Despite having the right grades, my child is not applying to Oxbridge because ....

[TalkinPeace]

• she wants to live in self catered accommodation
• she does not like the small sizes of the colleges / social units
• having to go back to college for lunch while doing a lab based degree does not make sense
• the whole gown and formal dinner stuff smacks of coat tails rather than standing on own feet
• she does not fancy fighting through hordes of tourists while moving between buildings
• having a tutor picked by which college they are based in rather than their research specialism seems very odd to her

Also, for what she wants to do, the course at Oxford is not that well balanced
and Cambridge, despite having a fab course was not a place that felt like home when she visited for 2 days.

So she will be putting other Universities on her form and taking a great deal of stress out of this house.

For what its worth, those of her friends I've chatted to are also ruling out Oxbridge in favour of other Unis because of the first four points.

What are other people's reasons for ruling out Oxbridge, despite having the grades?

Christina you're merging different events in time. Clearly Janet's clever parents passed the 11+ as working class children. Due to intelligence regardless of class. They then became prosperous and middle class. That was the beauty of grammars. You seem muddled, but Janet's account isn't.

Bobo perhaps my direct grant school was different because of where it was geographically, in London. But we mixed absolutely on equal terms, all of us, the direct grant kids (I had an idea it was a high percentage but never thought to find out exactly how many) and the fee payers. No one seemed to look down on me nor did I look up to the fee payers - why would one do that? I actually don't think things are so much different at Oxbridge these days either; intelligence is a great leveller.

I don't really think it was the beauty of grammars which made people prosperous and middle class, but was much more to do with post war expansion. Most working class children didn't go to grammars.

Janet's example is exactly of grammars enabling her parents to become prosperous, in professional occupations, but I wasn't intending to be exclusive and you're absolutely right.

But that wasn't the beauty of grammars for most working clasd children.

That's why attributing passing the 11+ to solely IQ is such muddled argument.

Also, I don't think Janet has said that her parents were working class, has she? She says they were from a pretty poor part of the NE which ism't the same thing.

It's also not the beauty of grammars now.

Poorer children do worse in grammar school area Kent than poorer children nationally, which is such a depressing thought.

Yes, but poor children nationally are not evenly spread anyway.

There are boroughs with much worse outcomes than Kent. Fully comprehensive boroughs.

The reality is that the UK state education system has not yet found a way to ensure that disadvantaged DC have equality of opportunity, let alone outcome.
The comprehensive system was meant to solve this. It hasn't. Blair's education x 3 also failed spectacularly (despite the huge increase in money spent and a collective will to make it work).

Maybe education, isn't and never will be the social tool many wish it to be? It might work on an individual level (for me, Janet's GPs, Molio's father etc) but not wholesale?

Without family (and also community) support for education, schools can only achieve so much.

I think that's right bobo.

When I look back at my childhood, my parents were not able to support my education in any way that perhaps more educated parents could (although parents were generally more hands off then, I suspect).

But they did support me. My Mum was, and still remains, my greatest torch bearer. That counts for a lot. Also, I think being an only child helped. My childhood was chaotic in many many ways, but my Mum would always manage to carve out a quiet corner for me. Maybe she couldn't have done that if I'd been one of four, like most of my peers?

Both my parents went to grammar school and came from poor, northern backgrounds. My dad had a particularly difficult childhood as his mother died when he was very young and his father (a miner) worked long hours. Both my mum and dad talk about their grammar schools with immense affection. They both say it opened a world of opportunity to them which they never knew had existed beforehand. Sadly, because of financial restraints they were both required to leave school at the first opportunity in order to contribute to their families' income but they would both say they were given more than just an education by their grammar schools. Their education changed the course of their lives, not least because it gave them different expectations of themselves. I fully appreciate however this was little help to the majority who failed the 11 plus examination.

