Nadim wading into Oxbrdige entrance debate

[mids2019]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10793175/Thinktank-Oxbridge-discriminating-against-grammar-schools-unfairly-impact-black-pupils.html

DM article here so maybe a bit of bias and the article is a little confused.

I get the impression that our new education Secretary (who is a big fan of grammar schools) has started to notice the diversity policies explicitly stated by Oxbridge in its attempts to take in students from comprehensives/deprived backgrounds.

I noted his dislike of discrimination of any form and I am taking this as a warning to top universities not to engage in activity which may be perceived as positive discrimination.

I understand that if grammar schools seem to be a link to allowing ethnic minorities to gain Oxbrdige places this is a good thing however it would seem not many from grammar schools are truly deprived socially so the situation is complex.

Do you think the government should be involving itself with this vexed issue of leaving to HE leaders.

(I think Nadim's inbox maybe overflowing with a mail's from concerned grammar/independent school parents whose children may not have got their university of choice)

@cantkeepawayforever
Taking grades in context of school tells you something but not everything. It tells you nothing about tutoring by parents for example. I appreciate not everyone from Oxbridge or other top class lives in an affluent area so their DC can easily outstrip the other DC by virtue of inherited intelligence and help from very involved intelligent parents. These DC would be in a grammar school if there was one. No one can ever assume that all DC in “poor” areas are all helpless and not helped. It simply isn’t the case. So choosing schools where attainment is overall low does look at all the advantages a child might actually have. It can be far greater than a DC with no help from parents in a leafy lane area.,

@poetryandwine
I can see from a financial point of view, overseas student recruitment is desirable. As I said earlier. DD was told there was a quota which was then greatly exceeded.

@TizerorFizz I didn’t mind having separate targets. I did mind admitting unqualified applicants - the whole School Admissions Team did. A couple of years we tracked their progress and degree classifications and their outcomes were rather poor, as you might expect. We hated feeling exploitative but our hand was forced

PS Eventually Central Admissions came to our support - maintaining The Brand & all of that

@TizerorFizz - no system will ever tell you everything. Trying to take into account as much as possible is preferable to the old system, however, of strongly favouring students who had benefited from all of supportive parenting, excellent education, and wealth growing up. Few parents will go so far in trying to hide their willingness and ability to support and push their children forward as to deliberately buy a home in a rough area, send their children to a low-achieving school, and pretend they didn’t go to university themselves. The accusations about “leafy comps” would not exist, after all, if such parents actually believed that tutoring would be enough to make up for sending their children to a school with poor exam results, as there would be tonnes of middle class parents trying to get their kids into failing schools with more FSM children in them if that were genuinely the case.

I do think employers need to be certain they can trust a qualification. I think a “brand” is worth preserving.

I also find it odd that a pp thinks that because a school doesn’t offer FM it might have a lot of other issues. I don’t think this follows at all. It just might have few very good mathematicians. My local school doesn’t offer FM at A level. My neighbour’s DC who went there did his FM at the local grammar. They worked together. He did a maths degree. Funding isn’t great here but the grammar would say the same. The grammar has lots doing FM. They don’t have better facilities for science either. However they have more who are good at science. Several neighbours have had DC go to the non grammar and all of them have gone to better (RG) universities than the DC crammed for the grammars who have all had issues and low A level results. Despite what most people would think of every advantage in life. It doesn’t always work out that a school with FM suits all its pupils. Or is a better choice.

The government was offering a £25,000 golden hello for good maths grads to be teachers. A house deposit. My friends’ DS got this. Is this still available?

@Walkaround

Some poor school catchment areas are rather nice. You simply don’t understand that where one parent works and the other is a Stay at
home mum/dad these exact choices are made. They back themselves to do the work. They don’t hide their education but they don’t move to get the leafy lane schools either.

The majority of parents don’t think they will coach their DC into Oxford so do seek out better schools in the belief intelligence rubs off. Those who are fairly certain of their abilities, eg in Maths, will not worry so much.

I do think employers need to be certain they can trust a qualification. I think a “brand” is worth preserving.

State school students have proven they achieve just as well, if not better, than their private counterparts. How would this diminish the brand?

I would say that admitting a wider variety of students, from a wider variety of backgrounds, and getting the same or better outcomes is enhancing the Oxbridge brand, tbh.

Surely it enhances a university's reputation as an educational institution that they can take able students from any background and get them to the same final standards, rather than any accusation they are relying on the relative privilege of their students' previous education?

That said, if any institution is admitting less well qualified overseas students purely because of their higher fees, and to the detriment of better qualified home students, that's a wholly different proposition.

I can't see why taking a child's grades in the context of cohort averages (as well as taking into account e.g. FSM) is sop wrong?

We all understood why this was a bad idea when Gavin Williamson as Education Secretary tried to hold down grade inflation during lockdown using this line of reasoning.

The same standards of respecting young people as individuals should apply.

@TizerorFizz - if the catchment area is “nice” then that counts against you due to postcode. And if lots of parents in a school in a “nice” catchment are tutoring their children and home tutoring is such an advantage, then the results at that school will actually be pretty good, won’t they, so no children will be advantaged by going to the school, they will just be making the teaching look better than it really is…

Taking grades in context of school tells you something but not everything.

Of course. I did not at any point say that it was the whole answer. It can be useful, as part of a package of measures, in redressing some of the systemic historic issues in Oxbridge admissions that have led to certain groups being over-represented in the intake.

@walkaround there are not enough “top” university places to go round. We find ourselves in a situation where almost 50% of grades are A/A star. Then a further proportion of Bs are deemed as good as As for contextual reasons. It is no wonder that parents from ALL sectors (comp/grammar/private) are starting to feel like university admissions are a lottery and resentment is growing. I find it quite sad that being supportive of your kids and doing everything you can to help them succeed in academic life is now seen as an unfair advantage that needs to be penalised in some way.

