Oxbridge: Blatant social engineering - not admission according to potential.

[Marchesman]

Despite resistance from some tutors, Cambridge University’s Access and Participation Plan 2020-21 to 2024-25 includes a target to increase the proportion of UK state sector students that is entirely separate and independent of aims for POLAR4 quintiles 1 and 2. Formulating admissions targets for the University of Cambridge’s Access and Participation Plan (2020-21 to 2024-25) | Cambridge Admissions Office

The university's own research in 2011 had "found no statistically significant differences in performance by school type, and there was no evidence of the phenomenon observed at other UK universities of state sector students outperforming their privately educated peers" https://www.cao.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cao.cam.ac.uk/files/ar_gp_school_performance.pdf Subsequent data shows that students from independent schools performed better in examinations than students from state schools by 2015/16, at a level that is highly statistically significant: https://www.informationhub.admin.cam.ac.uk/university-profile/ug-examination-results/archive

Therefore, APP 2020-21 to 2024-25 makes no attempt to justify the state school target on the basis of student performance. In fact the only justification given is: "We recognise that school type is not a characteristic used by the OfS or contained within its Access and Participation dataset; we recognise too that the state versus independent binary masks a range of educational experiences…[however] each of the under-represented groups identified within this Plan appear in far greater numbers in state maintained schools, as do students from low income households who are not identified by any of the measures currently available to us."

The result of this can be seen in https://www.cao.cam.ac.uk/files/attainment_outcomes.pdf

In final degree examinations: "The per cent mark remained lower for the three secondary school types: • Comprehensive (estimate = -0.70, SE = 0.19, t = -3.63, p< 0.001); • State grammar (estimate = -0.98, SE = 0.19, t = -5.22, p< 0.001); • State other (estimate = -0.87, SE = 0.20, t = -4.32, p< 0.001)" To put this into context, these are the figures for students with "cognitive or learning difficulties (estimate = -0.88, SE = 0.33, t = -2.67, p< 0.01)"

Regarding the acquisition of a First: "The probability of the outcome remained lower for the three secondary school types: • Comprehensive (coefficient = -0.20, SE = 0.06, z = -3.13, p< 0.01); • State grammar (coefficient = -0.30, SE = 0.06, z = -4.81, p< 0.001); • State other (coefficient = -0.24, SE = 0.07, z = -3.57, p< 0.001)"

Selection according to potential? Really?

I really don't know if this is an issue to be concerned about, I've failed to understand the question. Is it possible to rephrase it in a more accesible user friendly way

My niece is hoping to apply to Oxbridge so might be of interest to her

No issue with it whatsoever. Excellent policy.

Independent school students are better at taking tests and score better all the way through to graduation? Is that what the paper/stats claim?
how does social engineering fit into this?

Are you suggesting that as state school pupils don’t perform well statistically then their backgrounds shouldn’t be considered in admissions policy?

There will be many other factors at play.
Previous education
Experience of assessments
financial barriers and stresses

The US has some litigation which was described on Radio 4 recently about preference given to people based on the colour of their skin which is damaging hard working Asians and is race discrimination. If we are not careful we will have something similar in the UK.

If by recruiting people who are less bright they are not lifted up to get the grades of the well educated is that fair on someone whose parents' moved to near a state grammar school or paid school fees or where the child had a full scholarship to a private school like Manchester Grammar?

The issue seems to be that by letting some people in even though they are not good enough on the usual objective tests, they still do worse than others in final exams. Therefore the conclusion should be this engineering is inherently unfair and should be stopped.

OP I understand your post to mean state school and private school pupils perform equally well once they get into Oxbridge. Therefore their policy of levelling the playing field by removing the advantages private school and grammar school educated children have, is working well.
If so I agree - it is only fair to equal out the disadvantages many state school, minority, disabled, neurodivergent, low income, bereaved etc etc experience.
I believe they still have a way to go though - the proportion of privileged students at Oxbridge is still higher than the general population.

It really does not matter because the top employers want the best graduates. So many are already university blind anyway now and invest heavily in their weird IQ tests and interviews/group exercises etc. They just can’t take the Oxbridge short cut anymore - ie hire anyone easily and cheaply from Oxbridge.

Oxbridge is as elite as say Eton anyway. If someone has been to a top private school or highly selective grammar school they already had an elite educational experience. So it makes sense that others get the chance to have an “elite” educational experience at Oxbridge, even if they are not quite up to the mark academically (which to be honest, I question anyway). There are far less places than students who would be good enough to get lots out of the experience.

The way an Oxbridge education should be viewed now is that it is 1:2 learning and so it should go to those who had less attention during their schooling. However, they need to exclude anyone who has actual educational privilege - because having a very educated parent with lots of time is actually worth far more than a top private school anyway.

Bright children also attend comprehensive schools - they are not necessarily less academic than those who went to private or grammar schools.

