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'm delighted to say that neither dog, were they not dogs, be remotely in the offing for Oxbridge even if they were tutored up to their floppy ears. They are wonderfully unbright. Very relaxing on that front. No aspirations beyond chasing rabbits and the odd birdie.

Not like our first dog (no longer with us), a Parsons Jack Russell named Conker, who I now see might have had the makings of a fellow of All Souls he was so smart.

Ok OP, that's the end of my distractions.

Sorry for the derail, OP. But I can well believe that of your Parson, @goodbyestranger . Look at those eyes. He knew what it was all about, and could probably run rings around you.

It is the secondary schools that are bearing the brunt, not primary, @JustanothermagicMonday1 . There is a lot more scope for trouble when they are supposed to be getting themselves to and from school and between lessons in different parts of the school, and are dealing with all the issues around adolescence on top of problems at home and a primary education that was disrupted by covid. If a secondary school starts getting an exodus of staff, entire subjects can be wiped out. Support staff can disappear, too.

Gorgeous dogs, btw, @goodbyestranger .

@Marchesman - do you think social segregation is more pronounced at secondary school than in primary schools, across the country?

@goodbyestranger - what is your view on dog breeds and class markers? Do you think they can tell us anything about SES? Dog ownership in the UK today - is there a difference in attitudes towards dog ownership dependent on ethnicity?

Not ethnicity. Class. Or perceived class. No fighting dogs with spiked collars around here. Jack Russells, Parsons, Labs, Pointers and spaniels. Plus doodle hybrids. A few other breeds of terrier too plus the odd collie. No miniature dogs either.

Good are we onto dogs....
A surprising number of retired greyhounds round here. I want one.

I have to include a picture now of what prompted me to start this thread. He is a three month old schnauzer with a separation anxiety state. I apologise for the image quality, he is not given to stillness in his conscious state.

Do I have a life? Don't ask me again.

Cheeky little pup. How did the boot get on after its encounter with the beast?

@JustanothermagicMonday1
More pronounced and a lot more important but that is not to say primary education is without it.
https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/caught-out/

There is also an interesting report of a poll into the attitudes of teachers and parents on the matter of social segregation in state schools, which amongst other things shows unsurprisingly that those least exposed/affected underestimate the size of the problem. This I think goes back to my glib reference to the chattering middle classes - those most able to make their views heard are least likely to be saying the right things.
https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/fairer-school-admissions/

@DahliaMacNamara

Not well. Teeth like needles.

Very dear little pup OP. Absolutely beautiful colour and markings.

No dog here just enormous children who stopped being students last year (when the youngest grandchild (1) is not around who is definitely a lot cuter than her tall uncles).

I think our bit of London is pretty mixed socially and racially (the borough is minority white for a start) and most people get along but there will be social segregation by class all over the UK in all parts I am pretty sure. Brighton tried bussing comprehensive pupils from rich to poor areas to get a mix but it is quite a hard thing to force on parents. I think my own parents in NE England had a fairly pure form of grammar school education because if just about everyone is badly off then grammar schools in a sense are taking only people from pretty much the same community. My children's father went to a Yorkshire state grammar and there were about 3 in the area in those days and they were all really bad not the kind of posh grammars you get in the SE.

This angsting is stacking deckchairs on the Titanic though isn’t it! AI is the massive issue all our kids will face. Most types of law are stuffed in the next 10 years. We are looking for something less likely to be affected and will guide our kids career wise to that.

@JustanothermagicMonday1 yes social segregation is there in primary schools albeit very subtle. Also a form of ‘familiarity bias’.

I am hoping to be working as a lawyer in ten years' time., 20 even but we shall see. People certainly need to be adaptable. When I started we were getting the first fax machines only.,

My prediction is that there will need to be yet more lawyers to sort out problems created by the use of AIs

I don’t know I was also scoffing then I looked into it. Once smart people get the systems set up much of what junior lawyers do will be gone. The bigger firms are heading that way (friend senior in IT in one of the big ones). God knows what jobs our kids will end up doing - where you went to university will end up looking like an extremely old fashioned concern.

Well, that’s why I’m worried about the 1% - or more like 0.1% - because, frankly, I think most of them would happily cull the vast majority and then blame it on AI. Promises that technology would make everyone’s lives easier and enable more leisure time for people to pursue their genuine interests ring as hollow as promises that if you let the elite avoid tax, wealth will trickle down for the benefit of everyone. Technology is no longer improving our lives, it is now actually beginning to lower the quality of work offered to many humans who used to quite enjoy their jobs and did not want machines doing them, and is robbing us of skills, but also increasing the expectation that humans should work all hours and have very little leisure time doing the work that technology has left over for them. Instead of businesses and technology being used to improve people’s lives, people are simply obliged to increase profits for the few at the expense of the many, and if they can be replaced by machines then they will be, because those making the decisions are interested in profit for the 1%, not in people.

If all the world’s technology was suddenly turned off, we’d all be scuppered - we’d have no clue how to cope (unless, eg, part of an indigenous tribe in the Amazon rainforest, where a 13-year old can keep their siblings alive for 40 days, rather than be eaten or poisoned on day 2 like most of us…).

I think humanity’s biggest mistake is not to have realised that our competitive side may have got us thus far, but from now on it is competition that will destroy us. Not AI, but people destroying each other through competitive, selfish greed and mutually assured destruction.

Ps your dog is also rather adorable, @Marchesman.

Humans always seem to have to push everything too far. We don’t know when to stop.

@goodbyestranger

Thank you, he is a dear boy, but exhausting.

Regarding the statistics, sorry for the delay in replying, I wanted to avoid interruptions, and the critter has finally conked out. Understanding the findings from the Cambridge paper on outcomes would be a lot more straightforward if it had been written and peer reviewed for publication rather than being for internal consumption.

It is also more complicated than necessary if all that is required is to demonstrate that students from one school type do better than from another. This can be crudely achieved by collecting the results from several years worth of data in Cambridge's results archive, and putting the numbers into a suitable statistical tool available online. What the Cambridge paper does is control for things such as ethnicity, choice of course etc., to show that type of school attendance per se is associated with a probability of a certain outcome that is not explained by the other factors in the analysis (although there may be other factors that have not been considered that might account for it).

The attainment gap for black students, Asian students and disabilty groups is discussed in the summary early on in the paper and again in the conclusions but school type is not. However, the findings for school type are very similar to those for disabled or Asian students in terms of their sign and significance.

For the probability of achieving a first the state grammar school coefficient = -0.30 (p< 0.001). The p value indicates that there is a statistically significant correlation between belonging to the grammar school group and obtaining a first. The negative coefficient indicates an inverse relationship, grammar school attendance of itself is associated with a reduced probability. The same is true for Asian ethnicity, the Asian coefficient = -0.23 (p< 0.01) but for this group the relationship is actually less significant. Likewise for percentage marks in examinations the state grammar estimate = -0.98 (p< 0.001) which compares unfavourably with the cognitive or learning difficulties estimate = -0.88 (p< 0.01). These findings are interesting and surely worth discussing in the outcomes paper.

@Walkaround

Thank you. I tried to get a better photograph just after he woke up this evening. Not sure how it will appear.

Too big and fuzzy, not sure why.