Epsom College Failing at Oxbridge?

[HedgehogFan]

I have a young DS at EC and have seen a considerable decline of Oxbridge offers compared to other similar Independent Schools. Does anyone know why?

Every year this debate happens.

goodbyestranger - you talk about your satisfaction about what you see as entitled people losing their entitlement, but have we not seen you in other threads talking about how you are the daughter of a Viscount?! And you yourself were educated at a London independent day school and then went off to Durham?

My sincere apologies if I’m mistaken, but I’m sure I remember you discussing this last year.

@TizerorFizz

What a superior post. Nice privately educated people without 2 heads? Why is humble good? Humble is not being confident and playing down your attributes. Not always good and often disingenuous. Anyway, you can sneer at me all you like. So what does that make you? Even with wider participation at Oxbridge, what schools are benefitting most!!

It is interesting that you see humble in terms of not being confident and playing down your attributes. That isn't how I would define it at all. It is entirely possible to be both confident and humble.

There is of course some correlation between wealth and intelligence. It would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise. However, there are lots of incredibly intelligent people living in poverty. And a lot of rather stupid rich ones. If you doubt that there are significant numbers of very intelligent children who also happen to come from disadvantaged backgrounds, then I'm afraid you are very much mistaken.

Intelligent people are not immune from bad luck. Redundancy. Illness or disability. Death of a family member. Caring responsibilities. Mental health issues. Substance abuse. Domestic violence. Growing up in care. There are so many issues that can feed into poverty.

The free market usually sorts things out. If Oxbridge reject very good people (which Oxbridge has always done whether from state and private schools) those children will tend to do fine at the next best. if Oxbridge let in people who are not up to it, haven't done all the required reading, need remedial years to keep up with better state and private pupils [ I am not saying that is so although to some extent it is] then employers will weed those people out and give jobs to those who are the best whether that best is at Durham rather than Oxbridge.

In other words it will all be fine in the end. 20% of sixth formers to go fee paying schools in the UK and I think only 10% more than that % get into Oxbridge from private schools which is about what you would expect if rich high IQ parents who spend a lot of time giving their children a good environment are in play - that that might only make a 10% difference shows the system is pretty fair.

Oh yes Palomo it is a common theme.

But no, you're not correct that my father was a viscount (big V or little V? Let's go little).

I did go to a London independent, as a direct grant pupil. You as an academic (or have I muddled you with another poster?) may have heard of it, many of those on these threads will be too young. It was an excellent scheme while it lasted. Other pupils at my school who benefited from the scheme were desperately poor. High rise London tower blocks, having to go home to put heart in the oven for their four siblings' supper while their mum - abandoned by the dad - was at work. That sort of thing. Searingly bright despite shocking, unforgettable poverty.

My father was in fact a wartime refugee and the fact that he had a foreign title counted for astonishingly little since he arrived in this country on the cusp of war as a child with only a suitcase. Lack of money (as in literally not a bean) is a great leveller. He always taught us that he felt incredibly lucky in any event (death being a great leveller of course too, which he very narrowly escaped as a child). His own father, who remained in Poland, was shot in the back of the head and dumped in a mass grave for his trouble as a resistance fighter. The rest of the family who also fought in the Home Army died variously on death marches etc. My father's uncle wasn't killed (unusually in our family) and led something called the Warsaw Uprising where the Poles were abandoned by the Allies. He did make it to the UK after a stint in Colditz but the UK government refused him any pension so he helped his wife (also titled in her own right, which was also of absolutely no use) as an upholsterer whilst also caring for their disabled son who had been born while she tried to escape from Warsaw during the Uprising. Her husband later said he couldn't give his own wife advance notice of the commencement of the Uprising since there were so many other pregnant women who wouldn't have that advantage. I think he fronted the Polish Government in Exile, which also conferred no advantage or income either for him, or the wider family (except for possibly attracting the dubious privilege of being monitored by Stalin). Anyhow, that's a very long answer to your suggestion that my family were somehow privileged pussycats.

I'm not clear why a reference to Durham is relevant, other than presumably the fact that when I was there many, many undergrads were indeed privileged pussycats. However I felt fairly lucky to manage Durham, since I went massively off the rails as a teenager - you name it, I did it - so had almost no school exams to my name. Durham is beautiful. Could have been nowhere, or certainly somewhere a lot worse. I loved Durham, still do. Maybe I got lucky with that winning streak, inherited from my dad.

And many apologies to others for that bio, which would certainly have been written had there been no post about my alleged material privilege.

*certainly not have been written (!)

Perhaps in order to bring the thread back to its original theme, I should also confess that I spent a large amount of time as a teenager in the Epsom boarding houses (Epsom was then a boys only school), which was a lot of fun. I wasn't the only girl smuggled in, there were a few of us :)

My apologies goodbyestranger. I was just wondering why you take the view you do about about parents from independent schools feeling generally entitled to Oxbridge.

