's education.
• private schools can kick out any students who are disruptive or not making the grade
• private schools have smaller classes and resources and a commitment to pay for facilities and extra curricular activities which it would be impossible to achieve in the state sector without a massive amount more funding. Children cost more to educate in private schools than state but this money comes from parents.

A roundabout way of saying don't make the asssumption that there are a massive amount of A profile students out there who are missing out on the chance to go to Oxbridge because

a) Private schools have nearly half of A profile students despite only educating about 7%

b) there are a lot of students who choose not to apply to Oxbridge and we should respect their choice.

4.) Also Xenia and co. As you well know there was no 'golden age' of education when working class kids could climb up the ladder easily blah blah. In the day of grammar schools a tiny and largely middle class cohort got a good grammar school education and a large, mainly working class majority got a second rate education. Yes, there were a few exceptions who managed to pass the 11+ but this does not justify the majority who were written off as failures. There still is this minority of bright and hard-working students from deprived backgrounds who gets through to achieve A grades and go to Oxbrige within the state sector. I teach some of them!!

Those people who blame the decline of grammar schools for the lack of social mobility are barking up completely the wrong tree. The real enemies are social deprivation, league tables, faith schools and increasing difficulties in parenting (the Internet, mass media, isolation, lack of mixing of children outside etc etc).

If you don't believe me look at this:

education.guardian.co.uk/schools/comment/story/0,,2209779,00.html

in which Fiona Millar argues, 'There may have been many wonderful schools and great teachers 50 years ago, but large numbers of working-class children went to secondary moderns, the higher social classes were clearly over-represented in grammar schools, and low expectations of children from poorer backgrounds were prevalent in all schools, whether selective or not.

Home-school links were often minimal, and many children were taught an unstimulating curriculum in large classes and crumbling buildings by poorly trained teachers who regularly resorted to caning because, amazingly, children were badly behaved then, too. One 1950s pupil recalls: "My friends amused themselves shooting cigarettes out of each other's mouths with a slug gun".

Many young people left school with low levels of literacy and numeracy, which partly explains why so many adults are struggling with maths and English today even though they were educated in the "golden age". In 1959, around 9% of 16-year-olds got five or more O-levels, and more than a third of grammar-school pupils failed even to get three. All this in an age when society was arguably more stable and schools didn't have to take responsibility for coping with family breakdown, mental-health issues and the influx of non English-speaking pupils.'

and this which states that researchers

'found that children from privileged backgrounds excelled when they were deliberately sent to inner-city comprehensives by parents opposed to private schooling.

Most of the children ?performed brilliantly? at GCSE and A level and 15 per cent of those who went on to university took places at Oxford or Cambridge. '

from here www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article3405934.ece

The more I fond out, the more I realise it all comes down to parenting doesn't it?
The mc and wc children in a normal state school will do well if their parents teach them the value of a good education. That't it really.
I don't see why oxbridge has to be the ultimate goal

Back to the original OP's statement: I think that one example doesn't show that things are changing. In my town, the boys'independent school has had a record year for Oxbridge with around 25% of the year group getting places and the girls' school had offers for 30% of its year group whereas last year (don't know about this year) only 4 got in out of 750 students at the local "premier league" selective sixth form college.

The survey recently of labour activists' children put into very bad state schools is not really very big or worth looking at. The children had lots of support at home and at school did not socially mix with children who were different from them and were so unusual in their school they got a lot of teacher attention (which is very unfair).

In the past more children got into Oxbridge from poor homes. It was certainly not a golden age but it was a route now cut off to some children.

At my children's private schools they have not noticed fewer children getting into good universities. Every child that hasn't got in there has been a good reason, so far.

How things will change this year when you have to declare if your parents went to university when you apply to universities will be interesting.

By the way some subjects like medicine and law at Oxbridge and elsewhere now have separate additional tests which I think the universities are finding very useful when so many applicants have AAA already and a good CV.

I love the way you dismiss solid research and then make so many assumptions based on nothing except your personal opinion esp when you have no direct experience of state education Xenia.

And as for this comment,

'The children had lots of support at home and at school did not socially mix with children who were different from them and were so unusual in their school they got a lot of teacher attention (which is very unfair).'

Duh, the fact that they had lots of support at home is precisely the point. Middle class kids with support from home WILL DO WELL ANYWHERE.

Private schools take the credit for this while state schools get none. In fact they get blamed for not producing Oxbridge applicants in the 1000s when at the same time they're not allowed to select or exclude or small classes ....

Yes, they also got support from school and a lot of teacher attention. How is this unfair? I thought this was precisely what you wanted!! All children do or should get support at school.

'In the past more children got into Oxbridge from poor homes. It was certainly not a golden age but it was a route now cut off to some children.'

Not true. Not true. There's a lad I'm teaching at the moment who has just got into Cambridge and has just got full marks on one of his January modules and he's been through the state system for his whole life so it is not a route that's cut off.

One thing that's changed is that Oxbridge have taken away the EEE offers which they used to give out when I was at school. They used to give offers based on their own exams and interviews which may have given clever and confident kids from any walk of chance a way in. Now you have to have an A profile and you have to have got As at AS level to be identified as having Oxbridge potential.

