25% of Oxford places to go to poor students - who loses out?

[IrmaFayLear]

From the BBC website:

If 25% of places are to be targeted at applicants from poorer areas - and in recent years, about 40% of places have gone to pupils from private schools - then that leaves 35% for everyone else.

Even the BBC muses that the losers will be ordinary pupils from ordinary backgrounds - not rich enough for private school but living in nice enough areas.

Of course merit should not be overlooked in favour of gloss when admitting students, but I think this is increasingly less the case anyway. But admitting a large specific quota of students to one of the top universities in the world strikes me as nonsensical and unfair.

Devondoggydaycare I think you're ignoring the fact that plenty of people don't own their own homes and live in social housing or even tied housing. You also ignore the fact that with superselectives the average cost of housing next door to the schools is not key. In a related point though, quite right that rural grammars have a particular issue re the cost of transport which is why funds are made available as a priority.

Tapas on the tutoring point, I wasn't speaking from a parental point of view but a professional one.

But as a previous poster has said, the MN threads about grammars are a lost cause - just a stream of repetition so I'm not suggesting a digression, however relevant.

So you agree with my point then. Grammars in areas such as Devon and Poole remain the preserve of the wealthy. Unless you live within a few miles of the school, transport costs are unaffordable for most, with county councils applying strict funding criteria even for those on FSM. The precarious nature of rented accommodation makes a grammar place an even greater risk, because you don't know whether you will still be in the same property 6 or 12 months later and if there will even be a bus route from your next home.

I couldn't disagree more profoundly Devondoggydaycare.

I certainly find your assumption that everyone in the immediate area owns their own home pretty telling. Do you really suppose that the target market for the HTs of these schools are the DC living in the postcodes with high home ownership and a substantial average house price when they only need to shift a very small number of miles away to find several estates of social housing? Not only those, but in rural and coastal areas there are numerous pockets of poverty that you seem unaware of.

On the transport front where schools have a wide catchment area there are funds available - I'm not talking about the LA, which have slashed transport funding in recent years. If you go to the websites of various schools or ask any finance office they should be able to help.

Privately rented accommodation can be precarious in terms of security I agree but social housing far less so. Even so, once a DC has a place they have a place and a parent would then presumably opt for a house or flat which was accessible for school. There's a degree of autonomy too.

On the 11+ front there are a number of initiatives being proposed and /or implemented with the same aim as Oxford. So, taking a more holistic approach for disadvantaged DC and judging potential in ways other than the written test for example (looking at the progression of primary school work through their books and sidestepping a test). It's all good.

I don’t. Torquay is one of the most deprived areas in England with plenty of cheap housing. Many students walk to all of the secondaries. 8% of the students are pp at the grammars and several will be not far above so it is clearly possible. Also as was stated this week in research parents of all backgrounds often don’t take their nearest school. That said I do think op money should be able to be spent on bus fares.

It’s all a moot point anyway as grammars are shoved out by private schools too and particularly by the top 8. Probably not helped by the woeful underfunding they suffer. When they are closing their school libraries, enduring big class sizes and have no money for books or anything else I fail to see how they can increase money to outreach both for entry to grammars and Oxbridge.

What I don’t understand is why private places to Oxbridge can’t be restricted to the percentage that attend private schools. Surely that would be simpler, alongside a robust outreach program.

F1zzB1zz pupil premium money can be allocated towards transport costs.

Yes Torbay suffers from significant deprivation but I think Devondoggydaycare was targeting East Devon (she mentioned Colyton) where she seems not to realise that deprivation exists there too. It's quite astonishing that she believes that everyone in East Devon lives in a nice £350k+ house. If only.

Budgets have been incredibly tight in recent years but good management helps and a school sets priorities. You'll find that this is a major priority for almost all HTs of the really successful schools. It's helped that recently the government has made extra money available for grammars, tied to the success of these initiatives but this work started way before that - it's a priority and not new, but these things take time, as Oxford and Cambridge have found.

goodbye. I guess I’m here to be bashed. Topics where everyone agrees or has the same point of view would be boring! However whilst I too have seen outreach from our Grammars, it is still very hard to get DC getting into the schools from our deprived areas. It might be a slightly different population here from where you are and perhaps there are deep seated issues that are difficult to shift. Indeed we need better services for the very young. By the time outreach arrives from the Grammars it might be too late.

I am not against social mobility. I subscribe to the Sutton Trust! I have been a governor exclusively in schools in deprived areas. However actually confronting issues very early and not pretending there are hundreds of extra bright DC just gagging to go to Oxford is important. We know parenting can be poor. We know some schools do not differentiate work for the very bright. We know DC don’t get the chances they need to succeed and all of this needs sorting out way before age 17!

