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.

Classics they should be able to teach in state schools. Languages to some extent, although the cultural visits/trips/exchanges may be a little more complicated these days.

Music on the other hand would require specific funding into a network of local conservatoires that actively go out and find the children with an excellent ear and concentration amongst all kids and then teach them needs blind from an early age. It is really one of those disciplines which requires years of practice and instruction, and that includes voice. And again, Grade 8 Music Theory is also quite complicated, would have to be taught quite well at school as well. The only way to do music cheaply is having a parent who already has the skills of instruction, for free and ideally an instrument. Instruments are very expensive on the whole, especially good quality ones. Again, a free loan scheme would be required.

@Marchesman as you say association is not causation. I hope you realise how offensive and inaporopriate your comment about learning difficulties is. I'm out.

We used to have all of that. It's very sad to think that social mobility has gone backwards in my lifetime.

On the reading front @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g, there is a library app so children and teens can download books if the will is there, in an instant! Perhaps schools should be encouraging it more, if no libraries are readily available.

At a recent conference for the players of my instrument, the conservatoire students were all plum-voiced, well-heeled, with many talking about their time at Chethams

@knowthescore Are there not also a lot of overseas students, especially from East Asia at UK conservatoires? I thought the much higher fees mean overseas students are necessary to balance the books.
I agree it’s a great shame if music isn’t available to everyone at school as it brings so much pleasure and one doesn’t have to be virtuoso to enjoy it.

This is a very valid point thanks @EBearhug

Apologies in advance as this is longer than I intended but I want to give an example of how some kids don’t actually have a choice in where they study.

I grew up in a small Northern village. Working class background. Went to a comprehensive in the nearest market town (which took 2 buses but they were at least fairly frequent). Used to be a grammar school many years previously (when my DM went there) but when I was there it was making headlines in the regional press for pupils “terrorising local residents” by fighting at lunchtimes with another school. So that gives you an indication.

No 6th forms in the area at all but most kids didn’t stay on after 16 so it wasn’t considered an issue. Anyone who wanted to do A levels had to go to the ‘tertiary college’ in another town. The tertiary college also partnered with the local prison for education (I think funding from that was what kept them afloat actually). The majority of my family were baffled by what the point was of a working class girl doing A levels but fortunately I had supportive parents with less medieval attitudes. So tertiary college it was. 2 buses per day went to the college town from my village but since it was the only option if you wanted to do A levels, it was either get the rare bus (if you were lucky) or walk there/back (only took 1 hour if you knew the way over the fields) regardless of weather. I chose French, Spanish, Economics and Geography and towards the end of my first year, the tertiary college suggested I apply to Oxbridge. I wanted to do French and Economics at uni and I got an interview at Kings Cambridge for MML and Economics. Turned out Kings didn’t think I would be able to cope doing MML as my language A levels didn’t include any literature. My tertiary college only did a ‘modern’ syllabus for language A levels which meant a lot of reading and listening to news articles in French rather than French literature. So I was proficient at discussing the impact of unemployment on the economy in French but wouldn’t recognise Camus if he hit me over the head with one of his books. Kings only offered me for straight Economics as a result. So that was that. At the time I was furious with my college at the choice of syllabus and went off the rails quite badly but actually my ‘modern’ French is a lot more useful in the real world. Cambridge would have been a disaster for me. I would have been so out of my depth there and quite probably would have been one of those comprehensive kids who dropped out.

So I went to uni elsewhere and did my French and Economics there instead. It turned out well for me. But it upsets me greatly that there are still people out there who have no awareness of the additional challenges bright working class kids have both at school and when getting into uni. As @cantabsupervisor says, the gap with their privately educated counterparts at 16 or 18 is huge. And that continues in the graduate job market. The playing field isn’t level, and most likely will never be level.

Yes, but the will isn't there and most children and teenagers are exposed very young to social media and other content on the internet which is addictive, unregulated and requires far less effort than reading a book.

All I can say is that there are no plans to do this at the Cambridge college where my DH handles admissions in his subject.

As a city we have a top private school in the private grammar school model, a minor public school and top state sixth form college. The last of these schools has been in the top 5 state schools for getting kids into Oxbridge for years. It just makes me wonder where the clowns responsible for this Trinity Hall decision are sending their own kids to sixth form.

Additionally, the message this decision sends out makes a mockery of years and years of the development of fair policies by DH and many of his colleagues across faculties, departments and colleges.

If you attend one of these schools the chances are your parents have titles, land and inter generational wealth, your massive sense of entitlement that has been nurtured since birth prevents you from working in a normal career, you don’t need a job as such. it is something you do because your folks organised some soft position somewhere that has zero accountability and allows you to perfect the skill of falling upwards no matter how much you fuck up.

@ChamonixMountainBum So no one who went to a selective public school has or needs a normal job and every single one has sinecure positions from which they can’t be sacked?
Odd that my titleless ds worked as an interpreter for ten years, a job in which making mistakes would’ve resulted in the sack, and I can’t think of one of his friends who meets your claims.
Can you give some examples of companies which offer these positions which are exempt from normal employment law?

