This year's university places for dc at private school - what's the reality been?

[Thedogisdrivingmemad]

I'm reading and hearing lots of anecdotal information suggesting it's got much tougher for private school pupils to get top university offers. Things like "hardly anyone at dd's [private] school got an offer for Durham this year".
If you have dc at private school who've just left year 13, how has it been for your dc and their friends?

St Paul's obviously had an exceptionally talented year group in 2021. Again, no 2022 results on website.

Not sure a comment is needed.

@mumsneedwine - St Paul's Boys have achieved something like 95% A star /A this year at A-level (something like 65% A star). Haven't seen the stats for the girls school but it will probably be higher.

Godolphin and Latymer also got over 90% A star / A and (I think) their best ever results in the IB.

Latymer Upper has achieved about 83% A star / A and a record-breaking number of A stars this year (I think about 50% of all grades were A star there).

I haven't looked at other schools as I only really know these ones, but I bet Westminster, Kings Wimbledon etc will be similar.

What that shows is that private schools inflated their grades by 12%, state by 7% under TAGs!

NLCS (where one of mine went) which has often been in the top 3 of all schools state and private, over the years had a dreadful TAG over estimation which should never have been allowed through and the Head left. It will remain like the London super selective grammars a school with high A level grades however as it is very competitive to get in and a good school. I do think because of its over estimation by such a degree it is an outlier in the debate.

2022 was a year of easier A level grades and the staging post down to the 2019 levels when the A levels were harder and fewer higher grades as to be fair due to covid the authorities are moving people back to the 2019 levels of hardness in a staged process. So 2022 in a sense is a bit of an outlier year too which may account for selective private schools (and I assume super selective grammar schools) doing better this year with real exams than under TAGs.

All pupils can do is cope with the situation in which they are year by year with whatever the challenges are. I think my 5 graduate children benefited from AS levels in Lower Sixth because some of them had a few subjects they did not really like at GCSE French or sciences so by lower sixth they could bag high grade AS levels which were on the UCAS form. That has now gone.

Also my older daughter did the same degree at Bristol as one of my twins about 14 years later but the state had allowed by the time the twin did it much higher numbers where people had AAB or higher as long as there was space in the lecture halls and Halls. There were doulbe the numbers compared with 14 years before on the identical course therefore in my view it was probably easier for the twin to get in than his older sister but again you can only go by the situation you are in. It must be very hard for employers to do comparisons eg a 2019 A level pupil v a TAG grade one v a 2022 easier A levels but real exams one and 2023 back to normal one.

The relative of ours from the North (fee paying school) who thought one A level had not gone well got the grades for Oxbridge by the way so that was a huge relief but I have no statistics from that school to know if this year were worse than last or anything like that.

At the London super-selective mine were at, they are also saying they have had a "record year" for A*. I think about 20 have got into Oxbridge (this is out of 200). On the website it also says another 20 have got into "competitive medicine courses." It says 88% got into their first choice uni. And then something about over 80 offers have been made from "highly competitive US institutions" and loads are going there with all manner of scholarships. This seems to be a growing trend in recent years. This school has a quite international cohort though.

Levelling the playing field is not unfair. It’s not “much harder” for private school students given all the advantages they get given

@sevenwonder that's great, but why haven't they published them ?

Oops pressed post before I added my comment.

Privately educated young people are not being disadvantaged, discriminated against or any other the things threads like these hope to prove.

Levelling the playing field is a good thing.

@Xenia not blaming the pupils at all. They are all very bright girls and some would have deserved those grades. Was just a bit of a kick in the face to the schools that didn't fiddle the figures and played fair.

@mumsneedwine - the schools I mentioned have published their headline figures. As they always do. It's in "News" on the respective websites. They will no doubt publish a breakdown of subjects next week (sometimes they wait for remarks). LU have already published a breakdown, I think? Haven't checked G&L or other schools.

I do however agree with Xenia's point that lower grade boundaries this year may well be impacting the "record number of A star" headlines at super-selectives. These students have probably had an unfair advantage in this respect because their education was less disrupted.

I have graduating kids in both a London "super selective" indie and a local state this year. Our experience is that the indie kids were very much set on various U of L schools, Durham, Bristol, St Andrew, Edinburgh and obviously Oxbridge. In previous years many would have had say three offers from that collection when they had As/A* predictions. This year many had none.however for the top kids at my DS' state school it was exactly the same story. Much of that was down to these collection of schools being massively oversubscribed last year as no one failed to get their predictions, plus more 18 year olds, plus those unis choosing to reduce UK student numbers as UK fees not sufficient. (What was frustrating is the one or two parents at the indies blaming their kids failiures at Oxbridge applications on the fact state applicants were preferred when we knew plenty of devastated state applicants as well.)