This does not prove what you think it proves. It's extremely unlikely that the advantage private school pupils have because of their previous experience of all forms of assessment - in both its practical and psychological aspects - no longer pertains after three years at Cambridge.

I mean, I ‘only’ got a ‘2:1’ compared to fellow students who got firsts, but who didn’t have to do paid work or worry about money through their studies because their families were rich (and yes they had gone to public school, I went to state school), while I scraped and worked two jobs on top of studying. Does the fact that I got a marginally lower degree result have anything to do with where I went to school, or more to do with the different economic circumstances I experienced whilst at university? Or both?

As AllTheChaos inplies. 3 or 4 years at Oxbridge doesn't magically undo less good education, social deprivation or other barriers to achieving high grades that students have had to face all their lives.

At the risk of appearing to be rude Xenia. Life must really suck for children with educational and economic advantage. Poor them.

“Life must really suck for children with educational and economic advantage. Poor them.”

There is one huge hypocrisy at stake here though. Which is that foreign students and their high fees are not impacted. So rich overseas child has more of a chance now than rich UK born child where parents of said child may have paid a huge amount in school fees and huge amount in UK taxes? So maybe that is where @Xenia is coming from? Because if they are going to do this, they should apply it across the board including to overseas students.

All that's really happened is that it's now harder to buy your way into Oxbridge. Small classes, comfy homes, good technology, no need to do paid work, support sessions to write PS, do exams etc all give massive advantage. Now the fact you live on the 26th floor in a 2 bed flat housing 5 people is taken into account. You still need to get the same grades. Just the fact you've got them without all that extra help is taken into account.
No one notices privilege until they no longer get it.

Exactly this. The international students that I have met through my two Dad's have been lovely, well educated, and charming. However, there is no denying they all come from elite privileged positions, with high wealth parents, and have few barriers to accessing too UK universities.

But the odd thing about Cambridge's approach is that it seems to advantage those students with comfy homes, good technology, no need to do paid work, support sessions to write PS, do exams etc who went to state schools. So much effort over the past decade or so has gone into contextualising admissions data and trying to reach those students in the 2 bed flat housing 5 people etc. Looking at the schooling sector alone seems to hide the huge disparities in the education and circumstances of state school pupils. It's likely to work to the benefit of those students with comfortable homes, professional parents, grammar school opportunities etc.

The notion of Oxbridge having the monopoly on bright students is outdated anyway. Lots of excellent students are choosing other universities because their courses are more flexible and relevant to modern working life. But that aside, I think the tide is turning and it's not as easy to buy advantage as once it was, because more and more, organisations value diversity in outlook and approach as a means to success. I do wonder if therefore some of this agenda is about Oxbridge colleges wanting to remain appealing to employers, who no longer want the old-fashioned cookie cutter "posh Oxbridge" types filling up their organisations.

My heart bleeds for the children of the wealthy middle class and the token scholarship student (usually equally middle-class going by the posts on MN) they occasionally take to justify calling themselves charities to avoid VAT on the fees for systemic privilege.

“It's likely to work to the benefit of those students with comfortable homes, professional parents, grammar school opportunities etc.”

Getting into Cambridge, maybe. However, those kids were always going to get the top jobs and still will, as well as the private and grammar school kids. So nothing has really changed. And if a handful of kids from deprived backgrounds now also get the top jobs then surely that is a good thing? For all concerned. Because if all persons can at least have hope to get to the top, then everyone works harder, no?

And if kids who went to top private schools don’t get in, maybe they get an additional motivational kick to work harder? And maybe they actually have more fun at e.g. Durham anyway.

@Mia85 they do look past the school at the POLAR data and context of school. Comp kids at a leafy middle class school won't get much advantage over the private school up the road.
It's not perfect, but they are trying. The courses run at the end of year 12 for state school kids have made a big difference too.

And I agree. Loads of v v bright kids don't even apply these days as kids want more modern courses. At a lot of schools no one cares about Oxbridge - at some schools it is the main goal. And is used as a marketing tool - % getting in is often quoted by people choosing a school.

Yes I know they do, that's why it seems retrogressive to go back to a state school target rather than look at context.

All that's really happened is that it's now harder to buy your way into Oxbridge. Small classes, comfy homes, good technology, no need to do paid work, support sessions to write PS, do exams etc all give massive advantage. Now the fact you live on the 26th floor in a 2 bed flat housing 5 people is taken into account. You still need to get the same grades. Just the fact you've got them without all that extra help is taken into account.
No one notices privilege until they no longer get it.

Agree with this.

Can’t buy your way in anymore, boo hoo

Oh dear never mind.

You do realise it's not because the Independent school kids are smarter and the state kids more stupid, right? - they have access to money, and therefore typically a better quality of education with a fewer teacher to pupil ratio. Take pretty much most kids and give them the same chances in life and you would see they could also "do better" at examinations etc.