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)

PS no need to shout

A myopic vacuous debate led by an OP quoting The Dailymail.

Apologies.

The story is also in The Times. It was the lead story on Saturday and they are determined to keep it running. It has also been in The Telegraph The establishment feel threatened, it seems, by change under the disguise of claiming to champion 'equality'.

Not sure who you are saying is vacuous.

The pandemic has broken the NHS and state education system further. It was already struggling pre-pandemic.
The top independents and grammars have come out of Covid relatively in tact (online learning was largely successful for a certain type of student on a temporary basis, bright cohorts etc, supportive stable family homes, laptops etc). From a purely economic point of view and with a 20 year view, those kids graduating from those institutions need to go to good universities to feed into the productivity chain.
Grades have been massively inflated. If kids not quite up to scratch enter competitive university courses en masse, that they either drop out of, or they are unable to be as good and productive at careers further down the line, as a group (compared to those attending the aforementioned institutions), then it might/will have an impact on the whole of society.
I am not sure it is about being threatened as a class. I think the Tories just want the easy option and are focussed on economics alone, as usual. Perhaps some big employers have had words as well. It isn’t always just self interest (aka their kids and grandkids) but about hiring the right graduates for big business.

So the education minister enters the debate. The middle class workers have traditionally carried the tax burden etc. and they just don’t want to mess with that. They know where attainment has fallen. It is all rather sad and the gap will grow because of the pandemic, sadly not the other way round.

I predict some new A-level format etc. again - to stem the cycle of grade inflation.
Oxbridge is just a symbol in all of this.

If (and it is a big if) children from less well off homes who go to Oxbridge pick lower paid work (it might be the opposite as money may be more not less important to them) then the pool for employers paying the highest pay from Oxbridge reduces a bit but probably not materially. I found some stats the other day - big law firms taking about 15% of their graduates from Oxbridge so about 7% from each of Oxford and Cambridge so about 6% Durham and 5% Bristol - in other words from a wide range of places. It will be similar for any of the top jobs too so i don't think employers have a particular hiring problem - just masses of graduates as ever many of whom are good if they have high A level grades.

So 'the right sort of student' will have his or her productivity (aka earning power?) knocked by having to attend the wrong sort of university - so for them, the outcome is mainly influenced by institution, not person.

But 'the wrong sort of student' ending up in the right sort of university won't have their productivity (aka earning power) enhanced, because for them, the outcome is mainly influenced by person, not institution...?

@Abuildingwith4wallsandtmrinsid The criticisms are aimed solely at Oxford and Cambridge, making this a load of offensive codswallop as a reason for the Government’s interference. Oxford and Cambridge do aptitude tests and interviews in addition to asking for high exam results and often also examples of students’ work, and they make the application process so much more labour intensive than any other universities that they do not tend to get applications from students who are not confident they are of sufficient calibre to be in with a chance - particularly if they are from the state sector. If Oxford or Cambridge considered this a serious problem and expected a load of useless university dropouts who would be unemployable in future as a consequence, they would be the ones saying that they would likely be accepting fewer state school students in future. Instead, we have the Government arguing with the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge for saying the opposite, and the Vice Chancellor is in a better position than the Government to know and understand the quality of the students Cambridge is currently offering places to.

As for grade inflation - private schools as a whole are far guiltier on this front in the last two years than state schools, but you don’t seem to infer from that they their students are all inadequate human beings incapable of coping with their Oxford or Cambridge degree course. Are you merely inferring they are cheats?… Maybe this is what will make them more successful in life?

”and the Vice Chancellor is in a better position than the Government to know”

Hmm, the current VC of Cambridge has resigned two years before the end of his tenure for “family reasons”. He is considered a controversial character. He is paid a huge amount of money etc. Even within the institution he isn’t that popular. I am not surprised the Government are making statements.

Fact is bright children from poor backgrounds are, in some cases, failed by the entire education system (and often also by their parents). Having a debate at elite university level about it and trying to fix it then, is far too late. The whole system needs to improve. Especially now post pandemic.

So yes, I think it is symbolic. The woke Canadian VC picking cultural war fights probably because he does feel strongly about the inequalities in British society and rightly so. However, you cannot fix it through Oxbridge entry alone.

Mmm, wonder why that would be.😁.

Hmm. More bollocks. The Vice Chancellor wasn’t talking about poor children, according to the Daily Mail article. The only minorities he referred to were private school and grammar school students. The state education sector caters for the majority of children in this country, many of who are from stable, supportive, middle class families.

Now, if you had argued, @Abuildingwith4wallsandtmrinsid , that widening participation goals is complex and that Government was merely pointing out that making sweeping statements about private and grammar school student numbers having to decrease in future was provocative and unhelpful, then fine. Instead, you made your own deeply offensive, sweeping statements about the state sector and the sort of child educated within it.