💯@Igglepigglesblankie

And sorry, @TizerorFizz , but I don’t buy the idea that stay at home mothers are coaching their children to get into Cambridge to read maths or Natural Sciences. They may well be helping push their children to get into grammar schools, or to get scholarships to private schools, or appealing to get them into better secondary comprehensives, but I do not believe there is an army of SAHMs doing high powered home education with their kids whilst simultaneously sending them to sink schools so that they can advantage themselves in the Oxbridge application process.

I find it quite sad that being supportive of your kids and doing everything you can to help them succeed in academic life is now seen as an unfair advantage that needs to be penalised in some way.

This is incredibly bitter.

Please accept that there are parents out there that cannot support their children through the university system. They cannot support a child through school or help them achieve, because the parents don't know how. Contextual offers make the situation fairer for disadvantaged students.

@Igglepigglesblankie - except we have already debunked the idea that Oxbridge will accept a grade B, or inadequate achievement in their aptitude tests, or an absolutely dire interview. If you read the OP, this thread is talking specifically about Oxford and Cambridge.

The same standards of respecting young people as individuals should apply.

Well, yes, but I am not quite sure how using these measures to give prospective students an interview who might (without the application of any nuance) fall 'below the grades cut off' is not respecting a young person as an individual? Isn't it in fact looking at students very much as individuals, with backgrounds and challenges and individual circumstances?

It isn't as if they are then just given places. They go through the same interview processes, and are required to get the same A-level grades. All that it does is give some weight to individual circumstances, allowing some individual students to go and make a case for their admission who might otherwise not be able to do so?

Looking at the criteria for the foundation course is quite instructive, because it gives a small window into the range of types of event / circumstance that a young person might have faced in their lives and that the university might then take into account.

[I think your criticism is more fairly applied to universities that give lower contextualised offers to all students who apply from some schools - especially as that list of schools seems to include many which are not in the least 'deprived' (Bristol). I don't think it's a fair criticism of the process of deciding which Oxbridge applicants to interview]

Sorry, should say - that last criticism ONLY applies where the list of schools is bizarrely large. I do think that carefully-targeted contextual offers are entirely legitimate, based on e.g. postcode and school attended, FSM, PP, care leavers etc.

I find it quite sad that being supportive of your kids and doing everything you can to help them succeed in academic life is now seen as an unfair advantage that needs to be penalised in some way.

Is what you mean 'buying a private education no longer seems to guarantee the place at Oxbridge that you wanted?'

Or is it just the very human reaction that we perceive the redressing of the balance as 'depriving us of something' when we (and I would include myself - white, middle class Oxbridge child of Oxbridge-educated parents who was at a private school on a scholarship) have always been the beneficiaries of a systemically unfair process? The problem is that, if we want Oxbridge admission to be fairer, but the universities to remain fairly static in size, then the historically advantaged will have to lose some of their advantage. It doesn't in any way equate to the degree of systematic disadvantage some applicants have had over very many years, but it is a very human reaction to feel hurt.

@Walkaround
Define a “sink” school? Many DC go to average schools that from time to time might face challenges. Few schools are poor year after year after year. They are absolutely not all in poor areas either. I could point to the sad history of schools a few miles from me who are in decent areas. They don’t attract enough good teachers. They are not well run for long enough. It’s not money that’s the big issue. It’s that they are not great places to work or be educated in. There are many very good schools serving poorer areas. Parents often choose a school based on previous results. The school doesn’t always stay at the same level of quality and some dip very quickly.

I do know lots of highly educated people who live in poorer areas. As I said, only one parent works and they have a view that they don’t want to spend money on housing. They support their local school. It’s not like poorer areas are no go areas or unsuitable for clever people.

I don’t think just by virtue of using private you can expect Oxbridge

but as a user of both I’d not like artificial barriers in either system - so far state comp is doing well at support and no barriers (if it doesn’t happen for whatever reason I won’t feel it was unfair)

I hope the same for private eg for an academic child it feels fair

@TizerorFizz - so what’s your problem, then, if local schools go up and down? The contextual data will also therefore go up and down, and if your child’s school is in a down phase, you will “benefit” from that contextually. The school would have to have been down for years to genuinely disadvantage your child, and if it has been down for years, then you will benefit from the contextual data. If it has not been down for years, then your child has not been consistently disadvantaged - no more than any other school, since you think they all fluctuate, anyway.

It’s this up and down-ness that pushier parents are trying to avoid by aiming for grammar schools and private schools. So, is your woe is me that there is any contextualisation at all, or that there is still not enough?! Are you wanting to count working parents as a disadvantaged group, because they don’t have as much time to focus on their children as SAHPs?

@Walkaround
Thets not true about a child only being disadvantaged because a school is consistently poor. Everyone else would say inability to secure good teaching for say, years 11 and 12 is a big disadvantage and can happen in some subjects. The school won’t have an Ofsted but the DC are disadvantaged in those subjects unless parents are bright or they find a tutor.

I don’t think you understand how schools can fluctuate and it’s not all black and white. A child at what looks like a good school can suddenly find they have crap teaching. No teacher qualified in maths. A stream of supply teachers. You seem to think issues are only in deprived areas. This isn’t true and other DC have disadvantage too but it looks different. I would prefer a far more nuanced approach.

I would prefer a far more nuanced approach.

What would that look like? DD and her cohort were asked to fill in a questionnaire about lockdown learning and disruption to her schooling as part of her application process, for example. I don't know to what extent that was triangulated against other applicants from the same school, or indeed with the school itself.

Would you envisage something like that?