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?

And any institution which doesn’t think that the wider the pool of people it can influence the better, and which is not open minded enough to learn from those whose background experiences are different, is a doomed institution that will become stale in its thinking. There is a wider pool of people to tap in the state sector - time to learn how to tap it better, rather than start taking more privately educated students again, which will only lower their statistical success rates when viewed solely (and bizarrely) in terms of how many of them achieve 1sts at undergraduate level, which I don’t think is, in all honesty, anyone’s real idea of what reaching your potential actually means.

@Walkaround

If we dispense with the ideological flag waving and the personal stuff here, we seem to be left with three things. First is your belief, counter to the evidence, that relaxing the restriction on privately educated students will lower outcomes in terms of degree results. This is not amenable to reason and can therefore be dismissed.

Secondly your misconception that Cambridge's definition of success, and therefore identification of those who succeed, differ from mine. I have already explained at length that they do not and I truly can't be bothered going into more detail as this would be futile.

So that leaves us with the matter of a cause for the poor results of grammar school students. This is explained by the R squared rankings from the univariate analysis, there for anyone with the wit and inclination to look for it.

@Marchesman - but Cambridge’s definition of success clearly does differ from your own, or you wouldn’t be whining about it.

Cambridge did not, after all, need to set a target on state school applications, but it did. Different definitions of what success is. Oxford chose not to do the same. You do not like what Cambridge is doing. This is all your interpretation - Cambridge has turned two fingers up at it. You have failed to adequately identify Cambridge’s motivation.

And @Marchesman - you agree that the statistics used to show state school applicants doing better than the privately educated, so where is your proof that changing the proportions again won’t lower the proportion of the privately educated who get firsts compared to their state educated peers? The proportion of each school type that gets what are, after all, what you are obsessing over.

*is

And stop trying to pretend you have no ideological flag to wave, because you are even worse at hiding that than Cambridge is.

Still can't see that grammar schools kids are falling woefully short....

But, @goodbyestranger, they are falling short in a statistically significant way. In another year or two, the situation will be so bad they’ll be letting all sorts of thickos into Cambridge and it will cease to be a centre of academic excellence, even though undergraduates are not the ones doing the research. More importantly, it will upset its wealthy benefactors who want it to remain an exclusive club for the wealthy and don’t want to waste their cash on needy people, as helping the poor is not the role of universities, anyway. Helping the middle classes is even more of a crime, because we all know only wealthy people from public schools and poor people from failing schools are actually deserving of anything.

I really like these threads. I learn a lot. I was a bit disappointed when the bad faith arguments and ad hominem attacks started. The cute dog pictures seemed to help the tone of thread. Now we are back to ranting and raving.

I’m not naming any names. But maybe it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on whether you are “playing the man or the ball.” Whether you are here to seek a better understanding or to validate your ego. It’s a public forum and you are entitled to be here for whatever reason motivates you. But I wish we could argue facts, and disagree agreeably.

An “idea lab” is my jam. This feels like a bun fight between echo chambers.

https://twitter.com/waitbutwhy/status/1343681163752255489?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1343681163752255489%7Ctwgr%5E5d2c62309d6c81929cfcc54964b5b8049d0c3a8b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fconversationculture.net%2Ftim-urbans-idea-lab%2F

Fair point, @EmpressoftheMundane. OK, taking ideology out of it. I have already agreed I think Cambridge setting a target for state school entry is not something I feel comfortable with, and I do see where @Marchesman is coming from with the statistical analysis, based on the information available. On Marchesman’s definition of potential, the privately educated students have the most potential. I do also expect that letting in more children of lower SES from state schools will show in the statistics in a way Cambridge doesn’t like, by making this picture more stark, so that it has to be openly addressed. I don’t think Cambridge is unaware of this, yet it is still choosing to target more students in the state sector of lower SES.

I do think that universities are stuck in the countries where they are based, and if you live in a country with huge problems with social inequity and inequality, where Government interference with state education is actively harmful, and where state schools are also expected to paper over the cracks caused by inequity and inequality, you can’t fully insulate yourself from that. Cambridge is sticking its head above the parapet and is right to do so. We have massive problems in this country with inequity and inequality and we can’t expect this not to seep everywhere in the end. We need to sort this out. In my personal opinion, neither the inequity nor the inequality will be resolved by privatising privilege and relying on private schools to identify the talent.

I think we also need a wider definition of talent and a clearer idea of the purpose of schools.

It would also help if universities were viewed as academic institutions, not places you go with the sole purpose of improving future earnings.