It's not the fault of state schools if most of the A grade students have been creamed off by private schools, then grammar schools is it?

And again if you think that students are not achieving A grades at GCSE or A Level because they are being failed by the schools you are wrong, wrong, wrong.

There are so many barriers in the way of a child from a deprived background whose parents are not supportive or well educated themselves (and as Fiona Millar points out a lot of these parents will be the product of secondary moderns or technical schools in the good old days) that they really do have to be remarkable to get good qualifications.

So much of a child's academic success depends on their home environment. Even more so now coursework is such a big part of exams.

This is what you should be looking at and blaming for lack of social mobility:

lack of aspiration from home, lack of parental education, lack of conducive working environment at home, poverty, lack of reading, too much tv, too many computer games, ubiquitous uneducated and untalented celebrity role models ....

The grammar school thing is so much of a red herring as is harking back to the good old days (which were anything but). Before the Internet, 24 hr television, concerns about safety which mean children are incarcerated in their own homes, celebrity culture, it may well have been easier, to have motivated the odd sparky child to have done some extra work, passed the 11+ and gone on to Oxbridge but even this is a red herring.

What real difference would it make to society as a whole if another 10 working class kids a year make it to Oxbridge? While the majority of working class kids remain in schools at the bottom of the league tables.

I think getting hung up on the idea of a very few bright kids being denied the opportunity to progress (anyway not the case) is just a massive distraction from the real problems in the education system and society as a whole.

Most people (who work in education) are more interested in improving the success of all our schools and all our children and getting all children out of poverty and offering them all real opportunities.

I think you need good provision for the very bright and then appropriate education for the not to clever, which the private schools concentrating and the less clever children do pretty well too but I do think at bit of elitist preference to the very clever but poor children in the state system was a good idea.

Proof that state educated children do worse than privately educated even if they attend oxbridge Xenia?
Proof that less state educated children attend oxbridge than ever before?

'I think you need good provision for the very bright'

There is. Within state schools and 6th forms. Which have G & T programmes and Oxbridge programmes and individual support.

'then appropriate education for the not to clever'

There is by and large although since the brightest kids/ best supported kids are creamed off by private schools, grammar schools, faith schools and schools in nice leafy catchments you do get sink schools which middle-class parents will sell their own mothers to avoid and deprived parents have no choice about. It's no surprise that just as if you stick a bunch of bright, well-supported kids in a school with small class sizes you're going to see a load of A grades and Oxbridge applicants so if you stick a load of kids in a school in a deprived area who haven't really made a positive choice to be there and a significant number of whom will have difficulties ranging from SEN to drug abusing parents etc you're not going to get a load of A grades and Oxbridge entrants.

'I do think at bit of elitist preference to the very clever but poor children in the state system was a good idea. '

See above. Individual support + G & T programmes. Most schools set or stream which essentially means you get the equivalent of a grammar school stream at the top anyway but without separating kids who might live on the same street or siblings and without writing off the vast majority of kids.

I think I can see why if you had no real experience of state education and only read a certain sort of newspaper you might assume that there's a whole load of kids being failed by their schools who are just itching to get A grades and go to Oxbridge and a whole load of inadequate teachers but if you ever went into a state school you'd find this really isn't the case.

Teachers in the state sector are under enormous pressure not only to get their kids the best possible results but to prove that they've done this. At 6th form we get extra payments according to our value added. But every teacher's valued added and results in general are scrutinised.

And so are a school's. Teachers know that a school at the bottom of the league tables is a school in trouble where jobs are insecure.

Schools have G & T programmes, programmes for students with SEN, programmes to target C/D borderline kids. The picture you paint of children being failed by their schools while teachers sit back and do nothing is very far from the real world.

In fact, I think you'd be amazed how much time teachers give up for which they're not paid in order to help kids achieve their potential (whatever this may be). This can take the form of extra revision sessions, running lunch time reading clubs and sessions for those with English as a second language, coursework catch up days (at weekends in some cases), Oxbridge sessions, mock interviews, drawing up book lists, helping redrafting coursework. The list is endless really.

Students with A grade potential are usually fairly easy to spot and I really can't think of many who have not achieved this. Except for the ones who were lazy or dropped out or messed up an exam factors which are really outside the control of teachers and schools.

And, of course, there's almost always a link between being bright and being willing to learn and work hard and the opposite.

I know they do. I was married to one for 19 years in both sectors, know loads of teachers etc. I think it's slightly harder now most of the country doesn't have grammar schools hence the drop in numbers but certainly 50% of people at Oxbridge are coming from state schools which is not a bad result. If we don't think things are worse than in the 1960s that's great. I just thought that was what the research had found and why the Govenrment is trying to hink of new ways to help such as making children declare if their parents were graduates so those whose parents weren't (presumably in part because they were thick!) then get preference like in the Alice in Wonderland world of the communist states used to be.

