Innocent poll: Would you willingly send your DC to a so called poor school for the sake of.....

[fireflytoo]

...improving the standards of that school? There are often threads about all the issues revolving around so called good or bad schools. Many factors are blamed; class sizes, teacher child ratios, the middle class influence, sociological environments etc.

What I would like to know is whether anyone (especially anyone who gets cross at parents who move to good school areas or who pay for tutors etc) would willingly send their DC to a school where they know the DC would not nessecarily (sp?) get the best education....but where the school would benefit from having them there. (Presuming these said DC have supportive parents and the DC are quite capable of doing well.)

Hope I am not stepping on any toes here... I am genuinely interested in this question though.

Fembear, I think you'd have to be very, very cautious about mentioning Oxbridge to a student who hadn't yet taken her GCSEs.

5C - Kathy is right. If you get 5 people in a year that is extremely unusual.

No, Kathy. A large 6th form college. So 5 successful applicants is not great. I mean it's great for them obviously and probably only about 6 or 7 applied so it's a good success rate. But we don't get a huge number applying relative to for example the private school down the road which probably gets about 3 or 4 in every year but out of only 100 students in the Lower VI.

"And there's still this overriding assumpiton kathy that if you don't go to Oxbridge you've somehow missed out. This is not how I feel at all but it's obviously how you feel?"

Eh? What a load of twaddle! I have no assumptions yet about what my children will do (mainly because they're only 1 and 2!). Having experienced both Oxbridge and redbrick universities I agree with Fennel that there are advantages to both, even assuming they go to university at all. However, I do feel strongly about opportunities being available to everyone, and as I deal every day with students who have not had these opportunities, some of whom have missed out because it would have been right for them, I don't like it when these people's experiences are denied.

Policywonk - "The relationship between 'pure' intelligence and Oxbridge/Russell Group entrance is muddy, to say the least." What do you mean by "pure" intelligence?

"What grades did your dd have at GCSE fembear if you don't mind me asking?"

When she entered the school, she was Gifted. Five years later her GCSEs were not impressive (above average but nothing to write home about).
Maybe she would have plateaued anywhere but the school did not give enough attention to any of the able kids. All the effort was on getting borderline kids up to Govt target.

Sorry, Kathy, was confusing you with another poster.

As I've said, I've seen no evidence that students ARE being 'denied opportunities' at least not by their schools and colleges. Quite the opposite. As I say, I work in a large 6th form college so I deal with student who come from all the schools in the LEA and neighbouring ones (including students who've come from private school BTW) but I've also worked in secondary schools locally and elsewhere. I've never met a student yet with Oxbrige potential who have not been advised about Oxbrige. I have met plenty of students who have chosen not to apply and I have met lots of students who should all things being equal have been A grade students but weren't because of their home environment (e.g. some living in foster homes, some suffering from depressison etc etc).

fivecandles - "I think you'd have to be very, very cautious about mentioning Oxbridge to a student who hadn't yet taken her GCSEs" - It's essential that you mention before they take their GCSEs.

in fact how about telling all school children at least once a year that Oxbridge is open to every single one of them. It's not pressure it's just information.

Well, fembear, obviously I don't know anything about your dd's school but I don't think the school has failed her by not mentioning Oxbridge (before she took her GCSEs). I think this would be quite a risky strategy and one that could lead to heartbreak. I also don't think they were at fault for not mentioning Oxbrige to her after getting her GCSEs if they weren't nearly all As. As for the reason why she didn't get As, I don't know. I think the 'Gifted' label is very tricky and has caused a lot of heartbreak for a lot of students who were set up for high expectations which were not fulfilled for whatever reason.

I also think the D/C borderline thing has been a problem. But don't blame your school for this. Blame league tables.

If I had a DC who wanted to go to Oxbridge then I would support them, but I wouldn't be pushing them that way and I wouldn't choose their school on the basis that it would help them get there! There is life outside Oxbridge-and it is an alternative, not second best! You take the DC and support them with what they want to do with their life-not have the idea and tailor the DC to fit!

Why would sending my children to a poor school help that school? Honestly, middle class parents are so darned conceited they seem to think the presence of their precious children will transform a sink school.

