To think universities should state separate entry criteria for Indies?

[Wacamole]

DD who is on track for 3A*s at A’level, thought she’d give Oxbridge a go after being encouraged by her teachers. All very excited, doing super curriculars etc. Only just been told she doesn’t meet minimum entry criteria that would be expected from an Indy, which is straight 9s. She doesn’t have straight 9s, she has straight 8s (couple of nines), not only that, the course she wanted to apply for at Cambridge doesn’t require Maths at all, but school has advised they won’t even look at her if she doesn’t do Maths AND Further Maths. She is doing neither. Apparently an EPQ is also mandatory even though none of this is mentioned on Cambridge website.

All this second guessing, reading between the lines has been really confusing.
I have no issue with universities asking for higher entry criteria for students from indies for obvious reasons but wish they would be more transparent and state this on their ‘Entry requirements’ same way they state contextual offers?

It would be very interesting to know what percentage of state school kids who get into Oxbridge have benefitted from private tuition for their GCSEs and received contextualised offers on the basis of their glue-stick dodging (and hurling!) skills.

CJB you should know that Oxbridge don't give contextualised offers. DD had to achieve exactly the same minimum A level grades as every other offer holder for PPE.

DD never had any tutoring throughout her school life. She had a very difficult final 3 months before her GCSEs, as there were two suicides in the school community, but the staff did everything possible to support the year 11s. They got their best set of GCSE results a few weeks later.

She's in an area where less than 1/3 of students get 5 GCSEs and maths & English at GCSE. She was only in put into sets for maths, English, MFL & science. Every other subject was taught in completely mixed ability groups. GCSE grades for the top sets for maths etc ranged from grade 6 upwards. If you were in sets 3-9 it was assumed that you would take maths & double science at foundation level.

She was in an "aspirations" group throughout secondary school. They went to visit Teddy Hall in year 10 and it was aimed at encouraging students to consider university applications carefully. The inspirational speaker at their GCSE awards evening after GCSEs was studying English at Reading. You can probably count the number of students from her secondary school who have ended up at Oxford or Cambridge on both hands. They have 1 medic, 2 at Durham & 1 at Imperial from her year group.

By contextualised offers, I was thinking of the way that GCSE grades are converted to a score based on your performance relative to your peers at GCSE? Is that not what a contextualised offer is? (That's me asking, not making putting a question mark on the end of something I believe to be correct_

On a side note, we could easily have tutored her ourselves, paid for tutors or paid for private education. However, she's achieved what she's achieved so far without any of that.

It's a shame this independence cannot be made more explicit on UCAS forms

You're using completely the wrong terminology, which perpetuates the myths about state school students at Oxbridge. DD received contextualised offers from York & Durham where they dropped their standard A*AA offers to ABB. Oxford and Cambridge may look at factors such as relative GCSE performance, POLAR & FSM status to give them a clearer picture of an applicant's relative achievement, but they do not reduce their offers accordingly.

What do you mean by independence?

so contextualised, means "reduced" because of circumstances. Thank you. I knew that didn't happen, just wrong terminology as you say

(But I did come from the 2 EE's oxbridge offer generation!)

Oxford & Cambridge use the background information to help decide if someone should be invited to interview despite a lack of straight grade 9s and A* predictions. She did very well in the TSA, which helped, but they wouldn't have given her the time of day if she had applied with her GCSE results from a top indie or selective school.

@goodbyestranger

That makes sense. Curious heads are anti grammar when originally grammar schools were meant to be engines of social mobility........

@CinnamonJellyBeans

Interesting point about tutoring. Do you think the amount of tutoring a child receives should be taken into account with uni applications? (Hard to regulate I imagine). I don't know to what extent tutoring changes grades but it must have some effect of there wouldn't be an industry.....

mids2019 yes quite. It's fair to say that the tutoring culture hasn't helped grammars which have probably been a little slow to react adequately to the dilution of their original purpose. I think the remaining grammars were in denial for quite a while.

Some independent schools such as SPGS ask for a declaration re. tutoring on their 11+ application form.

Unfortunately grammars are very limited as to how they can select. A large amount of discretion has been removed, which is a shame. This is a critical difference between selection for grammar and selection for Oxbridge - the lack of autonomy, which means lack of contextualisation, in effect.

@Hoghgyni: Relatively independent learning outside of school hours, rather than an an expert coaching you through making connections and recall.

@mids2019: As you say, it would be impossible to regulate or assess the amount of private tuition a student has had. It's not the tuition itself, as we cannot be sure the value-added benefits it confers, or of it is being used to make up a gap in school staffing or knowledge. However, it's prohibitive cost makes it unavailable to many students.

@goodbyestranger: i wonder how honest people are with their responses?

Well they're told that if the response is found to not be completely accurate, the place at SPGS can be withdrawn at any stage. So that must wobble a few parents.

I like that!

Relatively independent learning outside of school hours, rather than an an expert coaching you through making connections and recall.

I wouldn't say she did any. She's clever, she comes from an academic family, she played tennis 4 or 5 nights a week and was taught by good teachers who were able to differentiate for the different skills and ability in their classes.

@goodbyestranger

Even if tutoring is filling in educational shortcomings could you not argue there is still an advantage relative to the student class cohort.

I agree that it would be difficult to determine precisely what is added through tuition in terms of grade increase but we do have a 2 billion pound industry here so it does suggest a belief there is a benefit.

If from the original post there should be separated tariffs for independent schooling are we missing something not considering tuition?

Hundreds of students use tutors for their Oxbridge applications.

www.admissionstutors.com/oxbridge

Oxbridge offers are not contextualised but the threshold number of GCSEs and Admission test results are contextualised by school type.

More fool them MidLifeCrisis.

School type is also a bit of a blunt instrument. As we see above, a very bright child with parents who are also bright and could have tutored themselves, got very reduced offers from everywhere and possibly didn’t have to do as well as her peers in other schools . Did she need that? Was she truly disadvantaged? I am not being rude, but no. It was just school attended. Which didn’t let her down if she didn’t need tutoring!

This is the huge problem we have in this country. So many initiatives don’t have the result they should have. The DD above would have got to Oxbridge anyway. I don’t entirely agree a full house of 9s is required.

The Sutton Trust is far more targeted. Like Sure Start, MC parents living in less desirable areas get the advantages. The ones who the interventions should help are often bystanders.

Our observation of tutoring is that it was as prevalent in the top set as in the bottom. Oxbridge entry is based on fine margins, and some prefer not to leave it to chance.

A lot of other countries rely on "class placement" to determine University entry. This is true in America where GPA, and maintaining a consistent record of top marks, is extremely important, but the same is true elsewhere. I used to know a lovely Russian mother who used question me in her attempt to understand the British education system. Her bright twelve year old was in top sets, but she worried. The school limited its information to whether performance exceeded, met or fell below expectations. How did she know what subjects to tutor in. It turned out he was already being tutored in 7 subjects as she was under the impression he needed to come top of the class across the board. Similarly two from East Asia struggled at Cambridge. It turned out that one, a friend of DS's, rather than return home had spent each Christmas and Easter at a residential tutorial college. Both had been serious high fliers at school, but in retrospect were seemingly performing to the top of their ability. Perhaps better to go to a "lesser" university with something left in the tank, and an intact academic curiosity and enjoyment of education.

mids2019 my hunch is that the tutoring industry gets most of its business from those in the independent sector anyway. I personally would be supremely wary of the vast majority of 'tutors'.

Tutoring is overrated imo

I’m glad we didn’t do it in state or private sector