Is it worth switching from independent to state for A level if applying for a highly competitive subject?

[rougheredges]

DS is in yr 10 in an independent school. He’s really happy there- we’re pleased with the academics and he’s got a lovely group of friends. He’s currently predicted grade 8/9 in 9 of his GCSEs (and a 7 in DT which he’s doing because he loves if!) He’s managing this pretty effortlessly.

Currently he’s thinking he’d like to study Economics at one of the tougher universities to get an offer from. He knows he’ll need lots of extra/ super curriculars as well, but his friend’s dad told him today that he might find it harder applying from an independent school. Apparently there’s less wiggle room and the bar is higher.

I’ve looked online and there’s a lot of conflicting information. Most of what’s out there seems to refer to contextual offers which isn’t relevant. I’ve read that it does matter/ it doesn’t matter/ they take where you did GCSEs into account so it’s too late/ they prioritise state schools/ it’s all about grades and PS.

I fear the answer may lie somewhere in the middle of all that but is there anyone who could give more guidance? His current school are keen to keep him (he’s currently an academic scholar with a princely 5% bursary!) so I’m not convinced they’d give unbiased advice.

(Local state school is great. He’d have gone there but it’s C of E and we didn’t qualify being disorganised atheists who figured it out too late. They remove the church attendance requirement at A level.)

Does anyone have any info?

How are interest rates higher than 6% ??? I can currently take out a loan of 4.8% with my bank. @mumsneedwine

What stops you from taking out a bank loan at 4.8% to pay off your DD's 6%+ rate student debt? You can lend it to her at that 4.8% rate instead. It’s like creating a fair student loan for her by yourself.

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money ?? Why on earth would a bank lend me £15,000+ a year, for 5 years, on a teachers salary. Some people live in a whole different world to the rest of us.

I wouldn't move him to a school sixth form but I would to a sixth form college (who specialises in A levels).

You told me earlier that your bank offers you a 4.8% interest rate, and you used that to argue that 6% is too high. But you also realize now that the bank won’t lend you a large sum at that 4.8% rate. So we have to take this into account when discussing what a fair interest rate is.

Agreed. (Both my DCs also on plan 2.)

oh and the majority of that £58k is fees. Not living costs @mumsneedwine
So this is a five-year medical programme? Purely from an economic perspective, I agree that this doesn’t represent a good return on the investment. Just don’t think student loans can be the scapegoat.

@mumsneedwine suspiciously, the government also changed to RPI for evaluations of teachers' real pay when it dropped below CPI as a result of the financial crisis.

The shysters.

That's an interesting question. I shall enquire.

Overseas fees within degree programmes within a given university, even a given School, can also vary. The whole process is market driven.

It has fed greed in the past, but at the moment it is helping crucially to keep universities afloat.

CPI or CPIH, which also tracks the cost of owner occupied housing, are considered better measures of inflation. Teachers were (and are but to a lesser extent) badly underpaid anyway. So I think using RPI (presumably to make a stronger case for a teacher raise) was a stupid and unnecessary move, but a minor point.

In a post from Oct 2024 called ‘The Long Running Difference Between RPI and CPI Inflation’, the Office for Budget Responsibility explains that RPI has been internationally discredited for some time. However, it says that RPI and CPIH are on track to converge by 2031.

I agree completely that the Student Loan model is badly broken. It needs a complete overhaul.

Failing that I would like to see annualised debt forgiveness for graduates serving the nation.

However, it says that RPI and CPIH are on track to converge by 2031. @poetryandwine

Yes. This means that the RPI used for student loans will essentially be CPIH from 2031, which is good news for students, and presumably 0.5-1% lower.

I agree completely that the Student Loan model is badly broken. It needs a complete overhaul. @poetryandwine

Speaking of overhaul, currently Plan 5 is a significant improvement compared to Plan 2.
(Plan 5 will effectively have a zero real interest rate once RPI is converted to CPIH.)

I started uni in 1998 and we were the first to pay tuition fees! We had to pay £1000 upfront and then maintenance were student loans (I did not qualify for the full amount but some of my friends did). There were loads of NSU student marches all over, including at Oxford. I had friends doing PPE at Oxford. Rachel Reeves started the year before in 1997, last lot to get out of it but she will 100 per cent have witnessed all the marches and absolutely knows it was always wrong and people fought hard for the next generation to no avail. The rationale was Tony Blair Education Education Education. At the time, we all thought he was great and Gordon Brown would visit Oxbridge to do the milk round and I remember a lot of people being pushed into finance and investment banking, including some medics and engineers. No surprise there was eventually a financial crash!
In 2003 I was a law student in London and attended the anti Iraq war march with pretty much every young person I knew. It was peaceful etc, but we were all shocked to see it reported extremely briefly on the News by the BBC, as a mention in passing. At that point, I lost trust in main stream media and its truthfulness. I knew why etc but I remember reading some Bordieu on advice of some of my more politically leaning friends. Frankly, as far as I am concerned nothing much has changed but I bet some of the current MPs were on that march and at least it has saved us from joining the US this time round, because that sort of thing is traumatic.
They absolutely know the student loans are a scam all the way but they do not know how to dig out of it in any shape or form.
In the mean time, we have had the financial crash, Brexit, Covid etc etc and now social media means there is no one controlled narrative anymore. All these forms of controlling people via “data” including our children at school, I just do not think the politicians know what else to do, because those data tools were inoculated at Oxford on their PPE courses and they are largely out of their depth.

