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.

Why should the government fund these institutions if they are not doing what they are supposed to do? Educate our youth

In the Guardian article it’s clear that the students they are looking for are to populate the less obviously monetisable or vocational subjects, like music and classics:

‘Trinity Hall use a “targeted recruitment strategy” to individually approach about 50 independent schools to encourage applications in subjects including languages, music and classics. Most of the schools are in the south of England and charge fees upwards of £25,000 a year.’

I can see that there could be a student recruitment crisis in these subjects and in languages. I do want these subjects to survive as taught subjects. I wish the governments of the past hadn’t removed as much funding as they have done from Universities. But unless we want to replace that then universities will have to cut courses or find willing student recruits from somewhere

There’s an article in the Spectstor headed “The Chinese Takeover of British Public Schools.
According to the article There are 11,000 Chinese pupils at British independent schools. At Harrow, 28 per cent arrive from overseas, climbing to 40 per cent at Roedean.

Therefore if these overseas students apply to Oxford or Cambridge, will the fact they went to public school count against them, or will their overseas status trump their public school status?

The purpose of universities is not to Educate our Youth.

The primary purpose of the most prestigious universities is the advancement of human knowledge. Although yes it is true that there are some more recently established institutions that focus more on offering courses that are focused on employability skills for young people, that are also called universities, the lack of distinction about primary purpose does the whole country a disservice.

When a university's primary purpose is the advancement of human knowledge, it pursues this by gathering the greatest thinkers to work on expanding the boundaries of that knowledge. The primary purpose of offering undergraduate degrees is to enable potential future professors to learn everything they can about the current state of knowledge in their subject of interest and to gain the skills they will need in order to start the real work of generating new, previously unknown, knowledge (that is the focus of ones PhD, and then all subsequent research work thereafter). Those minds that are well suited to this role are hungry for that knowledge and will absorb it enthusiastically through reading and attending lectures in the richly knowledge-focussed environment of the University. The fact that a large proportion of undergraduate students don't make the grade to become postgraduate students, and eventually postdoctoral researchers and professors, means that universities have a byproduct of reasonably educated young people who aren't going to be working on expanding the boundaries of human knowledge. That is a useful byproduct for many areas of business and enterprise but it's not the university's main aim. Universities are independent of government control and set their own policies. Government chooses to give universities funding for research to answer specific important questions in the quest for the advancement of human knowledge, and also provides funding to allow those students with the right kind of potential to become undergraduate students.

If the government's underfunding of state education is so ridiculously poor that a lower proportion of state-educated students reach the standard at which they could benefit from that level of undergraduate study than we would hope for, that is not the fault of the universities. If private schools that are free from the endless demands of government interference and the capacity to require sufficient funding per pupil to offer a high quality of education are thereby more successful at getting young people to a stage whereby they can benefit from that level of undergraduate study by the age of 18, that is also not the fault of universities.

I wasn’t thinking about whether those overseas students are denying domestic students university places.The point I wanted to make is that the quality of secondary education, particularly in STEM, here is sadly no match for what many overseas students are getting. And nobody seems to care.

There’s a Twitter thread from an Oxford physics professor, I’ll see if I can find it, which makes some interesting points about quality of UK students and more nuanced points about state/private and how it isn’t a good/bad divide.

Here it is - do read the full thread of 7 posts.
https://x.com/josephpconlon/status/2010289116588712175?s=46

Interesting. Can you add screenshots? I don't have twitter anymore and you can't read much without an account.

@CactusSwoonedEnding
Completely agree with this statement. Was discussing, with my recently graduated Cambridge DC, their time as an undergraduate mathmo. The maths course is brutal and the comment from my DC was, 'The department is looking for the next Field Medallist, the rest of us work hard to complete the degree and then scramble around in the job market hoping that the Cambridge name and good degree classification secures a decent career path.'
In my opinion it is not the duty of the university to make up for the shortcomings of secondary education.

