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.

Have cambridge really dropped a modern language GCSE from their matriculation entrance requirement. I think that's a real shame.

Why? Some people are really challenged when learning languages and I have a friend who couldn't apply to Oxbridge because he just couldn't learn French - but now he's tenured at Cambridge. Good riddance, IMO.

3littlefrogs, get your DS2 to look at Fitzwilliam college when he goes to Cambridge. It was very "normal" when I went to Cambridge 20 years ago and I don't suppose it will have changed much. Good sense of college identity. I was at New Hall, which is next door (but not suitable for your DS as it is women-only).

Churchill took a lot of state school kids, but always seemed a bit mad scientist to me. If he is into long hair, black T shirts and particle physics maybe it will be the place for him? He might also look at St Catharines.

And maybe some kind MNetter with more recent experience than me would have more accurate views to help him?

I think this is part of the trouble with state schools applying to Oxbridge. It's quite difficult to tell the colleges apart from the outside, although when you're there they all seem incredibly diverse. And FWIW, 20 years ago it was 50/50 state private, so the fall to 40/60 when the independent sector has grown over the same period is an improvement.

friday - I have the same impression of those colleges. I'm at a postgrad college myself that is relatively informal. Personally, the conservative, traditional high-table-gowns- for-formals style really doesn't appeal to me but in fairness, many people from all kinds of backgrounds enjoy the tradional aspects as part of the whole Oxbridge experience. Also it's something you can pretty much dip into as much or as little as you like no matter which college you are at. Even I quite enjoy it as an anthropological field expereince once in a while.

I agree that the 'Oxbridge is not for me' mentality is not good if what is implied is 'I'm not good enough' but if 'Oxbridge isn't for me' means 'I'm confident in my abilities and after carefully considered my options, I don't think Oxbridge offers me the right course or I don't think I would like the environment' or even, 'I need to stay at home while at university because my parents can't afford to bail me out' then that's absolutely to be respected. As I say, I've taught a few students were encouraged to apply to Oxbridge, were confident in their own abilities but chose not to. After all, we're talking about bright young men and women here who are capable of making up their own minds.

I was told by my school I was too young! (I was only a year young, I bet they could have changed the or stretched the rules....)

My own view and experience is that the reason private schools do so well with Oxbridge has a lot to do with the fact that so many teachers in the private sector are ex Oxbridge themselves, and that it is so crucial to their marketing to be able to say "x%" got into Oxbridge last year. They know the colleges, know the admissions procedure, have the confidence and incentive to push their pupils forward and the pupils themselves are more likely to want to go for it. If Oxbridge are going to encourage more state school pupils to apply they have to recognise and act on the inherent disadvantage that these pupils face, and the GCSE language change is a sensible step in this direction imo.

Penelope, you said: I get enough stick at manchester for not going to a grammar/private/single sex school

That's awful.

I never had so much as one remark at Cambridge with my foreign state school background. Quite a few of my friends from university were state-school educated. I hardly ever met anybody there whom I would consider to be educated beyond their intelligence, as Dennis Skinner so succinctly put it once. Just a few. Mostly a lovely, lively, bright and friendly bunch. Which may sort of be the point. Hence why I will be encouraging mine if they are so minded to apply to Cambridge as well- it was such a supportive, friendly, vibrant environment.

Oxford, where my sister went, was on the other hand a pile of dung. [tongue firmly in cheek]

In London, I wouldn't say I got 'stick' - but I was teased. That was OK.

I wonder if this kind of reaction varies even more by subject than by institution. I studied science (another biochemist who can't spell....) which tends to be a much more mixed bunch but I shared with a classics student and they were all dead posh. Not at all unfriendly as I recall - but from another planet.

I found that my state school was fairly ignorant about the application process. They were happy for us to apply to the one Oxford college that at that time actively encouraged state school candidates but if we wanted a more traditional college (as I did), then we were on our own.

In terms of the reaction to a state school pupil, I think I was one of 6 in my college (around 250 undergrads at the time) and whilst people did not make adverse comments, there were many assumptions that my life had been the same as theirs which I found difficult. I was constantly asked in my first term "which school did you go to". However, by far the worst thing that was ever said to me was "My, what a quaint Northern accent you have".

