How do we feel that private school kids fill Russell Group Unis?.... Controversial alert.

[faraday]

Yet I am increasingly finding that most of the people I know who have chosen private have done so because their DC just couldn't cope either socially or keep up academically in the local state schools (or a mixture of both!)- so they're individually hand-held, spoon-fed and tutored in the private sector- then emerge ready to grab those limited places from perhaps more clever but marginally less 'graded up' state school kids?

Hurrah, at last people are discussing the OP.

Pips = Primary information something or other
MidYis = Middle Years Informtion S..
Yellis = Year 10 and 11 Information S..
Alis = A-level informatin S...

Will try to figure out what the S stands for.

They are all basically the University of Durham tests - probably the most highly regarded int field of pupil progres, potential and value added.

S = System

Sorry Quattro - they are all fairly standard terms to teachers!

Thank you. I'm fascinated. Having just discovered SATs, I'm disappointed to discover they don't continue in secondary school and get replaced by Yelling and Pipping.

st - is he really just going for RG, or RG plus (say) some 1994, etc etc - the whole RG = best is a bit of a misnomer - RG = biggest of best, but not all best by any means.

To be fair the OP didn't say it was average children that were taking the places, merely that it was lower ability children than the others that might have had them. I too doubt that many truely average from any school are getting RG places.

I'd like to suggest that if the OPs group of children were moved to independent schools due to being misfits in state education, they were probably underachieving before and although percieved as being lower ability, maybe weren't really, but it took an independent school to get them to thrive.

While there may be others in the same shoes left in state schools, there will be lots of others who aren't misfits in state schools & who aren't failing to thrive educationally (the right school for the child argument), so the problem may be less big than percieved.

Hah! at being fair to the OP. She posted a theory based on her perception of some personal anecdotes, not statistical evidence, and has buzzed off and not returned to the thread since!

Habbibu,

He is selecting the course first, rather than the university first. But for his course, it is only done at about 20 places and the best ones are all RG. There are a couple of other acceptable places, at least one of which he will put down as an insurance offer.

The other thing about selecting a university is to look at their student body profile for the course in question. He will target a place where he is a average student. It is a rough calculation (based on number of UCAS points), but all he has to go on. It is only RG universities that match this requirement.

Really? No 1994 universities at all? That really does surprise me. Though if it's a very specialist course maybe it's only done at very large institutions.

But much more sensible to go for course first, I agree - you do get odd little pockets of brilliance in some subjects all over the place, and then some subjects done badly in otherwise good universities. Think that should be a guiding principle for all applicants.

Also wanted to say more generally that there are thousands of RG (and other equivalent quality) places for undergraduates - they are certainly not all reserved for the brilliant. Glasgow, which is in the RG, famously has a huge proportion of home students, and many - I'd say the great majority - of those will be from state schools. There has historically been a stronger tradition of going to university in Scotland, however - Scotland had a 47/48% participation rate long before the UK govt came up with the figure of 50%.

Topflight:

"But the OP asks us how we feel about clever pupils in the state sector missing out in RG uni entrance because of nurtured, but possiblly inherently less clever pupils in the indie sector.

Well, if the indie lot are the students best able to hit the ground running to get the most out of the degree course, then that's the best choice admissions can make. You generally choose the best candidate for the role in the job market, don't you? You can't make uni admissions depts responsible for righting the wrongs of the inadequacies of secondary level state education."

That's not necessarily true. From a financial POV, students from non-tradtional backgrounds come with additional money attached (it's called Widening Participation money), which is dedicated to levelling the playing field for students. Also, hitting the ground running is tricky to define - students who've had shedloads of support and extra tuition can find university a shock, where the emphasis is very much on independent learning. One of the main grouses of my academic friends and colleagues is that students don't expect to have to do this, and this is a problem for both private and state students.

I asked DH last night if he noticed a difference between his private and state educated ug students. He said he wouldn't know which was which...