@WantMoreCake yes that's the thing - and it's why employers look for graduates with a 2nd class degree. The students who get a 1st class degree often don't want to leave the university!

I got a 3rd class Oxbridge degree and have had a reasonably successful non-academic career with employers being sufficiently impressed by what I can do that it doesn't matter that I am considerably less able than mt friends who got 1st class degrees and some of whom now are dividing their time between original research and will occasionally do the odd bit of lecturing as they hope to identify the up-and-coming youngsters who will discover the next groundbreaking thing.

what I didn't realise as an undergraduate until it was too late for me to catch up is that Teaching at undergraduate level is a totally different kind of thing than it is in school. In school, it is the teacher's job to find out whether you understand something, and work out why not if you don't, and help you until you do. At university the responsibility for that work is solely with the student, who has to work out what they don't yet know and work out how to know it and if they don't understand something it's no one else's responsibility but their own to work harder until they do.

@CactusSwoonedEnding
I am not Oxbridge but from another elite London uni and coming from a provincial private school also realised a bit too late the approach to learning that was needed at university in order to truly succeed. I luckily pulled it back in final year and ended up with an upper 2nd. My partner, however, was from a failing state school background who learnt how to self teach from an early age and was hugely successful at the same elite university. This is not to say that all private school pupils are spoon fed and unable to carry out independent work and all state school pupils are amazing. My information is anecdotal and I am sure there will be plenty of stories which both concur or differ from mine. It just interested me that my learning experience at university sounded similar to what you described.
What I do believe is that creating DC that are Oxbridge, and other elite university, material, starts young and at home. This is fine for most of us but the state education system should be improved for the truly disadvantaged who do not have the parental support behind them.

Prof...this has always been the case for LSE and Imperial. When I was an LSE student 50% were post grad, and at least a third, possibly half of the UGs were from overseas. There were lots of mature students in the mix as well. I was the only Brit on my course. Fantastically diverse and working overseas I was forever tripping over other LSE grads.

LSE has a good outreach programme and it is sucessful in attracting London students from non traditional backgrounds. It is increasingly seen by students from private schools, perhaps squeezed out of Oxbridge, as a very good alternative. Ethnic minority students from elsewhere in the country are attracted by the diversity, but they have a real problem in persuading Brits from elsewhere in the UK that London is affordable and/or offers a good University experience.

International students equally will often prefer London to Oxbridge.

Government funding is a small proportion of LSEs income. Less than 10%. LSE and Imperial are UK sucess stories. We should be careful about imposing the same sort of political pressures/constraints as we do on Oxbridge.

There are quotas on medical school places because we think we need to have sufficient doctors to staff the NHS. ....then leave half of them unemployed as it is cheaper/easier to bring doctors in from overseas.

Thanks Needsmoresleep and CactusswoonedEnding for bringing different view points and I can see how difficult it is for the universities.

There used to be lots of schools that did just that. But they were mostly changed to shit comprehensives.

Dividing by school type is not particularly helpful.

The more academic private schools will see their role as preparing pupils for University study. OhDear has already outed my kids school on this thread, but safe to say it one that has been regularly mentioned and which sends coach loads to Oxbridge, and equal numbers to London. Their website suggests that "In 2025, our pupils took up places at all eight Ivy League schools, as well as Caltech, UC Berkeley, UChicago, Stanford, Bocconi University, and McGill University." In addition there were 72 Oxbridge places. The latter number used to be around 100. Some of the drop might be as a result of displacement as a result of Oxbridge's successful outreach programme, but some of the rest will be as a result of increasing competition from Universities elsewhere, mainly the US and London.

The school was pretty intense. DD had two members of the national debating team in one of her classes. You were expected to get the work done, but also be intellectually curious and challenge each other and the teacher, and then take part in a very active school life, including top level speakers invited by a pupil run society. Some of her peers were very bright indeed, but also had the advantage of being able to hit the ground running when they arrived on campus.