I didn’t make deeply offensive statements. My own 4 kids are in the state sector.

Toope is anti middle class - that includes leafy comprehensives etc. and grammar streams in them.

And yes, the man is being provocative fully well knowing that he has already resigned. Just read Varsity, he isn’t a popular character, lots of controversy there. I don’t think he means badly but I don’t think he really understands British politics, media, complexities properly.

In fact, I would love a purely comprehensive education system which would somehow avoid housing catchment too, with high quality well funded schooling. However, we are so far away from that in this country that it is pointless digging at independents and grammars when sought after school catchments are just as much an issue, as well as massive regional differences,

His being Canadian is clearly something you have an issue with.

@Abuildingwith4wallsandtmrinsid Your statements were deeply offensive. You basically said there had been massive grade inflation and that this only had a bad effect on non-grammar school state school students, who had been admitted en masse to the wrong universities, particularly Oxford and Cambridge, and that many wouldn’t cope, unlike students from the private sector, who had not over-reached themselves at all…

"So 'the right sort of student' will have his or her productivity (aka earning power?) knocked by having to attend the wrong sort of university - so for them, the outcome is mainly influenced by institution, not person.

But 'the wrong sort of student' ending up in the right sort of university won't have their productivity (aka earning power) enhanced, because for them, the outcome is mainly influenced by person, not institution...?"

I don't think the above is correct Also on the whole whether you go to state, state grammar or private school if you do very well at exams etc you tend to be in a better university so not surprisingly those students are the ones employers want even if they are trying to recruit "institution blind".

In today's Financial Times is a article about a female lawyer who has done very well and set up her own firm (well done to her for that) but because it is the woke left FT to its core it chooses to say she was the first in her family to university. It leaves out that she went to a private school in the South East and then Durham.

A student from a less well off background who goes to Oxbridge WILL have their earning power enhanced (unless employers go mad and discriminate against Oxbridge in the same way they might against Eton or even ultimately against grammars or people whose parents went to university) unless they make an active choice to choose lower paid graduate jobs.

No I don’t have a xenophia problem @Piggywaspushed .
Just don’t think this man was the right man for the job.

So, how is his Canadian nationality at all relevant?

However, you cannot fix it through Oxbridge entry alone

Issues with Oxbridge's hugely skewed entry stats (and other unis who do even worse) absolutely are for those institutions to address. And they have been for quite a few years now. So, why suddenly the furore? It can only be linked back to a sudden 'anti-woke' agenda.

The grade inflation amongst private schools vis a vis Oxbridge was less of an issue because those institutions were already being more “careful”/stringent about admitting private school students. The admissions statistics bear this out.

I am not sure what the situation is like amongst the Russell group - it is possible inflated grade independent students creamed the places from more capable state students there, not sure. This article refers to universities taking more students (bulge years).
schoolsweek.co.uk/ucas-university-offers-places-2021-grade-inflation/

Please explain what you mean by anti woke agenda.

I live in a county that is bordered on one side by Oxfordshire and the other by Cambridgeshire. Purely based on location you would think that large numbers of children were going to Oxbridge from here, but I’m only aware of one from any of my towns high schools in recent years.

We have large pockets of deprivation amongst smaller wealthier areas and large numbers on FSM. It’s good to know that we’re gaming the system by buying the only house in our budget in a deprived postcode, obviously not enough people know about that though as otherwise we wouldn’t also be quintile 4. My DD has spent 7 years in a school that has never had a higher ofsted rating than RI and I’m beyond proud of her contextual offer for September. Don’t worry, it’s not for Oxbridge!

We obviously played the long game by not going to uni ourselves and are in crappy low paid jobs so she’ll get the full maintenance loan.

DS in year 10 is actually off to Oxford this week as part of this scheme www.ox.ac.uk/oxfordforEM/NextGen I should probably cancel it though so as not to disadvantage some poor private school child who doesn’t get any of the advantages that he does...

The right wing press and government trying to stamp on any thing that seems a bit enlightened or anti-establishment? It's pretty obvious if one sees the Telegraph, Times, Mail. The modern 'political correctness gone mad'. Zahawi is obediently pandering to this.

Please explain why a Canadian nationality is relevant.

Well done to your DCs!

Interesting one of the sixth forms lauded for its entry on the list provided is Hills Road which is in Cambridge. Student , therefore, are not intimidated. It's also a bit disingenuous as lots of those students are children of Cambridge dons. The students also get a lot of input from the university and quite a few of their teachers attended it.

But the uptake to Cambridge from eg Bedfordshire is a bit better than similar counties demographically, so geography does play a part.