Durham - deeply disappointed child - any admissions insight

[albertandlilylight]

First choice university by a mile and really really wants to go there and college system would suit very well. 43 (IB) in predicted grades, am told by school very good school reference and personal statement. However, got an offer for a course did not apply for and for which has no interest. Don't understand at all. Worked so hard all the way through school, told hard work rewards and then this. Anyone got any insight to how Durham are offering and is there anything that can be done from here?

Durham has lowest state school intake of any UK university
February 24, 2022
By Waseem Mohamed and Daniel Hodgson

New statistics show that Durham Universityadmitted the lowest proportion of state-educated students in the 2020/21 academic year, compared to any other UK university.

Just 61.6% of the new cohort, who began their studies in the academic year 2020/21, was state-educated. This is significantly lower than the UK average, which shows that 90.2% of university attendees came from a state school or college.

Durham University responded by saying that they focus more heavily on increasing entrant numbers from postcodes with the lowest levels of participation in Higher Education, and as such admitted that they “do not set a target for state school entrants”.

Not a huge surprise @Parker231 .... but I'm out of date with this kind of stuff (thank god).

I wonder how Durham's stats for % intake from postcodes with low levels of participation in HE compare with other unis. I would be surprised if they were leading the way in this.

Oh I found that info: 7.6% from low participation neighbourhoods for Durham. Comparing with other northern universities (as I think distance from home tends to be a factor and the south tends to have fewer of the lowest POLAR4 postcodes), they are worse than everywhere except RNCM. Lancaster, York, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield and Nottingham all do better.

Or better than anywhere depending on how you look at it. If the best gtaught, brightest children are from families paying school fees who put education top and probably went to good schools themselves then you would expect one of the UK's best universities -Durham to take a high portion of children from those kinds of very academic private schools.

What about bright children whose parents can’t afford private school fees and instead attended a poorly performing state school?

Oh, not this bollocks again that people who send their children to state school care less about them. Stop that xenia. It's massively insulting.

What about people who could afford private fees but choose to send their kids to state school? How can people not compute that we exist?

It would be really interesting to see progress - entrance grades vs exit degree class - for students from eg private schools vs low participation postcodes.

Iirc the stats already show that students with the same A level grades in entry from state schools do better at university than those from private schools, but it would be really interesting to see whether ‘WP’ students - however they are defined - make the same, better or worse progress than ‘privately schooled’ students.

God in heaven, hold me back!

I can't even respond to this. If I start I'll fucking explode.

That would indeed be interesting.

Which is why I’m such a big supporter of cv blind recruitment where the school and Uni attended aren’t disclosed in the application process - it’s irrelevant!

I care deeply about my DD’s education as I had a crap one (low expectations in a comp and a few dedicated teachers but many leaving due to coping with the teen mums, bullying and drug crime) and my father that left school at 14 as his parents couldn’t afford the grammar school blazer and 2 years of extra education.

I see WP as a mechanism that now can avoid multi-generational journeys. I had got to University much against the odds, no WP then. I turned down top unis due to not being able to afford the travel costs. Neither of my parents had been in education beyond 15. That wasn’t accounted for in applications in my day. I knew no one except my teachers who had been beyond sixth form.

I went to a good university but not what might be seen as RG now. I remember first term being convinced I was in the wrong place. I had to work so hard to keep up. I did so much work when others were partying away, I was working ten to twenty hours a week to keep financially afloat. My parents had been sent a letter that whilst I had a small grant they needed to top it up but by which time my Dad had dementia and my mother other interests. I never got the top up and student loans didn’t exist.

Next generation DD has an offer from her dream college. I just wish I could tell my father who had to take a job at 14 rather than his well earned place at grammar school that his granddaughter has something that - had things been different - he could have experienced. That is what WP is about, avoiding it being two generations later. Quite rightly my DD doesn’t qualify as my father did the groundwork and I got a good job and live in a nice area but people like my father should they be living now are absolutely the ones that should be benefiting.

I think this would have to be very sensitively measured.

When someone starts Uni from a difficult background those difficulties don’t disappear in fact they might even escalate such as money pressures / need to work or issues / worries back at home if a parent has a disability mental or physical for instance.

