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?

@fUNNYfACE36
Why would independent schooling even exist if it did not buy advantages that going to a state school would not?

Your question indicates that you would put no value on the most important aspects of a private education. Parents may fight tooth and claw over places in socially selective state schools but not everyone is as obsessed with gaining an advantage. 96% of children in private schools do not go to Oxford or Cambridge and the majority of parents in my experience do not put a particularly high value on academic performance.

I don't know about STEM in general, and I may be a few years out of date, but for engineering Cambridge had about 25% girls which is better than many other eng. courses. Actually at other unis it seemed that of the small number of women a disproportionately high number would be overseas students - Chinese and Asian. The cultural problem there is more a U.K. one I'm afraid. (My dd was a camb. Engineer)

So... I'm not at all sure your assumptions are valid.

JustanothermagicMonday1 · Today 20:14
@ErrolTheDragon - you are not addressing the very specific point that girls outperform boys at A level in the U.K.

They don't. On the last occasion for which there are reliable results, 8.2% of boys results were A*s compared with 7.5% for girls, and boys have historically taken a higher proportion of facilitating subjects.
https://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/

@Parker231
Ethnic minority and state school pupils don’t have less potential - just less opportunities due to many reasons and prejudices - many displayed on this thread!

They have poorer outcomes - and therefore by definition they had poorer potential.

@Marchesman - not according to this https://www.statista.com/statistics/282976/a-level-results-in-the-uk-by-gender/#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20Kingdom%20in,in%20their%20A%2DLevel%20entries.

In the United Kingdom in 2022, 14.8 percent of female students and 14.4 percent of male students achieved an A* grade in their A-Level entries. The most common grade for female students was a B grade, achieved by 27.2 percent of females, and for male students the most common grade was also a B grade, achieved by a quarter of male students.

Someone from an ethnic group or state school is no less bright than someone from a private school. They just didn’t have the same opportunities - not their fault.

Hence these groups need support from Uni’s and employers to reach their potential and to ensure we have socially diverse workforces.

@BramleyBear
Saying that private school DC are being discriminated against is just nonsense.

There is a target to reduce their numbers despite that they significantly outperform students from state schools. By definition that is discrimination. Look it up.

Regarding the whole state vs independent schooling question, perhaps independent schools need to reliably quantify their students ability as compared to the rest of the population.
If is is objectively proven that their cohort is X per cent age more high achieving then it follows Oxbridge duty to fulfil fair admissions would simply be to reflect the percentage by which their inherent cohort is brighter. Perhaps they should devise some IQ type tests like the stuff they have in the US.

Why do you think they outperform state pupils? @Marchesman

The target is more about encouraging more state school students to apply. They can't get in if they don't apply. All Oxbridge want is the students with the ability and the potential. They don't really care where they comes from. They just don't want to miss out - indeed can't afford to.

@Parker231
Regarding state school pupils, you are wrong for reasons that have already been explained. Schooling is relatively unimportant the exception being for FSM eligible pupils, for whom on the whole, comprehensive schools are a disaster.

But the advantage of private education (class size, resources etc) must be calculated in first and foremost.

@JustanothermagicMonday1
JCQ cautions against reading too much into the 2022 results. Grade boundaries were set somewhere between 2019 and 2021 levels and markers were encouraged to be more flexible when papers were on grade margins, as can be seen in the leap in A*s compared with 2019 and earlier.

2019 was the last year with reliable results.

Reduce their numbers because they have been ridiculously overrepresented. Just because something is moving towards a more equitable position does not mean they are being discriminated against (for the second time). It means that they have had an unfair advantage for too long and people like you think that should be the unfair norm. DC are judged on attainment before they get to university when being considered for places taking account of the circumstances in which their results were achieved. Contextualisation. Look it up.

How come grammar school students who are surely selected on their academics, do worse than independently educated

DS's grammar didn't have any 1:1 career advice in Y11 to ask them what they wanted to do and suggest A-levels. They have suggested Oxford a few times (he's not interested anyway and we are happy with his choice to stay at home) but it would have required FM which he is not doing and they never advised, let alone advise about extra exams which Oxford requires 😂

We had to fight on GCSE results day for them to give him the subjects he wanted for his A levels as apparently they had not got DS's choice as they had sent an email asking months before that, yes a single email, no follow up which DS had ignored due to its stupid subject. The top 1/3 of his cohort according to DS left after GCSEs for other 6th forms as they were not happy.

