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?

My impression was that Trinity's reputation extended beyond maths to other maths heavy subjects, like engineering. When DS was applying it was the only college to require STEP for economics. Law at Trinity was also seen as rather smart.

I could well see that the college reputation might have worked in reverse for humanities!

I was also wondering about the 'Land Economy' degree, JustanothermagicMonday1, but it's really nothing to do with farming or estate management. Far from it! It's now one of the most competitive courses there - 8 applicant to every place. It's basically a mix of law, economics, real estate, business and international development and has a very high employability rate (so they say). DC says most people she has met doing that course are from India or China (she does not do LE, by the way).

Love the dogs, by the way!

Here’s a link to Cambridge’s 42-page Access and Participation Plan, for those who think the 3-page summary linked by @Marchesman is hiding something.
https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/files/publications/university_of_cambridge_app_2020-2025_including_2023-24_variation.pdf

These are the figures for UK domiciled admissions from the state sector by year of admission (the 2024-25 target was 69.1):
2012 63.3%
2016 62.5%
2017 64.1%
2018 65.2%
2019 68.7%
2020 70.6%
2021 71.6%
2022 72.9%

The data regarding the effect of school-type are from a 2019 report "covering the period 2011-12 to 2018-19". It is not clear to me exactly what this means but the finals results of students admitted after the state admission rate started to increase in the last decade are clearly not included.

In 2011 (2007 or 2008 admissions for which I have no rate) students from comprehensive schools were 5.6% more likely to achieve a first than students from independent schools, from grammar schools 2.8% more likely. Fast forward to 2015 (for these students the state admission rate had been around 63%) and students from independent schools were 20.9% more likely to achieve a first than students from comprehensives, and 9.8% more likely than those from grammar schools. In 2017 students from independent schools were ahead by 24% and 14.7% (for no change in the admission rates), but then the data ceases to be published.

So we have not yet seen and will not see the consequence (if any) of increasing the state admission rate. It can only be a matter of speculation how the figures stack up now when the rate stands at 72.9% or what that percentage will be in future years. All we know for sure is 1) state school attendance is a predictor of poorer performance in finals 2) students from independent schools are signficantly more likely to achieve firsts, and 3) despite knowing this the university set a target to increase the proportion of state educated students, which it exceeded, and is still increasing.

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN00616/SN00616.pdf

Won’t Cambridge shortly need to publish another Access and Participation Plan, given that this one only runs to 2024-25? Might that provide more data? I can see that the detailed data used to inform the current Plan is historic, and half of it is from before the point at which @Marchesman says the privately educated intake started to outperform the state educated intake, so we haven’t yet seen the analysis of the full consequences of the Plan in action. I can see also that there has been quite a dramatic change in state educated intakes in the last 20 years. When I was at Oxford, the state educated intake was below 50% I think.

Surprising (or perhaps not as it does not suit their agenda) that they chose to start leaving out the data that showed fee paying school pupils do better.. However my point about the Cultural Revolution was simply to say we are nowhere near that in the UK so I am not too bothered about slight unfairness against private school pupils as it is fairly minor.

EvioI notice this comment from the long version of the Cambridge Plan: “The University recognises that it along with the higher education sector as a whole must play a leading role in supporting the Office for Student’s (OfS) commitment to social mobility, and trusts that our reasonable endeavours to this end will be in active partnership with an education sector adequately resourced to narrow the gaps which manifest during primary and secondary schooling.” Yet this has actually coincided with massive problems caused by a Government which imposed austerity simultaneously with an expectation of massive, unevidenced change led by someone who had a stated contempt for experts and threw away all the expensive research on education reform commissioned by the previous government.

I think that first word was probably supposed to say, “I noticed”?! 🤣

I for one am now, therefore, somewhat confused as to the aims of the national curriculum, as it doesn’t seem to be designed to meet anyone’s needs, or even really designed at all. It’s more like a patchwork quilt, very badly stitched together and with far too many mismatched pieces shoved inappropriately together, leaving the whole thing looking far too busy and confused, like the teachers expected to make something of it.

I guess to organize the types of people the workers, the managers, the scientist etc.

Read the information from John gatto Taylor

I do have more recent examination results. I mentioned an FOI request many pages ago that showed a minimal increase in low SES students and a large increase in high SES students from comprehensives.