@BubblesBuddy I find your lack of insight into your own prejudice pretty shocking. My friend who got into Oxford came from Hanham in Bristol. Go on Rightmove now and look it up, houses often go for £500,000 there. You're just as likely to find a house filled with books and loving parents who read to their children there as anywhere else. As for the schools, they are typical comprehensives, a mixture of poor white kids, polish immigrants and middle class kids. It's hard to get great grades but not impossible.
I think all children deserve a chance to go to a great University. Like you've pointed out, the odds of them getting to Oxford are already against them. I don't understand why you're against this quota which helps to entice those who are already bright enough to go to Oxford. Just seems like you want social mobility but only when it doesn't affect your life.

There aren't hundreds of students from deprived backgrounds gagging to get into Oxford. However, there are a number of students who have the potential to go who are currently missing out because of where they were born, the school the attended or their family background.

I didn’t say I was necessarily against a quota. What I asked for is evidence that there are sufficient DC with deprived backgrounds (not from cheap housing full of books and parents who know how play the system) to fill 25%. No one has come back and said that there are many in very dire circumstances actually wanting or being able to go. I am not prejudiced against anyone and I constantly advocate for better services and education for the worst served in society. However I am not convinced that this will change social and cultural feelings, particularly in the north. We have lots of evidence that these DC are less likely to travel south to university and fear what Oxford holds. Of all the schools I have been involved with in deprived areas, I don’t know a single deprived DC who has Gibbs to Oxford. As I said fsm is a rarity in the Grammars.

gone to Oxford. It’s the ones who don’t go that have to be targeted. Not the anecdotal ones who do go! How are you going to change the views of all the others and coach from an early age for the prospect of Oxford when parents and schools don’t encourage it?

It's hard to be fair on such things.

If I take my dd1 who's currently applying.

She has been to state non-selective schools all the way up. They get reasonable grades so are considered "good" state schools.
We live in a "good" postcode.
She has not had any, nor would have expected to get any, contextual offers.
However she has friends who have had contextual offers.
The difference can be as great as A A A down to BBB. (that's the most extreme she's come across)

Some of these friends have been to exactly the same schools as her, and live in a "poor" postcode, at least one of them has only recently moved.
She's also got a friend who went to private schools all the way up, lives in the same postcode as us, but has transferred to a "poor" state school for the 6th form, but parents are putting the money instead into intensive tutoring. She's got some excellent contextual offers.

How do you, without knowing the individual cases, make these cases fair?
How do you compare a good private school, a good state school, a poor private school, a poor state school.
You can have a poor state school that does amazingly by their top ones-my df went to a secondary modern, having failed his 11+. They gave him individual tuition and he was the first (and as far as he's aware only) pupil to do A-levels there. He would still have done better at the grammar school probably.
You can also have a good private school that pushes the top/bottom and ignores the middle as they'll achieve good enough, but not outstanding to boast about results.
You can also have a child who's parents decided to spend their inheritance on private schooling, along with scrimping and saving to afford it, despite having little education themselves. They need extra support too.

And how do you compare a private school education, where they have 15-20 in a class, no disruptive pupils and selected so no children who really struggle, with a "good" state school with 30+ children in the class, some of whom will need help with basic literacy, some have SEN behavioural issues etc?

I support contextual offers. I support Oxbridge trying to identify people who would benefit and be academic enough, but whose exam results will be effected by their circumstances. I want to see the situation where people can be brought out of their background (as my df was) by hard work and support.
However I'm not sure it wouldn't just be something else the middle classes learn to manipulate to their advantage.
How do we identify those pupils who genuinely will benefit? Don't know!

The thing is bubbles you're talking about understanding individual students career decision making behaviour which we can't predict. If you asked these students many of them would say they didn't want to attend Oxford and this would be for a number of reasons - including feeling like people like them don't go to places like Oxford.

What we do know is that certain groups are underrepresented despite having the potential, or in some cases the actual grades, to attend and succeed at Oxford ( and other elite institutions)
This is just one of many initiatives to encourage fair access.

You seem very focused on the 25% figure.....this isn't an additional 25% and if you look at alongside the total number of university applicants you'd see that it's actually still a very small number.

