Is Trinity Hall Cambridge right about elite schools?

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/jan/07/cambridge-college-elite-private-schools-student-recruitment

Interesting position but maybe there are those at Cambridge that think encouraging students from the state sector has gone too far? Wonder if other colleges will follow suit.

But those who end up getting AAA are unlikely to get offers hence the actual grades achieved by students at Oxford on humanities course is more like AstarAstarA. ie most offer holders substantially exceed their offer. See this bar chart for the 2024 intake. Only 14.4% of those accepted got AAA or below.

I work in one of the most deprived area of the country. Yet our school consistently gets students with great results. We also have plenty in gangs (real ones), knives in school, county lines is a massive issue and we feed the majority of our students breakfast. Because they are poor does not mean they are not intelligent. They have to work much much harder than their contemporaries in nice homes and schools, but those that do care about education should have the same opportunity as everyone else. And we (& Oxbridge outreach) make sure they do. And even leafy comps have huge problems with county lines these days, you're naive if you think it's down to money.

Must be galling to have paid £65k a year and find your child sitting next to some tower block kid wearing a durag. Although I've never heard my ex students say anything negative about any of their classmates (maybe it's just some parents).

And yes, AAA will get you into Oxbridge. That's what they ask for. But as has been said most will get much higher.

They must have really liked him. Dropped grades are not the preserve of the poor (I know nothing about this man or his background though)

He went to a small, much sought after, state school in Chelsea. (In the days before pupil numbers started dropping dramatically.) My best guess is that growing up in that part of London, with urban confidence and access to what the city has to offer, could mean he presented as a confident and interesting young man.

“Must be galling to have paid £65k a year and find your child sitting next to some tower block kid wearing a durag. Although I've never heard my ex students say anything negative about any of their classmates (maybe it's just some parents).”

As I personally know plenty of kids who did go to public schools and the most talked after ones as such, I am pretty confident to say that most are perfectly happy being around brilliant state school kids. Just not those dealing knives and drugs.
I do not think people send their kids to private school for snob factor primarily. I think they send them for the experience and believing to get a better education. Look most of them have been privately educated themselves and that is all they know, or they had a crap state school experience themselves. There are good and bad schools and good and bad teachers everywhere. I do not even think people are trying to purchase an advantage, It is just seems less risky to them, they simply want their kids to have nice memories and not emerge from education traumatised. I am afraid to say there are plenty of kids traumatised by education these days in both sectors and the never ending insistence on testing rather than real learning and that is pretty ubiquitous.
And yes I am a hypocrite as we did do the 11 plus which is another hurdle but in our case the kids were bored at state primary and quite enjoyed it and there were no external tutors pressure involved. GCSEs however I find a mind boggingly toxic process these days. No issue with A level and the deeper learning there or IB for that matter. I just cannot understand who the GCSEs are even serving with the focus on learning for the test for an entire year pretty much at least.

Dropped grades - no. But admission with ABB is only preserve of contextual candidates. Diversity candidate in this case. There were hundreds of 3 As candidates rejected for the same place.

@nearlylovemyusernameOxbridge do not give contextual grade offers.

Kind of my point. The students don't care who is at Uni with them, but seems from here that some parents mind v much.

@mumsneedwine

Must be galling to have paid £65k a year and find your child sitting next to some tower block kid wearing a durag.

You know that there are kids wearing durags in private schools, right? inlc most thought after public ones?

apart from they do:

PPE admissions 2023-24 information for applicants V01

This is George Abaraonye course admission stats. Page 3, A-levels.
How can you explain that such a huge proportion of 3 As aren't even interviewed, but there is some number with no As at all are interviewed and even accepted?
Even TSA acceptance range is so varied.

It's not 23/24. And they give offers lower to people they really like, not dependent on context.

Their own exams and interview. It's not all about grades (as otherwise why interview ?)

Of course it's not only about grades. But seriously, do you honestly believe that candidates who didn't manage to achieve a single As, and only one A for that matter, can really be that much better than hundreds of candidates with all As? unless you do want to take into account context?

Let's agree to disagree.

Whatever they’re doing, it’s not working. Their output is suffering. Not rocket science really.

Must be galling to have paid £65k a year and find your child sitting next to some tower block kid wearing a durag.

What a strange comment.

Agree.

It is for Oxbridge to decide whether they have done more good by giving a place to a candidate from a non traditional background and improving their diversity, or whether the University as a whole does better by recruiting tip top, university ready, students who then make a significant contribution to University life.
(Raises eyebrow) DD competes in college sport, holds committee roles, participates in outreach programmes and has instigated improvements to college facilities. Is that enough of a contribution?

Reckon students from non-privileged backgrounds may be more inclined to seize all the opportunities an Oxbridge experience provides. WP efforts undoubtedly contributed positively to DD receiving her place (in addition to her flawless grades, exceeding the standard offer she was made); to reiterate, 'non traditional backgrounds' are not just about relative wealth and schooling. Regionality has already been mentioned, but students from the other home nations of the UK are a tiny percentage of the student body, irrespective of educational and socio-economic background.

What's their measure of output?

Also, the VC at Oxford graduations stresses the value to society of a graduate who has completed an Oxford education, not the value that young person brought to the university. The measure is outward not inward looking.

You’re right. I doubt we’d ever really know.. objectively. Why would they publish clear data which demonstrates the points that staff have been making for a few years.

‘A don involved in admissions said: “The part about being admitted ‘on the same rigorous basis as all other students’ strongly implies that academic standards are not being compromised by this scheme, which is simply false.

“I have known students admitted under this scheme who could not write essays in grammatical English, something previously unknown in my experience among Oxford undergraduates.” ‘

https://archive.ph/totwS

"The scheme admits students whose academic potential is judged inadequate for admission under normal standards. These students displace other students with greater academic potential who would otherwise have been admitted.”
"It is important to remember that this scheme occurs on top of other access-related accommodations."

wow

Students from "nonprivileged" backgrounds are irrelevant to this discussion. Between 2017 and 2021 Cambridge increased its annual intake of POLAR4 Q1 students from comprehensive schools by only 19 - as opposed to 135 from the highest socioeconomic quintile.

The justification that was given for discriminating in favour of state schools, regardless of markers of disadvantage, was that it would meet the approval of the media, politicians, and public. However, educationalists believed that it would make independent schools less popular and force their closure (the addition of VAT to school fees was proposed for the same reason). One highly visible effect has been that independent school pupils who move to state schools for sixth form are 30% more likely to be accepted.

Regarding differential offers, only 23 students were accepted by Cambridge with sub AAA A-level grades last year. Approximately 40,000 pupils achieve 3Astar-A grades or better, which gives Cambridge more than enough wriggle room to discriminate against any subgroup that it dislikes without needing to accept anyone with less than AAA.

As to the possible argument that a 3A student from a poorly performing state school has the same potential as a 3Astar student from a "top" independent school, we know that this is not the case. Cambridge failed to find "consistent relative overperformance in Cambridge examinations by any disadvantaged groups with matched A Level attainment, and therefore did not provide support for the idea that the potential of the disadvantaged groups was underestimated by their A Level attainment, or for differential offers". We can deduce from this that "privileged" state educated students are admitted with lower prior attainment, because their degree results are substantially worse.

In other words, as for medicine, you can select for criteria other than prior attainment, but you will be found out.

Degree classification.

Is that just Cambridge or is that seen in other Universities?

Students from "nonprivileged" backgrounds are irrelevant to this discussion

I do beg your pardon, I thought it was the entire point, as cited in the starting post and article (vis. has encouraging students from the state sector gone too far?). My comprehension skills must be rusty.