Goosey - I was teased mercilessly for my Geordie accent (and this was in London). I was asked 'if my daddy was back at work now' after the miner's strike (yes, I'm that old...) and whether we kept whippets or pigeons and on and on.

Even among state school students there is a heirarchy - you can still be very middle class and come from a state school. Or not. But assumptions are made very quickly from how you speak and other bits and pieces.

All the more reason to send children to private schools so they don't start with those disadvantages may be then.....or for people to change their accent (if that will help them in life and work)

xenia really change the record

Me thinks (s)he doth protest too much

Really Xenia, you think that people should have to change their accents? I think it would be far better not to change it and overcome the prejudices against certain accents: I do not keep whippets or like pidgeons and am certainly more intelligent that a lot of people with more acceptable southern accents.

When a friend of mine was asked if she could moderate her Tyneside accent, this did not say to me that accents were a problem but that the firm she was working for was staffed by idiots!

There's "accent" and there's "incomprehensible to anybody outside your immediate group/area".

If you are working in a job where you need to talk to a wide variety of people, possibly from all over the country or even abroad, I don't think it's prejudice to expect that people should be able to slip into the former rather than stay stubbornly anchored in the latter. It's a skill like any other work skills.

Elocution does not mean dumping your original accent and learning RP, rather learning how to speak so that the widest number of people can understand what you are saying, ie -speak clearly. No prejudice or snobbery involved in that, mere adaptation to the needs of your employer and customers. If you can't do that, you are less employable almost by definition.

Oh I agree with that Duchesse, DH is irish and has had to modify his accent a little so people can understand him. That was not the issue in the case I was referring to, it was a question of perception not comprehension.

You can try to over come people's prejudices which can take 200 years or you can speak in a way that ensures you get jobs etc. Simple choice.And in some jobs certain accents help. There was a time not so long ago where unless you had a regional accent it was hard to get on in parts of the BBC.

Yes, but it is only because people refused to conform and adopt RP that things changed. If everyone had done as you advocate Xenia, nothing would ever change.

I am enjoying reading this thread but having been born, bred and educated in Scotland i feel that I have a different take on this issue. I went to a secondary school that was, at the time, in the top ten state schools. Oxbridge was never mentioned to anyone as far as i know and some of my contemporaries were v. bright, in fact applying outside Scotland was never mentioned. However I do remember reading recently that former state school pupils achieve a higher proportion of first class degrees at university, something to do with the fact that they are better at independent study than hot-housed private school pupils perhaps? This holds true among my present day friends, my sister and two good friends achieved firsts (one from Cambridge) and none of the privately educated ones managed to (mind you they tend to have better paid but more conventional jobs). My own sons will not get the chance to test out whether the private school at the end of our street is better than the local comp because they have mild learning difficulties and the afore-mentioned school cherry picks only the brightest kids to keep its exam results high, this despite the fact that my children would benefit more than most from smaller class sizes etc. At art school, the private school pupils really struggled to work on their own and their sheltered lives led to very pedestrian results IMO (trying to stir things up.

I can't believe english people still go on about accents, grow up, the south east is not the centre of the universe you know!

But on the whole the private school ones do do better in life (as you say above - they have better paid jobs).
(ally, there is an article on class in britain in today's Times. I don't agree this is just about the SE. I am from the North but our family didn't have any particular regional accent.)

but are they happier Xenia?

why are you so obsessed about splurging your money down the pan on private education?

Did you go private?

My children speak very nicely thankyou and we are in the north

I went to a fee paying school and so do my children and I'm happy with that choice. I feel it's money very well spent.

I would imagine it was fairly neutral whether someone with a good education and well paid job is happier than someone on benefits or even on the £20k average wage because happiness is a different issue but certainly people find life a bit easier if they are coping financially so giving children the leg up private education is worth doing if it can be afforded.

we are lucky as our local state grammar out performs the privates

we snigger at the fee paying parents

only behind our prom programs you understand

Most of the country doesn't have state grammars. The top schools in the country are all private until you get down to about place 20 and that includes all the grammars but certainly some parts of the UK don't have any particularly highly performing schools at all.