I'm sure you are right that being an only DC meant you got more parental attention/time - an important resource. My DP grew up in a family with plenty of money but very little formal education (WW2/Jews) and his parents couldn't help with actual school work but were devoted to his and his brother's educational cause. I think that parental devotion is important.

I don't think you can generalise about state grammars. Certainly in the NE my parents were working class. My mother's grandfather was a minor, her mother was a domestic servant before she was born (although my grandmother had taken herself off to India on a boat to be a nanny so that probably shows some enterprise as one of 14 children) and then we widowed ni 1930 with a 9 month old baby. It is difficult to say they weren't working class and hard to say that the state grammars which were taking just about only working class children in their areas were not a good example of the grammar school system working. If 100% of your target area of pupils is just about all working class anyway that is very different from a grammar school in Surrey, say. Obviously there may have been a few differences - apparently my father had shoes and some children in his primary school had none after the 1929 crash and the depression. I was not there to verify his story of course. My father got to medical school and my mother teacher training college.

Then if you move to the next generation my chidlren's father went to a state grammar school in Yorkshire and said thre were 4 local grammar schools and they were I think the only schools just about and they were all utterly useless with hardly anyone getting to university or high A level grades.

I certainly agree that the huge disruptions of WWII led to a lot of changes, the health service, women shoved out of jobs because men needed them (so not all good changes by any means) and soldiers retuirning home of all classes who wanted change.

I think parents do make a big impact too. My father's father left school at 12 in 1892 due to illness and poverty - one of about 12 children too. Although he spent his year in bed reading and self educated. He did not have my father until h e was over 50 and did not marry until he was over 40 because he wanted to be able to afford it and do it well.

He was an interesting man and in the 1901 census was living in a boarding house in Newcastle with 26 other young men who all slept in bunk beds.

I agree about that. I come from a Scottish family and I think it would be correct to say that in Scotland in general there has been a broad acceptance for umpteen generations that education is the way up and out. Obviously not everybody has accepted that and as I don't live in Scotland now I don't know how current that view is any more, but my impression is that that view was widespread and fuelled far better social mobility than you'd have found in England in the late 19th and early 20th century. The lingering benefit of that was that my parents were 100% behind me when I got a scholarship to a direct grant school and very happy to support me to go on to university. I am so grateful for that now. I know quite a few women of my age who are just as bright as I am but didn't have that kind of support, so dropped out of school without doing A levels, let alone a degree, and in later life found themselves very limited by that lack of education.

Just to clarify, we'd moved to England when I won the scholarship. I don't think Scotland ever had direct grant schools. Grammar schools were certainly not usual in the post-war period - it's been comprehensive all the way in Scotland for a long time, as far as I know.

Gasp0. This provide another reason not to apply to Oxbridge, namely fees. Scottish students are now far far less likely to apply to English Universities. My assumption is that this will have a huge impact on the traditional Scotland to England migration of graduates who study in England and then find professional jobs in London or elsewhere. So fewer families may have relatives in England.

The reverse may also be true. DD is looking at medical schools and is keen to avoid PBL, and a couple of Scottish ones appeal. However there is the obvious concern about whether the anti-English sentiment seen on TV is widespread in Universities, and also what would happen should there be a vote for devolution or a Brexit.

We're still seeing application from Scotland in my department. But then only one Scottish university can even vaguely compete in my subject.

I think it's a real shame though, that the vast majority of Scots will be educated in so few universities.

Need more - I'm in Scotland and where I am there are plenty of students from English backgrounds applying to do medicine in Scottish medical schools. Several acquaintances (mostly English) teach at the local medical school, so I would be surprised if there was much anti English sentiment. I have lived here for 15 years and haven't come across much, apart from the SNP stance of hating Westminster, although since the indyref that seems to have died down.

I live in Scotland and yes, it is comprehensive all the way (or private, but no one in my family has ever been to private school).