Since Y7 he's had, trainee after another trainee or endless supplies for English, Maths, no Geography teacher. 3-4 subject teachers within a year. The teacher would start a Maths topic assuming they had covered another which another class had covered. The same with literature. Zero communication. I can go on and on but you get it.

You certainly can't compare this grammar with a private school. In fact, the Cambridge outreach officer visited the school to encourage them to apply.

I seriously can't imagine what it would have been like if they also had disruptive children in class or they had to cater for lower abilities like in comprehensives.

All Oxbridge outreach does is advertise themselves and say it's cool, we are not a private, elite club, apply and we'll see. They show how to do your own research and and further study your topic, how to show passion, lectures to watch, books to read, they don't give a toss about duke of Edinburgh, piano lessons etc.

I have seen threads like this one so many times. People crying why Oxbridge "discriminates" only for Oxbridge admissions to appear on threads saying "no, we have simply become better at spotting talent".

When it gets to 93:7 ratio get back to us. With 7% of children going to state school that would be fair.

I think it's better to look at the ratio of high performing children since not everyone is a realistic prospect for Oxbridge. It's about 3:1 when you look at DC achieving ÅÅA or better at A level. Oxbridge are not far off but not there yet.

@trickortrickier
All Oxbridge want is the students with the ability and the potential. They don't really care where they comes from.

That is not the case.

Firstly they explicitly say that they want them from one place in preference to another.

Secondly their preference is demonstrably for lower potential.

You are not listening @Marchesman

Why do you believe that state school pupils don’t do as well as private school pupils at Oxbridge? What could the answer be?

@SoTedious
Do you have a link to the research showing that 10% of private school students are from the bottom two SES quintiles? I find that really hard to believe.

H. Chowdry, C. Crawford, L. Dearden, et al. "Widening participation in higher education: analysis using linked administrative data," J. R. Statist. Soc. A 176/2 (2013), 440.

One reason why state educated students are gaining lower Finals results could be that Oxbridge still teach as if all pupils went to public school. For example, in humanities, in order to study historical texts, literature (in any European language) etc etc, you need a solid knowledge of the Classics and of the Bible. Most state schools do not offer Latin, Greek, or even Ancient History. Public schools and many private schools, especially private grammars, encourage all students to take Latin and Greek, and attend compulsory chapel where even the most atheist of students will pick up a decent enough knowledge of the Bible as a text. A non-faith state school student will have none of that.

Source: spent way too much of my undergrad looking up random ancient texts on wikipedia because I'd no idea what the literature I was studying was talking about. Doesn't mean I had lower potential, just means I had a different education and the course didn't account for that. For example, with a cross-humanities Classics 101 type lecture course in the first term.

@BramleyBear

If the position was equitable they would have the same outcomes. They don't so it isn't.

The preconception about historic unfairness in the opposite direction dates back to a paper by Smith and Naylor in 2001 that looked at the 1993 university cohort and research by Parks in 2011 showed that the system was by then equitable.

Returning to a thirty year old grievance to justify this is ridiculous.

@drawingmaps

Public schools and many private schools, especially private grammars, encourage all students to take Latin and Greek.

I am afraid this is nonsense.

@Marchesman
so if drawingmaps point is nonsense then what other reasons are there for wfh state pupils underperform at Oxbridge in your opinion?

The question I asked was given the split between the categories ‘State’ or ‘Private’ educated entrants to Oxbridge is now 70:30- I have no argument with that, as said- what percentage of ‘state’ educated entrants do expect to come from households of less than 25K ?

@Rummikub

Essentially it is due to the increase in admissions from state schools without a corresponding increase in suitable applicants. If you look at archived "undergraduate examination results by school type" you will find the turning point, before which students from state schools outperformed those from independent schools.

https://www.information-hub.admin.cam.ac.uk/university-profile/ug-examination-results/archive