Unless you come from a school or background which qualifies for contextual offers from where I sit (eg totally non expert based on my small community) it has made no difference if you are at an indie or state. I would add though that the indie was more generous on the predictions, the state was SO much stricter and underestimated for a lot of kids. But that could be those particular schools.

so lesson is if you are wondering whether to take your kid OUT of an indie for sixth form where they are happy already and you can afford to keep them, if it was me, I certainly wouldn't bother if it was done for hopes of finding an easier route to the top top unis

That's a fascinating set of results, mumsneed, even more interesting when you compare to the 2019 exam results.

Some departments look like their CAGs are actually reasonable, e.g. French or music, but other departments are clearly shockingly different. Maths would find it exceptionally hard to justify the change between 2019 and 2021. That said, 2019 did seem to be a particularly low-achieving year compared to previous years.

This is it. I have friends in SLT at a number of private schools; all said they were stuck between a rock and a hard place with pushy parents demanding high predicted grades when it was based on teacher predictions and they felt unable to be as honest as they should have been at fear of folding as many had lots of parents demanding reductions in fees too. So they over predicted to keep parents happy, knowing that they’d only be investigated if it was above a certain level of inflation on previous year’s grades. I can’t remember the exact level but it was high enough that they took a calculated risk to err on the bear case scenarios / likely better than best case for the last several year’s students on the assumption they wouldn’t be challenged as their stats are usually good. They were proved right, meaning lots of average private school kids took places from state school kids with accurate predicted grades and unsurprisingly lots of those students then struggled on courses and at unis they were never actually good enough for, damaging their confidence too. No fear of going under due to withheld fees at state schools, no inflated grades, those students performing similarly now compared to the ‘drop’ in performance at private schools.

can’t say I have much sympathy, although I do feel for the kids told they were cleverer than they were and then left high and dry. Absolutely agree with the pp who said levelling the playing field is a good thing, even though that absolutely means some average private school pupils will have to go to average unis; the horror.

Hahaha this is hilarious

@sevenwonder they are not on their websites. I've looked as I'm nosey. Neither NCLS or St Paul's have anything about 2022 results at all. Not under News or exam results. Just guff about what a great set of results.

mumsnedwine - keep looking! It's where I got the info from. It's not necessarily the first news item, they may have published some other items on Friday about sports or whatever. Scroll along. It is published in the G&L news and the SPS news and the LU news has a whole write-up as it always does. Those are the schools I had a look at (out if noseyness).

Well if it’s not the most recent news item on Sunday when they came out on Thursday that looks incredibly like they’re trying to bury the details.

@MummySaidBeKindAlways it is a brilliant school. Just didn't need to have such inflated results last year. Although the fact some (& it was only some) private schools did this meant some Unis have expanded WP schemes as they could see the total unfairness.
Being at a private school will never confer anyone any disadvantage. If it did, people wouldn't pay all that money. All that's happening is that unis are acknowledging some students have not had the same massive advantages in life and have still managed to get great grades. I love the assumption that all state school students get contextual offers. V v few get any kind of special consideration at all.

Yes - NLCS last year is certainly not indicative of all top private schools grading approach last year and the head left, seemingly as a direct consequence.

We cannot say "all private schools overgraded" just because NLCS did and the consistency at some of the other highly selective schools between this year and last supports the idea that plenty of the latter group did not drastically over-grade.

@Thedogisdrivingmemad think I made it v clear it was some. Quite a few some though. And should not have happened- integrity was something I would have expected from those schools.

It's always exactly the same every year @mumsneedwine . They post their headline figures in "News" on the day results are out. Then, a few days later, the full breakdown appears in the relevant section of the website. But if they win a sporting event or whatever in the meantime, of course that will also be posted. Why would it not be? News is posted at least daily, It's not 'burying' anything. The results are all there in plain sight (or will be very soon) for anyone to see. I don't have kids at SPS - no vested interest here - but I had a look out of nosiness (and a few others as well).

Hebe that is a really interesting insight. Everyone is so quick to say "mine didn't get many offers because they're at private school"...great to have a direct comparison to suggest it's not as simple as that.

Maybe kids getting fewer offers than in the past is being portrayed as private school offers getting fewer offers than state school kids.

There are stats for the last few years on state vs private entry to Oxbridge and specific schools numbers for Oxbridge and there is a noticeable decline at many of the super-selectives.

I am not saying that is a bad thing before anyone jumps on that - just stating fact.