My clever oldest got stellar highers but we never even thought of Oxbridge, because of the fees. Basically English Unis are out of the question, so she chose across Scotland. Her grades meant she could get an unconditional from any Uni, but she has a very clear career and goal in mind and only 2 Unis offered a course that attracted her, so her Uni choice was entirely made on subject & being in Scotland.

Even without the fees issue, I can't imagine we would have considered Oxbridge, it just sounds too alien & alienating. I had never heard of all this dark blue/light blue, don't understand the college system, it just seems so different from any other Uni.

I don't know if my DD would have got in - I doubt it, as I can't see her impressing the dons, a shy comprehensive school girl from a teeny village is not going to come across well. I actually wouldn't want her to subject herself to such snobbishness and be found wanting. At least with the Unis she chose, it was grades all the way and that was all that mattered - Glasgow told us they had a policy of never reading supporting statements as they favoured middle class children & were meaningless.

I think English unis now want 2-3 A grade advanced highers now where as Scottish unis with their extra year still offer unconditionals for highers which makes a difference too. When I went to uni in the 80s many English unis just wanted 5 good highers as well even for medicine.
A combination of tuition fees, needing more exams and for many subjects not getting anything extra for the additional money and effort means many students stay in Scotland.

SGADM - I'm not sure why you think Uni choice is limited in Scotland? There are 19 Universities in Scotland, which is pretty good for a country with a population of 6 million, and many of those are exceptionally good. For example, for DS's subject three of those universities are in the Complete University Guide top ten and are amongst the preferred institutions for the main recruiters in his chosen career. So that, on top of having £36k of fees covered, why would you need to go elsewhere?

Hmm - we always hear how good the Scottish education system is, and yet it's comprehensive? Can this be so?

Personally, I think it can - far from failing in England (and I mean England, not Wales or NI), I don't think comprehensives have been a failure - I have just looked up my three local schools,(where my DCs went) - 60%, 50% and 56% getting 5+ A*-C including English and Maths at GCSE. This is an area without grammar schools, but a good number of private schools, (which cream of a significant number of academic children, and some of the not so academic, but nicely behaved), leaving the Comps with a skewed intake. Not bad I thought. My Grammar school, which would only have taken ~25% of the more academic school population had half failing to get 5 O levels. Not something to boast about.

But the real elephant in the room is the class system - whatever system we have will reflect this, however much we tinker, which I suspect is why the Scottish system works better, because their society is more egalitarian. It's a great pity that the post war reconstruction went and dreamt up a nineteen thirties solution to education, instead of catching the prevailing mood of wanting to build something better and not having the same vision as the founders of the NHS.

But to go back to Oxbridge - many in the north just don't fancy a small town in the fens - the pull of Manchester say, is more alluring, for someone from small market town where nothing happens.

Well, I would say the Scottish system is not necessarily better (look at how the Curriculum for Excellence has been implemented), but it is a lot more straightforward. I look at the threads on the English system - the enormous struggle to get DC into "the right school" - and think thank god I don't have to cope with that. Here you apply to the local school for your catchment and you are going to get a place, you can apply to other schools outwith the catchment and you may get a place, or you can go private. Of course, there are good schools and not-so-good schools, and you pay a premium for houses in the catchments of the good schools.

Education has been the route out of poverty forany wc children. Definitely was for me.

Definitely not so for the very vast majority of children that I went to school with, which reflects the national and historical picture.

My Grammar school, which would only have taken ~25% of the more academic school population had half failing to get 5 O levels.

But O Levels were abolished in 1987. Getting 5 O level passes thirty years ago (when many students from secondary moderns came out with no qualifications at all) is nowhere near comparable to getting 5 GCSEs nowadays. The bar 30 years ago was set so that a small minority of the population would get 5 O levels but the bar now is set so that a majority of the population gets 5 GCSE passes.

My point disquitiones was that half of those of the supposedly top 25% of academic ability failed to get that basic standard, whereas it should have been achievable for all of them. Or are you saying that a generation ago we were happy with only about 12-15% achieving 5 O levels?