OK, I have no problem with general aspiration raising in schools and encouraging university application generally and applciation to Russell group and Oxbridge fine, great and as you say the more the better. But taking an individual student aside before GCSEs and telling them they should think about Oxbrige is highly risky and could completely backfire. What if you said this to a student who then got all Cs or even all Bs? What if the student felt pressured by it? What if a student felt haunted by the spectre of Oxbridge all her life if she didn't go on to get As? Or set herself up for Oxbrige and then did appallingly at A Level (I've met lots of students who did brilliantly at GCSE and couldn't hack A level by the way)

"I have met lots of students who should all things being equal have been A grade students but weren't because of their home environment (e.g. some living in foster homes, some suffering from depressison etc etc)."

We have a stable, supportive home environment thank you very much!
So: parents blames school, teacher blames parents.

PS to avoid future confusion- she was never Oxbridge material, just Russell Group.

And sorry to keep mentioning this but Oxbridge is NOT open to each and every student. Oxford and Cambrige are highly selective. Pretending they're anything other than this is not helpful to anyone actually.

'Honestly, middle class parents are so darned conceited they seem to think the presence of their precious children will transform a sink school.'

It is a fact of life that enough of them would transform a sink school.There is nothing wrong with middle class aspirations.

Loads of people fail to get into Oxford or Cambridge and mind about it. But it doesn't ruin their lives.

Loads of people fail to get into Oxford or Cambridge and mind about it. But it doesn't ruin their lives.

nkf - quite.

Wasn't talking about your or your dd when I said that about students not fulfilling their potential fembear.

I thought you were saying that your school was at fault for not encouraging your dd to apply to Oxbridge because of one of your earlier posts.

And I'm not 'blaming' anyone for anything. Recent research suggests that 2 children with the same IQ aged 3 will already show a difference by aged 4 where one child comes from a middle-class background and the other doesn't.

Especially in my subject (English) I see the academic advantages of social class all the time. So I might teach 2 students who, in theory, have the same ability but A grew up in a house full of books and is taken to the theatre by her parents whereas B didn't. Those 2 factors alone could make the difference between an A and a B grade or even an A and a C grade in my subject at A Level. Although I do my best there's very little I can do to redress the balance between student A and student B over their lifetimes.

And private schools are likely to have many more students like A than like B obviously. And many more A grades obviously. And many more successful Oxbrige applicants obviously.

5C - Ahhhhhhh. You need to read the Sutton Trust research because you keep trotting out arguments which perpetuate the indepedent schools' domination of Oxbridge. As a teacher it's your duty to read it.

In fact, I'd argue that success at A Level in English has relatively little to do with 'raw IQ' whatever that might mean and lots to do with how sophisticated a reader you are. In this day and age of the Internet, mobile phones, I-pods and so on it's much harder for a child from a not very educated background to get hooked on reading. A bit of a digression. I really should get back to my marking.

That's crap Swedes. What arguments that I've come up with 'perpetuate the independent schools' domination of Oxbrige?

Once again, the reason independent schools dominate Oxbrige is because the children who go there are amongst the most privileged children in our society. They have already been selected by ability, by their parents' ability to pay and by parental support.

If I opened a school tomorrow which was only allowed to take in studetns who passed an exam and had supportive and wealthy parents I think you'd find that they too would A grades and get into Oxbridge.

And since I've just got a student into Cambridge I really don't think I'm the problem here.

And I think English is different from most subjects in those respects that I just mentioned.

"I thought you were saying that your school was at fault for not encouraging your dd to apply to Oxbridge because of one of your earlier posts."

I understand: it could read as "did not encorage to Oxbridge" but I meant "did not encourage. full stop".
The school taught her that she could get average results by coasting. They were satisfied as long as she got above a D. It's the old lack of aspiration thing.

There are such simple things that the govt could do to raise achievement and improve the quality of education that ALL our students receive. Getting rid of league tables would be one and halving class sizes would be another. Obviously I don't know your dd's personal circumstances fembear but I do know that quiet, coasters in big or noisy classes can slip through the net (was she one of those?) while the 'more challenging' students hog the attention.