Nothing offensive about it at all. If you went to the trouble of reading the analysis to which I referred you would know that.

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).

The per cent mark remained lower for the four disability groups:
Cognitive or learning difficulties (estimate = -0.88, SE = 0.33, t = -2.67, p< 0.01);
Mental health condition (estimate = -3.00, SE = 0.44, t = -6.88, p< 0.001);
Other or multiple impairments (estimate = -2.20, SE = 0.55, t = -0.40, p< 0.001);
Social or communication impairment (estimate = -4.73, SE = 0.77, t = -6.15, p< 0.001).

Is access to education resources based on identity boxing not a left wing idea?

If the identity boxes are "wealth", "titles", and "being from a well-connected family", I'd say it's very much a right-leaning Establishment idea.

I went to uni as a mature student, as did my mother before me. I went to a pre-application meeting with the head of the course and was made an unconditional offer without even being asked my A-levels, based on vocational and informal experience. The straight-outta-sixth-form types all had to do the conditional offer dance.

My mother had a very similar experience some twenty years earlier, and she studied at a Russell Group institution. Mature applicants throughout the UK have similar experiences of entry requirements being waived.

Were those not "contextual offers" based on our age, that our A-level results were disregarded and offers made based on our prior experience? Are you OK with mature students getting a different application process? And if so, why not be OK with contextual offers on the basis of other objectively-justifiable factors, such as being a care leaver or attending a school that is in special measures?

@Denim4ever - the state school Oxbridge stats refer to total numbers of successful offers and often omit to cite the size of the year group, to put it in perspective.
I think the only state school which competes with Westminster School (arguably) is Queen Elizabeth in Barnet.

Just to pressure-test your argument.

If an Oxbridge college announced that…

1. grades are not the only measures of ability,
2. they have established that presentational skill, breadth of cultural reference, and intellectual confidence are important aspects of ability that are poorly measured by grades,
3. their data tells them that private school candidates applying with weaker grades than state school ones are nonetheless likely to be just as able (or even more so) than state school students on the measures above,
4. and therefore it will apply carefully calibrated lower grade requirements for private school candidates to even things out…

…would you call that discrimination?

@Marchesman I undersstand stats including the ones you quote. I have read the executive summary.

We will have to agree to disagree about the comment you made. I am not going to get into an argument about it if you cant see why it is offensive. We have different values.

I went up to secondary in 88 so I would have been at primary 81-88 ish.

No, it doesn't need a network of local conservatoires. It needs for schools to be run by the LEA instead of academy trusts, and for the same LEA to run a free, or at least low-cost, peripatetic instrumental music teaching service and instrument loan scheme.

So the primary G&T provision died off between 81 and 85.

That's how far back the underresourcing of state pupils goes: four decades.

The East Asian students favour strings and piano. The instrument I play is something with a lot less cultural prestige associated with it.

What I said in the thread wasn't about this aspect. The middle para really only muses as to whether the Trinity Hall Admissions person has his kids on track for the best state sixth form in the area if he has any kids. To expand - Perse best private school probably slightly better sixth form, Hills Rd state sixth form definitely better than all the other local private schools apart from Perse

To be fair hills road sixth form college (the Cambridge state “school” I presume you are referring to) is sixth form only, and takes a massive number of students who were previously at private school.

it’s well known it’s a good way to have a “state” school university application.

Yes and same is true for Peter Symonds in Winchester, where plenty of ex Winchester College pupils move over every year too. Exactly the kind of “gaming the system“ that some people object to. Although maybe they are just trying to save some money for uni fees.

Incidentally, at DD’s grammar many also now tend to prefer Oxford as many consider Cambridge too woke on admissions. I do not know if this is just a disinformation campaign but it is not good to hear this from the young and I have no idea where they get it from. Because their Oxbridge stats including Cambridge are very solid.

Tragic. Having spent quite a bit of time in HK recently this makes me shiver.

I went into teaching after my Cambridge degree.

i’ve taught in state schools my whole teaching career.

funding for g and t type stuff has come and gone over the years and also changed in focus.

at one point (and this is personal recollection not me checking dates etc) there actually was a proper push for all schools to identify gifted and talented students and offer extra opportunities to them. This was definitely pre covid - might have been the Blair years or maybe the coalition?

I remember all schools had to have a g and t policy, and there was a national organisation set up for it which ran summer schools and got information out about other opportunities etc.

these days (I am retired now) a lot of the focus is on finding and developing students who are gifted and talented at stem. There’s a lot of money going into maths circles and the like.

realistically the current government do not consider the classics, music and foreign languages high priorities within education - I believe the scheme to support state schools in offering Latin got cut recently.

the main focus is improving maths and English more generally and after that stem.

What you say is true. The point addressed in the second paragraph of my original message is not about that though. I just mused on whether the Trinity Hall Admissions Tutor has his kids going there if he has any.

@HundredMilesAnHour

There is no significant difference in Oxbridge admission rates from private schools and the top performing quintile of comprehensive schools. But pupils in the top quintile of comprehensive schools are about 25 times more likely to get into Oxford or Cambridge than those in the bottom quintile.

The playing field is tilted within the state sector, largely geographically.