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?

@ProggyMat
What would your advice be to lower socio- economic folk where such things like ‘State Grammar Schools’ - super selective or not- don’t exist in their region?
Also, those where there are no ‘Outstanding Comps’ ?

A good question. If they live somewhere like the North East the only possible honest answer would have to be along the lines of: Be prepared to suck it up.

In the NE the acquisition rate of AAA or better per head of the population is less than half that in London and the SE. In 2021 only 68 pupils from the NE were offered places at Cambridge, fewer than five years previously. It is a national disgrace. But hey, look at how well Cambridge is doing with the target for independent schools, a level playing field at last.

?! The article states this boy’s parents are an accountant and an IT consultant, so exactly the the type would be accused of gaming the system if they had stayed in the state sector, instead of getting an Eton education on a massive bursary, which is apparently very noble of them. And the school restricted his food intake, because he was too fat, apparently. But hey, obscene amounts of money were spent on sports physio, etc, and he was a good boy who complied with expectations. I see in that article a boy who has been very controlled and groomed, who has actually had limited agency over his own life - and this is an article he wrote, setting it all out for the world to see, food restrictions and all. It’s like being transported back in time to the Victorian era and he’s the circus freak being paraded as the pet charity case and having to tell everyone how good they have been to him. Are we supposed to want to live in the world where a tiny number of astronomically wealthy elites help themselves to a grotesque proportion of the earth’s resources and then handpick a few charity cases to dip their snouts in their trough for a bit, too, provided they perform nicely for them, so as to justify leaving the rest of the world to starve? Lovely. Obviously, if they hadn’t sent him to Eton, he wouldn’t have deserved any Harvards, Oxfords or Cambridges 🤔.

<table 2: results for univariate regression analysis on page 5 under type of secondary school - not my interpretation:>
Apologies for being a dog with a bone about this but it does appear to be a trap for misinformation. As reviewer I would have told them to remove that statement in the first part of the results since their subsequent multivariate analysis shows that hypothesis from univariate to be incorrect - multivariate analyses which adjust for such ‘interplays’ shows that school type remains an independent predictor. Correctly they remove that interpretation of association between course and school type in their conclusion.

I am not surprised their conclusion avoids comment on the results relating to school type and instead focuses on the greater effect of ethnicity.

Provocatively, grammar school students do marginally less well than those from comprehensives.

@Marchesman I know this might be a hard concept to grasp but not everyone wants to go to Oxbridge. They want to be nearer home for Uni. Not everyone cares or thinks Oxbridge is the only way to succeed. Or the best for some courses.

“In 2021 only 68 pupils from the NE were offered places at Cambridge, fewer than five years previously. It is a national disgrace. But hey, look at how well Cambridge is doing with the target for independent schools, a level playing field at last.”

The North East has Newcastle and Durham (pretty much an Oxbridge vibe there too at undergrad level). If you are poor and need to work at uni, then end of term travelling costs, rents etc. all likely to put you off. There are also a ton of other really good universities with great courses much closer than Oxford or Cambridge. One thing the North does have going for it is great unis!

@mumsneedwine to be fair to @Marchesman she’s already acknowledged that. I don’t agree with a lot of what she’s said but there are pertinent points - the situation in the NE for example- which for some reason folk don’t seem want to engage with.
@JustanothermagicMonday1 I was being naughty earlier when I asked about advice- I live in the NE.

🤣Except both you and Cambridge agree the playing field is not currently level. Good to see you all in agreement on something. Interesting that your cure is to suck it up if you are poor, but to complain of political bias against public schools if you are rich.

@ProggyMat but the NE schools have been asked about this (not all, but a selection) and the upshot was that lots of students didn't want to go to Oxbridge. They wanted to stay nearer home, as cheaper to live and cheaper to get home !
So there's not weird science behind less going, because less apply.
So trying to use NE figures to say outreach has failed is silly.

@Walkaround this is my favourite sentence of the thread. Just about sums up some of the attitudes in this country at the moment.

"Interesting that your cure is to suck it up if you are poor, but to complain of political bias against public schools if you are rich"

@ProggyMat - anecdotal, of course, but I have a lot of white middle class friends who are encouraging their DC’s to attend unis that are not in London or the South East. Especially for courses in medicine, law, engineering etc - they seem to think that in the long run, life up there may be better for their children, cheaper housing, they seem to think there will be more employment opportunities etc and a better quality of life. They think their DC will have more of a balance at uni and get out of the hothouse environment that is the South East. So there is that perspective too.
Cambridge house prices are absolutely ludicrous, for example. If you are a doctor why would you go and live there.

Similar in Liverpool re the desire to stay home. Even getting students to consider Manchester is challenging!

Mainly it’s because they have part time jobs, can’t afford to move away, or have caring responsibilities.