It’s a bit of a leap to blame Oxford PPE! Especially when tuition fees were introduced by Gordon Brown - neither Oxford nor PPE - when Tony Blair was PM - Oxford but not PPE - and David Blunkett was Ed Sec - Sheffield, Politics.

This is a very good analysis of the alternatives (& the pros of the current system!)

https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2026/02/14/if-everyone-hates-todays-student-loans-where-are-the-big-alternative-ideas/

@Notanorthener - OK I drafted that in a pretty ranty manner, but I was not trying to blame Oxford for student loans! It was more about the power structure via the PPE course and the political elite and it is not like this is news, see eg Sutton Trust comments on Oxford and PPE.
Since 1937, every single prime minister has been to Oxford uni, apart from Gordon Brown (who surprise surprise went to the most elite one, in Scotland, Edinburgh).

The head of the civil service that Starmer just threw under the bus, O Robbins, also a PPE graduate and his father, a Bordieu specialist…
What do they say the political class uses education in a post industrial world to feign an illusion of social mobility?…

If people are angry about student loans, especially those who were sold the social mobility lie, it is time to listen. It is not like it is not true!

My 'alternative' plan to student loan is simple:

1. University tuition is completely free.
2. You pay nothing back if you don’t work, or if you earn less than £25,000 a year.
3. If you earn the UK average salary (£39,039), you pay back less than one coffee per day.
4. If you earn £50,000 a year, you pay back roughly 1.5 coffees every day.
5. If you happen to be very high-earning, like £100,000 a year, you pay more, about four to five coffees per day.
6. Your.remaining payback responsibility is written off after 40 years.
7. In real terms, nobody pays back more than the original principal.

This is essentially what Plan 5 is all about, assuming RPI and CPIH are aligned from 2031 onwards.

Admittedly, losing the equivalent of a few coffees each day may impact slightly your day-to-day life experience, but it will not lower your social mobility.

I believe this system allows more young people to afford a university education.

The other thing I distinctly remember is that soon as supposedly “free” maintenance loans came in (don’t worry, you may never pay it back was the motto, cheap finance was all the rage) - student rents went up very noticeably and landlords cashed in on this surge. There were a number of marches against the rise in student rents in 1999, as the colleges themselves in Cambridge put rents up quite a bit too.
It is not just about the tuition fees for unis, there is a whole industry that sprung up around this.

Again, I think maintenance loan is only a second-order effect. The main driver is the large influx of wealthy international students, who simply push up prices in the rental market.

DH says it's a bit cheaper for internationals to study at his post-1992 institution than at Russell Group but not that much especially when you consider the non fee costs. His department does have an excellent employment record though. Last time he was at Cambridge they asked about it.

If no one is paying back more than the equivalent of the original principal, the profit motive for a third party loan company ceases to exist. Fine by me, but that would seem to leave HMG to fund student loans directly, would it not?

This then becomes highly politicised. I thought one reason for the existence of the SLC was to keep the cost of student loans off the books, somehow?

Sounds great. But wouldn’t raise anything like the amount that is needed to fund universities.

It’s like the suggestion upthread to levy 1% on all graduates. Try 5% and you might be coming close.

If it was easy to come up with a cheap, fair, easy to understand alternative then I don’t doubt this would have been introduced.

The think tank study I linked to above explains some of the numbers and the trade offs.

My solution is different. Forget interest rates and thresholds, %s and repayments for life. (Lots of people don’t understand them anyway.) Everyone has to pay back their tuition fees interest-free in 10 annual chunks - 1/10th of the total fees over the 10 years after they leave uni. Painful but done and dusted. If they have any years of not working/extenuating circumstance then the loan is converted into a commercial loan after 10 years at a regular bank. So for ease of maths, if tuition fees are £10k per year for 3 years, you have to pay back £3k per year every year for 10 years after you graduate. Simple, easy to understand and means your “loan” (more of a contribution) is paid off in your early 30s. No more stories of spiralling loans, penal interest rates, rich people getting to pay off their loans early, never-ending payments interfering with young couple’s desire to have a family etc. Clear and transparent. (The reason student loans spiral out of control unlike most people’s mortgages is that repayments are currently too low!) The govt still subsidises the system but everyone sees in advance what they have to pay, no surprises.

In addition, I would end maintenance loans and reintroduce means tested maintenance grants, so that students are incentivised to take gap years, work part time, live at home, do condensed degrees and really consider long and hard the cost and value of a degree

Won’t happen of course.

(Higher earning graduates will contribute more to govt funding through the progressive tax system - if they need to pay more then that is the mechanism to do it, not by complicating university funding.)

but that would seem to leave HMG to fund student loans directly, would it not? This then becomes highly politicised. @poetryandwine

Sure. But it seems that half of the posters here long for totally free university tuition, which would inevitably become completely politicised If you don't want government intervention, just look at international student fees — that's what a genuine market looks like.

I think this is actually very delicate.

University attendance has become a class signifier. A government funded, interest free, ultimately forgivable tuition loan will be seen by those not attending as an unfair break for the middle class, and middle class aspirants.

You can be sure that Reform would foment the discontent.

You don't get much more working class than me, and I went to Uni because it was not only free, they gave me money to go. Out generation had the greatest social mobility since the war. I'd not have minded paying an extra 1% to fund it.