In my experience, it’s true in some cases, but mostly not. Not anymore. Those days are gone.

I think I have spoken to you previously (though a while back) about the independent school mine are at (London). 25% are on bursaries. It’s not only Oxbridge that have their schemes to widen participation. It’s also happening earlier - at the school level. The school mine are at won independent school if the year and also a TES award for improving social mobility a couple of years back. Yes, there still a long way to go, obviously. But the school is a far cry from a collection of entitled toffs. My husband was a refugee. I’m non- British and grew up in a different kind of poverty to the way people think about it in the U.K. But here we are. There is such a diversity of parents (culturally and economically) and their children in the school, but nobody really cares. Perhaps a few have entitled expectations yes, but it’s definitely not the norm. It really isn’t.

Ah my apologies too Palomo, I've clearly confused you with another poster.

Yes I completely accept that there are some initiatives out there in the private sector driven by decency rather than profit.

As I am sure goodbye knows most private schools make no profits at all and are charities. About 80% of school fees goes on teachers' wages. Lost of children have financial support (not most by any means, but quite a lot - even 3 of mine - my older son paid no fees other than 15% from age 4 - 13 as his teacher taught at the school, he then had a music scholarship as did his brothers although that was much less of a discount - more like £1k off a year from £16k a year fees - something of that order) and plenty with parents not earning much have bursaries.

Advantages in life come in many forms and I see it as a moral good for a parent to do what is best for their child. Parents differ as to what that is and that is fine (within reason) in a free society.

Children don't choose private school - their parents do so if they are deliberately disadvantaged by the universities because of a decision of the parents that ends up not being very fair but there is not a vast amount of that kind of positive discrimination around yet and life isn't fair anyway - you just have to get on with it and play the hand you have been dealt.

Children don't choose private school - their parents do so if they are deliberately disadvantaged by the universities because of a decision of the parents that ends up not being very fair but there is not a vast amount of that kind of positive discrimination around yet and life isn't fair anyway

True - and I don't think it's remotely the case that private school kids are being disadvantaged by unis. Just having a bit of their advantage accounted for. As the various metrics used work by comparing against school cohorts, measures of deprivation in the area etc, they also apply to grammar school and 'leafy comp' kids.

[quote TizerorFizz]@AlexaShutUp

Oh come on! You seriously would not have wanted the roughest of schools! You didn’t want your kids mixing with the really deprived and criminal classes but you seem to think they have the ability to get to Oxbridge!

Can you not see that, by and large, people do jobs commensurate with ability and education. Many years ago I would say this wasn’t the case. Certainly pre universal grammar schools, people didn’t have opportunities. Several generations of people attending mostly decent schools, and the expansion of uni education, the deprived super bright child is not so easy to find.

Parents who were poor 50 years ago, but were bright, got decent jobs. Even if they didn’t go to university. My parents, nor my DHs parents never got near one. They didn’t need to. They were successful at work and became middle class with middle class aspirations. Their DC did go to uni. We’ve moved up the work and education ladder. People then moved out of poor areas and became middle class with aspirations. If all DC were the same in terms of distribution there would be no difference at all between Cambridge comps and Dewsbury comps! But there is. So there’s not equal distribution. There’s a reason for that. It might also explain who goes to Oxbridge and where they are from.

No doubt unpopular but I bet no one posting here has been near a deprived area school and when there is one, they have run in the other direction.[/quote]
The last paragraph of this post has really annoyed me. I spent the first four years of my teaching career in a school in an incredibly deprived part of Manchester, just 3 miles from my house,. 70+% of the school cohort was on free school meals. One kid in my y7 tutor group was the 2nd oldest of 7. The oldest became a dad at 14. The youngest 5 siblings had 4 different dads. For lots of those kids, school was their safe space. Yet I loved it. The kids were amazing once they trusted you. Had the Head not been a complete tosser, I may well have stayed there for my entire career.

Would I have sent my own kids there? It's a tricky question because they were brought up in a completely different part of the country. However, when choosing a secondary school, I rejected our "zoned" enormous comp simply because the Head was an arrogant tosser - my next door neighbour's 4 sons have all gone there and done well. I chose the school mine ended up at plus 2 other schools all of which have buses passing 1.5 miles from home. The "zoned" one's bus is a mile away. We were at the time a quarter of a mile from the boundary of all 3 catchment areas so were confident we would get our choice. I did look at the catchment school which DC's primary was part of. I went round the music department and was appalled by the standard of teaching and learning and the utter disinteredness (sorry if that's not a word) of the teacher. It's my subject and the DC are able musicians. When we have open mornings and I'm teaching, I always smile and ask if parents have any questions - it's not like open mornings come with zero notice.