Sometimes a parentified child with minimal parental support and/or a traumatic / deprived home life excels at school as a distraction or a way to elicit the recognition missing at home. Often even though they may leave the home for Uni they may take the responsibilities for the home with them.

I think in cv blind recruitment you gave to be very careful that you aren’t instead selecting on proxy measures - confidence; accent and standard English; body language etc - that are potentially a function of schooling / university rather than a demonstration of fit for the job.

In the world of music, totally blind recruitment (individual performer playing behind a screen) is an interesting attempt to remove as much as possible if this, but still eg ability to afford a better instrument must still be a confounding factor.

Agree with everything here.

It is certainly very hard to be fair to everyone as the example of someone able to afford a better instrument (music) above and then CV blind graduate recruitment but someone speaks a certain way eg I think at the BBC for a time people used to put on very local accents they never had because that was the way to progress.

I have always favoured the stellar person doing very well in the context of a very poor school being seen as remarkable and getting extra consideration for university but we just need to ensure we do not use too blunt an instrument. We also don't want to get like China in the cultural revolution where anyone of the elite had their children sent to be road sweepers in the countryside to get rid of privilege - it didn't work and it wasn't fair on those children.

@Xenia spare us the ludicrous hyperbole please. This is supposed to be a serious thread. Your views can't possibly be for real.

I think it is patronisingly easy to talk about a few ‘stellar students in a very poor school’ as being deserving of excellent university places alongside the privately educated offspring of the wealthy - shades of the assisted place scheme or, further back, notions of the ‘deserving poor’ and Tudor era Oxford scholars taking along a poor boy from the sane parish to study alongside them but also carry their books and act as a servant.

It is much more challenging- but necessary if our universities are genuinely to take the best students in terms of ability - to acknowledge that very good students from average state schools may also be more deserving (as fundamentally more able) than similarly qualified students from high performing private schools.

I think much of what we see in places like Mumsnet exemplifies the prejudices and discrimination in our education system.

People who chose to send their children to private schools do so because they feel it buys them privilege and places them ahead of others. In simple terms that is the reason for doing so - to buy an advantage.

many people chose not to do this as they feel it is wrong. Even more people have no choice as they can’t afford it - even with the “sacrifices “ often talked about here.

As I’ve mentioned upthread there are two elements to working towards a more equality in our higher education system.

One is of course widening participation / contextual offers which has been discussed far more eloquently by others.

The other is the reality of a situation like Durham with its 40% private schooo intake. It would be interesting to see the % of grammar vs comps broken down in the state school figures. This really high % serves to actively put off some state school pupils from applying - if you look at an institution and cannot see it reflecting the experiences of people like yourself then that will put many people off from applying and conversely favour the more privileged groups. So achieving higher education institutions which properly reflect our society is more then just contextual offers.

This conversation was specifically about Durham - my dd - state school - is desperate to go there so I’m not slagging the Uni off but there are some serious areas / concerns it needs to address more robustly then it has preciously.

This gives a good idea of how disproportionate the intake is in some departments:

https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/student.registry/statistics/summary/1.11school/201-11.pdf

It’s interesting to look at the figures above and consider the degree subjects of our government and people in power, that many of these are subject areas which have 50% or more of their intake from the private sector.

I also want to stress that this is a problem with the institutions and not the people who attend them. So many people here who have dc at Durham have been massively encouraging and helpful when I have discussed my dd applying - I have no idea where your dc went to school but if it was fee paying I am not attacking you 😊

Agree, Kitty. But also want to add that plenty of the least well off don't think 'if only we worked harder and had more money we could go private'. That is quite a specific view and that kind of rhetoric builds prejudice against the state sector as if it is always second best. Lots of people value state education and entrust their children to local schools. And, let's face it,many private school parents choose private because they have traditions, and oodles of money. Not all of them are making some kind of sacrifice.

I don't mean you, kitty!

cant those studies exist but they have lots of contradictions in them...

Yes I agree totally - it implies private is best and state is inferior which is a flawed assumption.

Hmmm... those figures might go some way to explaining why all the (state educated) Durham dropouts I know were studying history...

Law is interesting!

Sociology as expected