We live in a crappy area due to job. Dd attended the local comp which is dire to say the least. It's in one of those categories where contextual offers are given. Gets Ofsted visits frequently. But the school is still regarded as the best oir of the worst in the area.
We get X amount of pupils that go to the oxford summer school programme. But the experience puts them off. Many of dd friends that have been come back feeling that they wont fit in . It's a different world. It's for the rich. They would stick out like a sore thumb. Too many cliquey social groups. My own dd didn't get the opportunity to go to the summer school. Never got invited. But she did apply to go to Oxford. Did the test and got above average scores. But didnt even get a interview. She was upset the time. She subsequently got 2A* 2A which was the highest for the school that year.
At uni she lived with friends who had Oxford offers that also came from crap schools like hers. She was a bit miffed that her AS grades, subjects and external test were better than some of her friends who had offers. Can only think her PS must have been of poor quality. But who knows. It's all in the past. Shes doing great now. Went to a good London uni, did post grad course too and not looked back since.

Sillybilly there must be something very wrong with the UNIQ selection process if the summer programme is full of rich cliquey social groups....

I imagine they thought the university was full of rich cliquey groups. Not that these were people on the course. It’s a perception that is very hard to shift! Going into some dining halls, quads and libraries would perpetuate this. Just look at the language used on MN when talking about people with more money or different views to the ones they have! They reject someone different!

there must be something very wrong with the UNIQ selection process if the summer programme is full of rich cliquey social groups....

Maybe it was more the environment and/or some of the people helping on it?

DD helped on an outreach course run by her college plus a couple of others last summer - more students volunteered than were needed so they were chosen with consideration of their background.

It is a chicken/egg situation. Bright children from working class backgrounds are put off Oxbridge because it dominated by people with wealth and privilege. Increasing the number of working class children will make it easier for working class children in the future, as they will feel less isolated. But that is hard to do, because bright children from working class backgrounds are put off by the wealth and privilege. And so it goes on.

This is not just bad for these children - indeed bright children will probably achieve their potential at other, equally excellent universities. It is bad for Oxford and Cambridge and it is bad for society. Oxford and Cambridge lose as they do not take the best and the brightest - because these are shoved out in favour of the average and rich whose whole lives have been tailored to get them a place, whilst brilliant working class children go elsewhere. Society loses out as social mobility stagnates and we continued to be ruled by the white male elite educated beyond their intelligence (Rees-Mogg, Cameron & Johnston come to mind here).

So who loses out? We all do. That this small effort to vaguely level the playing field is causing such alarm is deeply depressing.

@goodbye nope sorry was meant that they assumed there would be too many cliquey social groups. Basically the group that went had formed there own assumptions to the experience. I guess what I'm trying to say in essence is that the problem is that many of these kids that are being targeted and although are bright enough. Wont apply because they do think that they being poor or disadvantaged wont make it a pleasant experience. I guess solving that issue might get more to apply.

UNIQ happens out of term time and the helpers don't tend be be the very obviously rich set, quite the opposite. Possibly just the environment - but Sillybilly referenced cliques. Still, if you find the atmosphere on a UNIQ week oppressively cliquey then possibly better to go elsewhere and try your luck (because cliques are everywhere).

Sorry Sillybilly - cross post.

Still, if you find the atmosphere on a UNIQ week oppressively cliquey then possibly better to go elsewhere and try your luck (because cliques are everywhere)

Because god forbid these institutions should actually look at themselves in a mirror and consider what is putting off brilliant working class children. Must be the children's fault, not tough enough, probably not enough competitive sport, better they go elsewhere etc etc. And so the usual average but privileged children take their places and become our future leaders and that is going so well for us all, isn't it?

I so much wish my father was still alive so I could ask him what the heck it was like for him going to Oxford just before WWII. I've mentioned him before on various threads... his father walked away from a background of Durham mining to find work as a farm labourer in Yorkshire, married a teacher and got a job in a coke works - it was a matter of note that he was continuously employed throughout the 20s and 30s while his brothers became unemployed as the pits closed. My dad and his brother went to one of the grammar schools, and thence scholarships to Oxford and Manchester (both chemists).

How's that for social mobility? The factors may have included:

1. a father with enough get up and go to get up and leave 2)a mother who presumably valued education
2. an education system which at the time gave the necessary support to some bright boys (maybe a few girls.).

This was in the 1930s fgs.

(The flip side of that story is that I've no idea what became of dad's 100-odd cousins, presumably few followed similar paths)

Sorry to ramble, but this is why I'm so interested in these HE threads.

Because god forbid these institutions should actually look at themselves in a mirror and consider what is putting off brilliant working class children. Must be the children's fault, not tough enough, probably not enough competitive sport, better they go elsewhere etc etc. And so the usual average but privileged children take their places and become our future leaders and that is going so well for us all, isn't it?

That's pretty much bollocks, you know. Maybe some truth in the past but almost exactly the reverse of what they're trying to achieve now.