The very small study which showed the labour activists' children do well in sink schools is not really worth writing about. What was interesting was that the children were very different from the others in the school, like gold dust almost for keen teachers who homed in on them and got them good results. The children didn't like being in ap lace where they didn't have much in common with their peers so I'm not sure it was really an experiment that worked and presumably that suggests if you're middle class and clever in a bad school you get more attention than the poor who are clever? It certainly didn't seem very egalitarian.

Maybe that was the odd wc clever sensitive child- you never know!!!
What rubbish- gold dust for teachers. Some wc people can even read now you know

fivecandles - excellent, thoughtful post. I think you're right that when people have no experience of state schools themselves, they can be extremely fearful of them! And I think fear of the unknown works both ways - I know a lot of state educated people who think private schools are 'too posh' for them and don't believe they could cope in that environment. Having seen both sides of the fence, i guess i'm lucky, because I know now that my kids can cope with a private school environment, but that they don't need it to be successful. I'm not slating all private schools, and obviously there are things they do very well, but I've also seen the reality that you pay through the nose for things like expensive uniforms and marquees on the lawn for the end of term. All in all, I suppose my feeling is that the advantages are all negatives rather than postives IYSWIM - ie you dont get the whole swathe of kids at the bottom end of the ability scale, you don't get kids with severe special needs etc. It's about wiping out the negatives rather than actually offering teaching that is superior.Nothing wrong with that at all if you want to spend your money on it, but be clear about what you're paying for. Also, if you have a good state school on your doorstep which sets by ability (which virtually all state schools seem to do these days) then if you have a kid in the top sets then there's no difference academically.

I find this a very, very interesting area. I currently am involved with graduate recruitment in the law firm I work at and look at this subject almost daily. We collaborate with the Sutton TRust and I speak frequently to Oxbridge admissions tutors. They raise the point often that they can only admit the people who actually apply to them - that there are a lot of very bright people who for whatever reasons are self selecting out of applying.

I think I was a direct peer of Martian Bishop. I went to Oxford from a fairly average state school - completely untutored and unprepared, 4th term entry. I don't personally buy the "oh, its off-putting" stuff - for me it was a luxurious feeling not to have to pretend not to enjoy working. There were a lot of people in my school with aggressively low expectations and a bit of a culture of anti-intellectualism.

Interestingly, Cambridge have just dropped the requirement for a modern language GCSE.

Personally I felt that the old style separate exams and interview were a much fairer route - they were extremely challenging and interesting exams that went to the heart of how you thought, not how well you were taught - to a certain extent they were unteachable for. Interestingly there is now a creep back to them in individual subjects as a result of grade inflation.

I'm interested to hear that Anchovy. Didn't know Cambridge had dropped the MFL requirement, though personally I think there's much to be said for studying a language to at least this level. Your point about the old style exams and interview assessing your cognitive ability rather than how well you've been prepared is interesting too- it's certainly always been my assumption that the top universities want the brightest minds that are out there, regardless of where they come from and how well coached they may or may not be. I don't know what the answers are - but certainly it would be a positive move for state school pupils, which after all are the vast majority of kids, to not feel intimidated or put off oxbridge (while recognising at the same time that it's not everyone's cup of tea and not everyone who has the potential to get in will want to go there). Lots of food for thought here.

I read about the Cambridge/modern languages in the Observer today, so hot off the press. They make the point that it is a diversity issue - it is basically a response to the fact that schools are no longer insisting on it.

We work a lot with the universities, as our graduate intake can obviously only be based on graduates (there is no alternative career track to qualifying as a lawtyer - degree is required). My impression is that they genuinely are working very hard to try and get a wide application base. as someone said above, Oxford and Cambridge actually are working probably harder - they are very well aware of the issue, they have to live with the publicity and probably have a better infrastructure for going into schools etc. Plus as someone said above, a lot of colleges are comparatively well funded and are creating bursaries to help less well funded students.

I get quite cross with the Oxbridge - ooh, thats for toffs, not for me approach. Its a multi-layered issue and not a small part of the issue - as a recent Sutton Trust survey showed - lies with the teachers at 6th forms/University entry points who are not pushing capable students that way.

I completely agree that Oxbridge degree does not equal lifelong success/happiness/bed of roses, but they are both excellent universities by most (not all) objective criteria and would be even better if they genuinely took the absolute best by ability from a wide, not narrow, range of applicants.

Well that's great that Anchovy and Bishop felt confident at Oxford but I really don't know if I would have at 18 (quite happy at Cambridge now but I'm older). I think it depends a great deal on your family and how well you can shake off that influence - I needed more time. I was very keen to go to London (UCL) and that was a good choice for me.

Bishop mentioned expecting to find people like herself who enjoyed learning. I had abolutely no idea whatsover what to expect and was pleasantly surprised to find the being bookish was a positive attribute for a change (you don't have to go to Oxbridge to find that). I have no regrets at all about not doing my undergrad at Oxbridge, but I am pleased to be a postgrad there. I'm not sure that it's entirely a bad thing for the brightest students not to choose Oxbridge - but I do think it's a bit sad to be put off for the kind of reasons I experienced.