A friend had two girls, the second of whom did not manage to get into one of London's more selective private schools. Right at the start the younger girl's school briefed parents on homework and expectations. Spoonfeeding if you like. The syllabus was taught and the work set and if the girls were diligent they would get the grades. The supposedly "better" school was less organised. The pupils selected were very capable of getting the grades, so there was time to focus on stimulating imagination and curiosity.

There is a lot of teaching to the test in both sectors, rather than having an aim of using sixth form to prepare the most able pupils for University. The most impressive students will be those who, because of a poor teaching environment, have had to a large extent to teach themselves, so arrive at University ready to do the same. Second though might be pupils from privileged educational backgrounds who are used to using both teachers and fellow pupils as resources to help them pursue intellectual curiosity.

I just looked up the school where DD went to before sixth form. A decade ago they only had a very small handful going outside the UK. In 2025 it was 28, including six to Bocconi, three to Georgetown, three to U Chicago, as well as most if not all the Ivies. (They also had 34 Oxbridge places).

The question might be rephrased. Given current political attitudes is Oxbridge worth it. Will bright students do better elsewhere.

I do have one question.
Are the students taught more in European and US universities? Obviously Oxbridge has the tutorial system. But Grande Ecole, ETH Zurich, US colleges, are they not actually still being taught at uni at undergrad level? That is by comparison to British unis.

And if that is the case, mind the British uni model have to shift if the younger generation are that way inclined?

Dividing by school type is not particularly helpful
Agree with the above.

My understanding is that the main difference is that A levels are so specialised that UK Universities are able to get students to the same level in three years. US Universities are four years, but offer much greater breadth. So a friend of DDs chose Harvard over Cambridge as she was able to take a minor in music, and take courses other subjects, whereas Cambridge would have expected her to be very focussed on maths.

In terms of level achieved, for the brightest students it is really how long is a piece of string. Final year UGs at Harvard, Cambridge, Imperial or LSE will have access to Masters courses. Subject societies can allow for useful extension. DS and friends at LSE were picking up summer research assistant jobs from their second year. DD's group work at Imperial, which was her (an intercalating medic) and half a dozen students from Europe on the engineering Masters course, involved applying computer game technology to medical tech and threw up some really good results. Places like Cambridge and Harvard exist to provide a learning/research environment that will stretch the most able. US Universities are strongly reaching out for some of our most able, yet it is controversial that Trinity Hall might do the same.

I do think we specialise too early in the UK (or at least itinerary England/Wales - I don't know how Scottish Highers work, and I'm not sure what NI does.)

Shame I can't read all 7 posts. Assume its because pushy private school parents steer their sciencey DCs away from physics and towards economics or computer science as they think its more lucrative??

Why the pejorative "pushy".

After making the decision to pay, we were more than happy to leave education to the school.

I would argue that in London, where Tiffin 11+ coaching often starts at age 7, grammar school parents probably win on the pushy front.

MN illustrates how difficult it is to have any sensible debate on education without politics and prejudices being brought into play. Education has been a real revenue earner for the UK. It is one of the "industries" we are good at, which brings in money but also allows our young people to enjoy a subsidised world class education. . Yet we seem almost determined to undermine it.

Totally agreee with @Needmoresleep on "pushy"

Are parents who buy to be in a catchment area of a great comprehensive not "pushy"? It's such lazy stereotyping.

Yes perhaps I shouldn't have said pushy, but some of these posts are gobsmackingly elitist.

Well you have to be pushy in this climate if you want your kids to be financially self sufficient and contribute positively to the tax pot, unless you really are independently wealthy with a huge trust fund.
There really is no other choice and besides, these kids are funding everyone else. Fail to see the problem with it.
Pushy middle class parents are ubiquitous across sectors and school types and thank God for them or all services would fail immediately.

I think there is a strong correlation between “pushy parent” and Russell Group standard uni educated parent (I am using that widely as there are plenty of elite unis worldwide).