There have been no comments on homeschooled children and fair access for them. Anyone care to comment?

I’ve dealt with a few home schooled children as well as hospital schools. They have a handful of GCSEs, some are bright. Just didn’t thrive in school environment. They then go to post 16 education and many do v well once they’ve settled. Some unis though want 6 GCSEs and they tend to have 5 at most. So it’s not that straightforward.

Hopefully you can see this - it's from the latest admissions stats published by Cambridge on their admissions website.

If their target was / is '69% state school intake' you can see that the vast majority of colleges exceed this anyway - and this has been the case for some years.

Ignore Hughes Hall, Wolfson or St Edmunds as these colleges are postgrad / only accept those over the age of 21.

You can see that the majority of colleges make offers to and accept over 70% state school students. 70% is broadly in line with the proportions of students who achieve at least two A stars nationally.

You can also see the impact if WP perhaps (in most cases) in that the % of 'offers' is generally higher than the '% of applications.'

So a 69% state school intake is old news really. Cambridge have been exceeding this for years.

Basically 72.2 of applicants are from the state sector. They receive 74% of offers and go in to take up 72.9% of places, across all colleges.

“I’ve dealt with a few home schooled children as well as hospital schools. They have a handful of GCSEs, some are bright. Just didn’t thrive in school environment. They then go to post 16 education and many do v well once they’ve settled. Some unis though want 6 GCSEs and they tend to have 5 at most. So it’s not that straightforward.”

Given the state of education at the moment and post pandemic, my thoughts are that both Oxford and Cambridge should be more flexible with homeschooled children. In particular, people who are not well off who live in terrible catchment areas but have gifted children often feel like they have no choice but to homeschool. If state education is already not meeting these children’s needs then surely university education should, especially if they are very able?

world, that pretty sums up my view - that it is just about all still fair, not huge errors going on. However we should keep track of how things pan out as it is in no one's best interests if 18 year olds who are not up to the work load at Oxbridge from comprehensives, state grammars in the few areas with those and private schools.
What I want us to avoid (and indeed same with my own profession - law) is moving to a Chinese cultural revolutino system where the children of the elite were sent to work as dustbin men in the countryside on principle even if they were really bright. it is not fair to put the sins of the fathers on the children as it were and the same goes for 18 year old in the UK who had no choice of whether their parent chose a fee paying, grammar or state school.

What I want us to avoid (and indeed same with my own profession - law) is moving to a Chinese cultural revolutino system where the children of the elite were sent to work as dustbin men in the countryside on principle even if they were really bright.

That's a bit hyperbolic... all that's happening is a few more from the 'elite' who might have got to oxbridge going to eg bristol and Durham, and maybe in turn displacing a few from there to other Russel group unis etc.

Though of course, there's already a disproportionate number of the elite apparently set to work in the countryside if my memory of the demographics for the Royal Agrigultural college is correct ... maybe because they own it.

Thank you EmpressoftheMundane for your timely rejuvenating effect on the tone of the discussion.

In this spirit of reconciliation I submit another dog photograph. He is in training to be a wolf when he grows up, or possibly something in the close protection line, and this photograph was taken by a groomer after an unfortunate misunderstanding over a bath and pedicure.

@JustanothermagicMonday1

agree. Especially as some I dealt with would thrive in that environment imo.

Interesting that Trinity is at the bottom in terms of both offers and acceptances, though not of applications.

As DCs high achieving private school Trinity was seen as an additional step up, as in only the exceptional would try Trinity. So they may have been looking at exceptional candidates from the private sector against a more rounded cohort from the maintained sector. Obviously a lot, then, got pooled to other colleges.

Some of the super elite are swanning off to the US to gain more hardcore capitalist ideologies, in any event.
Yes, Land Economy at Cambridge still open to the Farmers.
And in any event, with uni blind recruitment the elites get to put up their feet, not write 2 essays a week and still get the top jobs if they fancy Durham or Bath or York instead of Oxford. So in a round about sort of way, this might even work in their favour.

I'm not sure why Trinity is lagging so much for that cycle @Needmoresleep - this wasn't so marked in previous years. It used to be Johns with the highest independent school cohort - not anymore.

A few years ago, Kings and Homerton had the highest state school intakes, but other colleges have now caught up. Especially, Lucy Cavendish since it switched to being a co-ed college two years ago.

I think Trinity is perhaps seen as a 'step up' for Maths, but not anything else. Christs has a reputation for being top of the Norrington table (or whatever it is). They close their bar during exams etc. Trinity, does however, have a lot of money!