@Rummikub - but Liverpool is also a fantastic place to live! Even though some people from London have never been there…

I agree @JustanothermagicMonday1 Liverpool is fantastic for so many reasons. Many of my students want to go to Liverpool uni however the uni entry reqs for GCSE is prohibitive for them.

eg there’s a requirement for medicine that GCSEs must have been achieved in year 11. No second chances for those who have troubling family lives and also cutting out asylum seekers who have to learn English first. I see some very able students who cannot go due to this.

@Walkaround my DD was ‘privately educated’ from Yr7 via 100% scholarship/ bursary She’s just about to finish her first year at Oxford where she adds to the ‘private’ numbers but also all the WP categories.
@mumsneedwine I’m not using
the NE figures to say outreach is failing - it was to highlight the disparity within the State provision. For, me this is far greater than the State:Private divide.

@Rummikub if you let Liverpool know about those extenuating factors then they will admit those students under different criteria. The WP team are v good.

Indeed!

Provocatively, grammar school students do marginally less well than those from comprehensives

That isn't provocative though sendsummer. There can't be any reasonable quarrel about whether the brightest grammar school students are inherently cleverer than the brightest at comps. It may well be true in the immediate vicinity of one of the remaining grammars, as a generalisation, but that's about it. The issue is that students at comps generally face a much, much steeper uphill struggle to get an offer in the first place. The raw numbers at the top of the study are stark, or am I getting this wrong?:

Table 1: Numbers of students by school/college background School/college type Number of students Independent 8,130 Comprehensive 4,770 Grammar 3,270 Other state 2,082

Cambridge house prices are absolutely ludicrous, for example. If you are a doctor why would you go and live there

Cambridge may be slightly more moot but certainly as a young doctor you might well want to stay close to the centres of excellence, which are heavily concentrated in London and a small number of other places where house prices are nearly as mad. It matters at least for the high fliers. And shift patterns don't allow for long commutes. Fingers crossed for that 35% pay rise.

Sharpen your wits. The OP plainly doesn't think it's a good thing that children in the most deprived areas deserve less help than than the children of the middle classes in 'top performing comprehensives ' in the home counties. They say 'that is a disgrace'. Sucking it up is what those people in areas with no state grammars and no top performing comprehensive have to do. Their children literally have to go to the only local school, even if it's failing, because there is no other. Any help to widen access should be directed at the very poorest areas.
It is particularly unattractive to suggest that those from the affluent South should be helped to get into Oxford(1st in the world) and that poor children are lucky that they have the 146th in the world University in their area.
People on here make me glad not to be English.

1 Westminster School Independent 198 79
2 Hills Road Sixth Form College State 300 69
3 Peter Symonds College State 208 56
4 Brampton Manor Academy State 242 54
5 Brighton Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College State 219 52
6 The Perse School Independent 137 48
7 Eton College Independent 194 47
8 St Paul’s Girls School, London Independent 98 46
9 St Paul’s School, London Independent 154 40
10 Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet State 103 39

For the 2021 Oxbridge stats published in the Spectator - has anyone else noticed how heavily weighted they are towards Cambridge itself? (Hills Road and the Perse?) You would think they might be at least a little worried about how that may look at a first glance?

@goodbyestranger - I thought the two hospitals in Newcastle were really good? The Royal Victoria Infirmary and the Freeman Hospital? Is that not the case?

@oddandelsewhere “People on here make me glad not to be English.” Nice one.

All some people are saying is that for undergrad level learning perhaps it is best to get away from these elite ideas about “best unis” being so important. Much of Europe does not operate in this elitist way. You go to uni to do a good course and get a good job after. That is what matters.

Incidentally, lots of Londoners with European passports now looking Europe way again for uni as well. And the very strange one I have recently observed is Swiss unis? What is the attraction there?

On the subject of offers for the NE, there is some evidence of WP measures taking effect here (ie. Cambridge targeting under-represented areas) as the 'success rate' for the NE is actually the highest. But, as people above point out, they can only offer to those who apply, and not many actually apply from the NE (only 290 in 2021 cycle).

Having said this, there is not much difference in offer rates between U.K. geographic areas - only Wales and Scotland appear to be lagging.

The lowest 'offer rate' is for Scotland - not sure why? Mainly the impact of a different curriculum or the fact relatively few do Advanced Highers because you can enter Scottish unis with Highers only?

JustanothermagicMonday those numbers must be for applications - what are the numbers for offers?

Quick google @worldstillturns “:Do Scottish students have to pay for university in England? The sting in the tail: if you're a Scottish student and you want to study elsewhere in the UK, you'll forfeit your free tuition fees cash and can be charged up to £9,250 a year for your course”

So….a third of the graduating class from Hills Road Sixth Form college go to Cambridge. And Hills Road alumni make up 7% of the Cambridge entering class. 😮

So, Hills Road is where the Cambridge academics send their children? Looks very nice. No state schools near me look this good. And not all of the private schools.

Looks like quite a wheeze to me.