My sons' school measures their progress against their MidYis score predictions. DS1 has a MidYis score of 142 and DS2 has a MidYis score of 146 but I've never been able to find out what that actually means.

This thread has taken rather an unpleasant turn, with posters independently educating their dcs patting each other on the back.

Just so I can be smug, ds achieved the highest SATS English result in the county, plus 98% in maths and 90-something (can't call to mind) in science. And all that in a crappy state school. Oh, of course, private schools don't have SATS, all the children have their minds on much higher things.

I can't tell which are the private or the state educated students on my course either- unless they tell me. Students come in all shapes and sizes, but it is definitely not the case that you have to be either brilliant or an independent thinker to get into a RG university - sadly

Like Habbibu, I'm not convinced by the hitting the ground running argument. We teach a lot of languages from scratch for a start anyway; a bright student can get so much further in a term at university than during several years of secondary school; it's a more grown up way of working. I'd say the hardest part of our job is making students understand that university is something different; it's not more and cleverer A-levels. We have huge problems with plagiarism and with a passive dependent learning style.

swedes, read the document I linked to in my post 23:08 on Monday to get some info on predicted attainment and MidYIs scores. I believe more detailed predictions can be made from the results for the different subjects too. Your ds's scores are at the very top end of the scale and so any predictions will be less inaccurate as:

1. there are few candidates with scores that high and the predictions are most accurate near the mean ability (as they have more data to work with there).

2. the ceiling effect of GCSE scores (you can't score higher than A, but you can score lower, so ability groups where you might expect all As will get lower predictions as some in the group will miss their target but none will exceed it)

Generally the predictions work well for a cohort, but at an individual level need to be treated with caution (as you might expect for predictions made from a relatively short snapshot test).

Yes, cory, I imagine that is a problem, getting students to realise it is not 'cleverer' A levels.

The trouble with the A level system is that reasonably bright students can, and do, get the top grades relatively easily, as long as they have been 'taught' or 'spoon fed' very well. It is the nature of the exams, because the govt or whoever want more students to get top grades.

If the exams were harder and required more independent thinking, only the very, very brightest would get the top grades (and that would include SOME of those who do so now), as used to be the case.

What are you talking about, Fircone? Who's patting whom on the back? But if anyone would like to pat me on the back (you?), all pats will be gratefully received.

Snorkle - Ahh. Thanks. DS1 did get all A*s and a few As in his GCSEs, most of which were IGCSEs (so a bit meatier I think).

A problem I found in teaching first year undergrads in particular was the perennial question, posed the second you started a topic: "will this be on the exam?". Used to drive me insane, and seemed to be a result of an exam rather than knowledge based culture. And is a common problem for friends in many universities!

swedes, well done him! I think the MidYis data is really more useful to schools in measuring if the cohort is doing as expected (& hence if their teaching is up to scratch) than much else. I expect you knew or guessed your ds would do well anyway.

"A problem I found in teaching first year undergrads in particular was the perennial question, posed the second you started a topic: "will this be on the exam?"."

Indeed. And it doesn't necessarily get any better. I took a load of MA students round the library to show them the research resources and the question I got at the end of the session was, 'for which part of the course will I be using these?' We were looking at the specialist dictionaries! And these were research students.

I'm doing an OU short course at the moment, and for various reasons have completely run out of time, so am just working from the assessment. And it'll work, and I'll pass, but it feels really bad and cheating and immoral...

It's a shame for students, though, to have this mindset. takes so much of the fun out of university learning. At Masters level it's just depressing.

Fircone,
I teach Years 5 and 6 Science and I go way beyond the National Curriculum. The NC at that age is incredibly dull, which is why it is no wonder that many pupils are put off science for life.

"independent education encourages bold, independent thinking, and gives children the ambition to aim high and not always go for the easy option or easiest subjects"

I think you mean good education which can be state or independent.