I remembered a second FOI request that I made at the beginning of 2022, for the examination data that went missing after 2017. This shows that in 2021 students from independent schools were 35.6% more likely to achieve a first than students from comprehensive schools but only 7.2% more likely than students from grammar schools.

Students from grammar schools were 26.5% more likely to achieve a first than students from comprehensive schools (up from approx. 16% four years earlier), probably due to a contraction in the number of students from grammar schools.

Of course these figures still only relate to state school admission percentages of 64 or 65%.

I think we should be careful not to bias against naturally gifted children that attend private schools. In reality I do think there is a genetic component to intelligence and it may the case the children of intelligent (and wealthy) children attend private schools and recognition of their talents shouldn't inadvertently not be recognised as social mobility becomes more of an over arching aim in education.

We need application processes that obviously do not bias in any way against intelligence, ability etc. yet if there are a disproportionate number of intelligent pupils in the private sector (hard to prove I admit) we should view inclusivity with a little caution. I think the fear (maybe unfounded) is that universities would rather accept a slightly less able child from the state sector to satisfy maybe some arbitrary target.

I get the argument of the OP. The widening participation ideals of Oxbridge aren't in reality attracting huge numbers from deprived sections of society as I presume was the intent but using a state label as a proxy for deprivation which patently isn't the case. If all the widening participation plans are leading to is middle class parents trying to game the system to optimise their offsprings chance of an Oxbridge offer them possibly a review is needed.

Students from grammar schools were 26.5% more likely to achieve a first than students from comprehensive schools (up from approx. 16% four years earlier), probably due to a contraction in the number of students from grammar schools

Has there been a contraction in numbers from the grammars? I thought the opposite was true? And surely you would apply that same logic (contraction of numbers) to independently educated students (I have to say that was my immediate thought when you posted).

This absolute focus on firsts is probably misguided anyhow as a pure measure of ability and potential.

I would say you're unlikely to get an Oxbridge first if you're not really quite seriously clever but it's incredibly easy to miss by a couple of marks (assuming no major issues which affect performance - different point, already made) and be exactly as clever as the guys who got over the line. Often it's just one duff paper.

Except there is educational poverty in the state sector and this affects a far greater number than those earning enough money either to game the state sector or to pay for private education. You do not have to be in economic quintiles 1 or 2 for this to be the case. There is a huge rump in the middle who are neither gaming the system, nor getting a fabulous education, but who do have plenty of untapped potential. Also, with regards to poverty, as genes have been shown to switch on or off in response to environmental factors, you can’t avoid the argument that the larger the inequalities of experience, diet, education and environment within a society, the greater the inequity. To shrug your shoulders and not only to more or less accept this, but also to claim it’s a natural consequence of the inadequacies of those at the bottom, so that to try to boost them up would be a waste of time and resources, is a self-fulfilling prophecy - you have let those at the top take more than their fair share in order to then justify not sharing with anyone else.

Regardless of whether private schools take a token number of socially and economically disadvantaged students themselves, they are massively skewed towards enabling the most advantaged to take more than their fair share. So we need to find a better balance in society and stop being quite so deeply relaxed about vast inequalities of wealth and education (and I do not mean by dragging down the salaried population and letting the real wealth, which is not from salaried employment, continue to accumulate in a tiny number of hands) - and also, stop being so relaxed about those in the middle just being left to plod on in an education system controlled by a Government that wasn’t interested in the opinions of experts when it redesigned the National Curriculum and starved schools of the funds required to effectively carry out all of the functions expected of them. Of course the consequence of this is that the relatively better off will flock to the same schools, because then they can pool their resources to ensure more enrichment for their kids in the state sector, leaving the poor kids behind to suffer the reality of the funding deficits and abject failure to cater for their needs and wants.

As for the truly gifted in private schools - Oxbridge clearly has no trouble tapping into them. It hasn’t put an embargo on admitting privately educated children.

OP could you post the mirror statistics for 2.1s and 2.2s and 3rd's? How did the intake from each sector fare in the lower categories?

I'm still not clear why there should be moral outrage at the idea of Cambridge facilitating social mobility in any event. But then I did say that right at the start. Just that there don't seem to be any really sound arguments against it and plenty for it, as shown across these thirty two pages. So yes, still not clear.