Able and committed students will do well wherever provided behaviour management is good and the school is proactive in helping those with learning difficulties. I'm glad my DC went to school with people from all sorts of socio-economic backgrounds.

Children don't choose private school - their parents do so if they are deliberately disadvantaged by the universities because of a decision of the parents that ends up not being very fair

Whether the children choose the school or not (mine certainly had some input), in the main they are educationally advantaged by going to private schools. Private school = educational advantage, otherwise why would people pay for it? Who would pay to give their child a worse educational experience than one which is free?

And ffs can we please get past the idea of private school children being deliberately disadvantaged? Their privilege is taken into account. It is fairer that way. The universities want the best people and now understand that looking at the context of a student's achievements helps with that aim.

Your insinuation in a previous post that the quality of Oxbridge is going down because there are more state school students getting in is also absolute bollocks and the worst kind of shitty snobbery. Everyone still has to get extremely high grades, and that's still generally harder from the state sector. Parents need to understand that times have changed. More state school students are applying and shock horror, some of them are better candidates than the fairly good private school students who might have been given places in the past. If you don't get a place at Oxbridge, it's because the university found someone they wanted more than they wanted you.

@hopperrock

Children don't choose private school - their parents do so if they are deliberately disadvantaged by the universities because of a decision of the parents that ends up not being very fair

Whether the children choose the school or not (mine certainly had some input), in the main they are educationally advantaged by going to private schools. Private school = educational advantage, otherwise why would people pay for it? Who would pay to give their child a worse educational experience than one which is free?

And ffs can we please get past the idea of private school children being deliberately disadvantaged? Their privilege is taken into account. It is fairer that way. The universities want the best people and now understand that looking at the context of a student's achievements helps with that aim.

Your insinuation in a previous post that the quality of Oxbridge is going down because there are more state school students getting in is also absolute bollocks and the worst kind of shitty snobbery. Everyone still has to get extremely high grades, and that's still generally harder from the state sector. Parents need to understand that times have changed. More state school students are applying and shock horror, some of them are better candidates than the fairly good private school students who might have been given places in the past. If you don't get a place at Oxbridge, it's because the university found someone they wanted more than they wanted you.

You missed the end of the sentence in that quote ... but there is not a vast amount of that kind of positive discrimination around yet and life isn't fair anyway

As I am sure goodbye knows most private schools make no profits at all and are charities

Well the charitable status is well known to be dubious (but lucrative for sure) Xenia but when I wrote profit I didn't mean profit in the corporate sense, rather I meant self interest. The motives for expanding bursaries and for operating support programmes for state schools in the local area will vary massively according to the social and moral compass of the HT. No doubt the quality of each of the initiatives also mirrors the same. Plenty will be purely nominal, and barely effective.

I'm glad my DC went to school with people from all sorts of socio-economic backgrounds

Malbecfan posters on MN generally don't accept the social diversity that can exist in grammars. I've mentioned it on occasion but it always gets the same response, I assume from posters who don't actually know what is going on in grammars. I think it's fair to say that our grammar still has more better off parents than the three non selectives in the area, but it's certainly mixed in a way that independents definitely aren't.

The DC at the grammar undoubtedly all have educational privilege however, regardless of background, which is a point I've always made. This has been fully recognised by Oxford and Cambridge for as long as I can remember and if the grammar school kids have to reach a higher bar overall to get a place, then that's 100% fair and appropriate. I don't recall anyone in the grammar ever muttering bitterly about unfair bias. Presumably that wouldn't be legitimate, since we don't pay for our DCs' privilege.

Malbecfan posters on MN generally don't accept the social diversity that can exist in grammars. I would argue that there is a lot of socio-economic diversity, particularly in the super-selectives in areas attracting a lot of pupils from Asian backgrounds.

I think it’s also important to remember that Oxbridge offered significantly less places overall last year. The stats are there to be seen. Not only were there less offers to independent school applicants - but in general across all sectors. Even this year, offer ratios have been on the cautious side. I think some people are possibly confusing measures taken to mitigate against the impact of CAGs / TAGs with ‘independent school students being discriminated against.’ The fact is, offers were significantly lower across the board. Schools that have more consistent numbers of Oxbridge applicants will have noticed the impact more. For instance, at the independent mine are at, numbers were down last year, but this year are pretty much in line with pre-Covid levels, from what I hear. My DC was unsuccessful last year, but got in this year. Lots of the friends who didn’t get in last year have reapplied and been successful (in fact, all if them, I think). So I think the impact of widening participation is probably of little to no impact anyway and people are getting in a state about not much really. The last couple of years have been unprecedented and only time will tell as to the real impact of WP initiatives.

I always hesitate to join a thread like this because of the (inevitable) polarisation in a debate that is complex and has many layers.

