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?

Yes Classics ab initio students are marked on equal terms both in their Prelims/ Mods in the second year and again in their Finals in fourth year

@drawingmaps

What you said was: Public schools and many private schools, especially private grammars, encourage all students to take Latin and Greek.

The paper that I cited shows how wrong you were. The relative prevalence of classics teaching in the state and private sectors is not contentious. Latin and Greek are beneficial but most people in both sectors avoid them, particularly Greek because it is too difficult

They have the option. State school kids don't have the option.

I've already said I made a generalisation. The fact remains that those outside the state sector have more opportunity to study Classics. I knew students from certain schools where Latin was compulsory, Greek an option for upper sets. But they have the option.

Actually I'm not sure why I'm bothering to argue with you. You've made your mind up that state school students are somehow inherently inferior and you won't be persuaded otherwise.

@drawingmaps
state school students are somehow inherently inferior

And I said this where?
I went to a state school, my father went to a state school, two of my grandparents went to state schools, and so did one of my children.

Why on earth would I think that?

@Marchesman - perhaps you need to rethink, or clarify, you choice of the expression, “better people.”

@drawingmaps
State school kids don't have the option.

They or their teachers voted with their feet, the same with MFL. All part of gaming the system to get higher examination grades - qualifications at the expense of education.

Karma.

This is such a depressing thread. @HighlandCowbag utterly agree with you but do many people on this thread do not want a just society. In fact they are pretty much advocating that the majority of pupils are trampled over in order that they and theirs maintain their positions of undeserved privilege. Sad.

All part of gaming the system to get higher examination grades

Oh please. Anyone with any knowledge of education - particularly inside knowledge - knows that independents are past masters at doing exactly this. It permeates the sector, from easier IGCSEs to certifying every other kid as dyslexic. Game upon game upon game. So the Cambridge policy you abhor: karma

Marchesman - I'm not too worried about private schools having a stranglehold on Classics as long as the doors are opening everywhere else. Karma.

Haha lots of karma being booted about :)

@goodbyestranger
Yes Classics ab initio students are marked on equal terms both in their Prelims/ Mods in the second year and again in their Finals in fourth year

Equal terms with one another but not on equal terms with classicists educated in Greek and Latin, the content is different. "There are two courses, Lit. Hum. I and II. If you have done Mods IA, IB, or IC, you will normally go on to take LH I; if you have done Mods IIA or IIB, LH II."

I meant what I said. Course I and II are marked on equal terms. There is no silo system.

DD4, despite being ab initio with no classical background whatsoever, is marked alongside her independently school peers with their education in Latin stretching way back. The title of the course at the entry point becomes irrelevant. She is incredibly fortunate though, her tutors are all outstanding and she has been taught by a distinguished All Souls fellow from the outset. An absolute bargain for £9250 pa, especially since the chances of her getting a job with a Classics degree is almost nil, so she may never have to repay. Bingo!

And this is the case with Mods too OP. Thus, DD4 could see how good a first she had as all the students regardless of course at entry point were listed numerically. No distinction whatsoever.

Sorry: chances are not chances is.

Some people don’t realise that many areas of the country are fully comprehensive with no grammars!

I’m not sure that’s why. I think it’s a myth that MFL are hard to get higher grades in. MFL are more attractive to people wealthy enough to envisage travelling or living overseas and using them, though. I also think Classical Civilisation A-Level in the state sector attracts lower grades because it is perceived to be an easier option than History A-Level, so it is not always the brightest candidates who opt for it (was certainly fellow students’ view of it when I was at school). The anti-Greek and Latin thing was a rebellion against “dead languages,” because they were seen as a convenient way of keeping the hoi polloi out of Oxbridge until 1960. They are still largely perceived in the public mind as an easy route into Oxford or Cambridge for the privately educated, given the unlikelihood of a state educated student being offered Latin or Greek as options in the first place. The fact not all private schools offer Greek or Latin any more indicates that it is no longer automatically assumed in any walk of life that a person has not received a proper education unless they have been taught Latin and Greek.

@goodbyestranger
All part of gaming the system to get higher examination grades

Oh please. Anyone with any knowledge of education - particularly inside knowledge - knows that independents are past masters at doing exactly this. It permeates the sector.

Yet more ideological anti-independent school rubbish that runs contrary to verifiable evidence. Full marks for persistence but nul points for sense of irony.

"In summary, we found that even after controlling for prior attainment and school difference, young people from advantaged households take more academically demanding subjects, have higher odds of studying EBacc-eligible subjects and lower odds of taking applied GCSEs than less advantaged young people. This is likely to be partly a result of direct forms of support from parents with higher SES which leads to variation in subject choice."
Henderson et al. Centre for Longitudinal Studies Working paper 2016/6
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwimhs2tvqr_AhXWh1wKHdZ7AIgQFnoECAgQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridgeassessment.org.uk%2FImages%2F518880-uptake-of-gce-a-level-subjects-2017.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2WPDwdR9U1uINPjWZkKBrS

That’s the way to miss the point. 😂

Because you said that upthread!. You said that independently educated children had innate qualities that allowed them to get so many oxbridge firsts!! Even smarter than state grammar kids who have had to academically compete to get into their schools

@Xenia · Today 18:37
Why does it matter if some schools are better than others? We live in a wonderful capitalist UK, the only political system that properly works and this is one of its features - you earn more and you have more money for schooling etc to give your children or whatever else you choose. This is good, moral and right. It works. It is how humans are made and it is in a sense why we are here.

Regardless of whether it matters, it is inevitable. It is the disgusting hypocrisy surrounding it that is emetic.

The better off achieve an advantage by buying into "DCs high performing comp" in expensive catchment areas, or if they live within the vicinity of grammar schools, by tutoring or dipping in and out of prep schools to game the eleven-plus. In doing so, they tip a system containing 500,000 or so pupils in their favour and then they have the gall to pretend that they are disadvantaged and deserve a leg up when it comes to Higher Education. Essentially, having kicked the poor into failing schools they piggy-back the few deserving poor who have managed to survive the system:

In 2013-2021 Polar 1 acceptances increased by only 66, when comp and grammar acceptances increased by 441 most of whom were in Polar 3-5 quintiles.

@fUNNYfACE36

No I did not say that. Quote my exact words.

@Walkaround

Assuming that you read the data, in what way do you feel that it is inconsistent with my point?

@goodbyestranger
No distinction whatsoever.

Try telling that to a Mods A Man.