It would be interesting to see how spiky the profile of results is for each sector type and how that would be analysed. Who is mainly getting the 3rds? Who gets the top 1sts? Can a more steady results profile point towards a better background education?

It would be nice to see a bit more honesty around austerity and the effect this has had in the state of the country. Austerity in the UK was not caused by the Labour government having been too profligate with its spending - thank God it had got public services in a better position before austerity started running it down - it was caused by the Labour government taking an intensely relaxed attitude to oversight of the methods of wealth creation, which irritated the Tories, because that was their mantra, too. The UK not only went long with growing global corruption, it joined in with gusto and aimed to be the best at supporting it.

The global financial crash was caused by gambling with the poor by elite global institutions and the elites who used and abused their services. The elite were then protected from their own greed and stupidity by squeezing the poor and then encouraging the poor to blame the middle classes and each other. So now, the elite are wealthier than ever, but the poor are still being squeezed by austerity - and there is a massive increase in those who feel poor, because their quality of life has been massively affected. Not so for the elite, however.

What qualifies someone as “elite”
@Walkaround?
Because in my definition it tends to be the mobile sort of person who ups sticks and leaves, not that we care if they do, but the global elite is a global issue not a U.K. specific issue.
In reality, HMRC can only get to persons with let’s say up to 5 million of net worth: the rest will fly to better shores. The fact we still don’t have capital gains taxes on main residences is, in my opinion, a big mistake.

@JustanothermagicMonday1 - yes, I think a big part of the problem is globalisation and the elite either being able to move themselves or their money out of reach. However, the UK chose a solution to this which has exacerbated, not remediated the issues it is suffering from - it has actively helped and encouraged the problem behaviour in order to attract wealth, but it hasn’t ultimately benefited UK citizens from doing so, it has just attracted the wealthy to use its services to help it hide from the tax man, making it a surprisingly poor “rich” country. It has not attracted the “right sort” of wealth, because that sort is attracted by better infrastructure and greater productivity, neither of which the country offers (and which is not achieved by just getting rid of lots of people, telling those left to do more with less, and then telling them they don’t know what they’re doing anyway and should just do as they are told and achieve whatever ridiculous expectations you have set for them.)

It’s a race to the bottom in terms of behaviour - countries that sell themselves as the “good guys” are actually justifying really bad behaviour on the back of the reasoning that if they don’t do it, the bad guys will (rather than acknowledging that they are being the bad guys). This then seeps into the behaviour inside individual countries - why willingly pay lots of tax when you know you are just a sitting duck? How come we are a wealthy country if we can’t afford to maintain a healthy, productive population? Why should we trust those telling us what we should be doing when there is such a glaring mismatch between what we are told and what we can see?

And it’s not even just a few individuals - it’s business structures set up by them. It’s easy to hide behind it being the business, when it is people who are structuring the business in a particular way in order to benefit shareholders and avoid tax. The employee is just another asset to be played with, and not a particularly desirable one, as employees are unreliable compared to machines - they have more needs. The customer is just there to be tapped, and as for everyone else - who cares?

So, who or what is business supposed to benefit? It appears the elites decide that.

Also, a depressingly high number of very bright people in the UK go for careers which actively facilitate the flow of ever greater shares to an ever smaller group, because these careers pay them incredibly well, complete with bonuses for behaviour only the elite would consider truly desirable - far better from a personal perspective than joining the ranks of those who simply do a useful job and get paid for it. This is because pay in other sectors can’t compete, so you end up with a brain drain away from other areas of the economy which are actually essential for the healthy functioning of the society as a whole. In the end, society becomes so uneven, you can only have a reasonable quality of life if you follow the money, not any other social purpose you might otherwise be attracted to.

I would argue that Cambridge is providing state education with a gloss that it does not merit by this process. The numbers involved are trivial but the effect on perceptions is not. State education should be seen for what it is, or nothing will change.

In 2018 there was a large discrepancy between admissions from grammar schools and comprehensive schools.

I am mysteriously unable to reproduce the whole table but this is the tail end of it. The percentages are the important figures, the academic year is 2020-21. The secondary school types from top to bottom are:
Comp
FE
Independent
Other
State Grammar
State Other
Total