I was a parent who actively chose a comprehensive for similar reasons outlined by Alexa and others. DS was offered a scholarship to a local private school and we could have comfortably afforded it but we both disliked the Head and DS did not like the school. So he went to the comprehensive which gave him a good all round education despite being in and out of 'Requires Improvement'. There were a lot of very good teachers there as DS had opportunities he might not have had at the highly selective private school. The debate is never that black or white - it depends on many things including crucially a good understanding of what will be a good fit for individual dc. And yes, we were lucky to have a choice, I appreciate many don't.

The problem that is hopefully now being tackled is one of increasing ambition and supporting those dc who want to apply to elite universities within certain sectors of state education. At DS school there were only 2 applicants to Oxbridge but both got offers. DS achieved 12 A GCSE and 4A A levels and is now comfortably in the top 10% of his cohort at Oxford having also scored in the top 10% of all students who took the particular aptitude test so I would argue that admissions tutors (at Oxford) know very well what they are looking for.

And yes to NewModelArmy’s point. In some ways, London schools are always going to be more ‘diverse’ than a comprehensive in the suburbs or the countryside which draws from a fixed regional catchment. Rsorcislly as catchments for most schools seem to be shrinking year on year. At DD’s independent school in West London they have 25% on bursaries, as U said. Then there are about 30 free places entering sixth form (about 180 in the year, I think) and there is a programme to target schools in some of the most disadvantaged areas to attract only these students to apply. In DD’s friend group, nobody had two British parents. In the group of about 12 of them, a few lived in Kensington or Mayfair, a few lived high in towers blocks near to the Grenfell site. There were Nigerians, Russians, Syrians, Jordanians, Italians, Indians from the full socio-economic spectrum. By and large, stark differences in their backgrounds and vultures were not an issue. A lot of the parents are not British and have no idea about Oxbridge or the process. The wealthier ex-pat types from the Middle East etc tend to have been educated in US and so they tend to be thinking along these lines for their kids. That’s a whole other process. At the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, parents barely speak or write English. DD’s friend filled in the forms for her younger sister to apply at 11 plus and the parents had no idea this was even happening. The girl got in as well. The school can be quite a socially-challenging, pressured environment in many ways and it definitely has its problems, But the cohort is far more diverse than people might think. I know this is only one particular school I keep banging on about, but all schools in this area are adopting WP measures now to some extent. They have to.

Well I’m sure the Oxbridge tutors do know what they think they are looking for, but still, far more DC who would have more than coped at Oxbridge will be rejected than those who are accepted. They won’t always get ‘the brightest,’ but they’ll get some of them. Apart from a few stand out characters, most of them will be much of a muchness. It could have gone either way for DD this year and she knows that, 10 9s and 4 A* means very little as they all have that, pretty much.

cultures not vultures! Sorry for all the typos.

@Palomo

Well I’m sure the Oxbridge tutors do know what they think they are looking for, but still, far more DC who would have more than coped at Oxbridge will be rejected than those who are accepted. They won’t always get ‘the brightest,’ but they’ll get some of them. Apart from a few stand out characters, most of them will be much of a muchness. It could have gone either way for DD this year and she knows that, 10 9s and 4 A* means very little as they all have that, pretty much.

Absolutely, I imagine most Oxbridge applicants would be in that category and we know many more who would probably also do very well but choose not to apply - either choosing universities like Imperial for STEM subjects or sadly because of the 'not for the likes of me' culture that can be a barrier at some state schools in some parts of the country. WP schemes are trying to break down those stereotypes.

Actually goodbye I was thinking more about my DC's primary school experience. I have just come back from the beach. Whilst there with my DF we met a lady wheeling a very disabled lady in a wheelchair. As we approached she shouted "hello Malbec" and I recognised her as a mum whose DD was a couple of years older than my DD1 from the primary school. Very sadly her DD has a degenerative incurable condition and the tiny primary school struggled to meet her needs, so she left. The disabled lady was her DD. I chatted to them both for a few minutes - the DD cannot speak any more but smiled when I admired the colour of her coat. She is now in her mid 20s but wasn't expected to make 18 - her mum is truly inspirational and the most positive and cheerful person you could ever meet.

When the child left school, my DDs were upset. They also knew this girl was ill and maybe wouldn't live for a long time. They helped raise money for the charity that supports families like this child's because they knew her.

By sending our children off to particular settings, we can miss out on the chances to educate them in other ways. Talking about the child who left their school opened up many questions from my DC, not only about her, but about disabled people, how they are treated, how they manage day-to-day life if their mobility is impaired and so on. It became more personal to them because of this child. Those discussions were really important.

Selective grammars may do better than selective indies, but they can't have the same socio-economic diversity as non-selective schools. That's the whole point of selection isn't it - that it's not available to everyone. Some people who live alongside the school, in the same community, are excluded.