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?

You do not need me to remind you which of us is arguing for contextualised offers. As my previous post makes clear, a contextual offer recognises innate academic ability while acknowledging a young person's material and/or family circumstances. A contextual offer is not based exclusively on social class.

Well I understand the research but I'm not sure that you do....

Why would you rip your teenager out of a really good private school where he is thriving and away from his friends if you can afford to keep him there, based on what a university "might" think?

Private education has always been the best way to give your child a headstart in life and I would have loved to give my children that advantage.

You would be taking a massive risk.

A level classes in private schools have much smaller numbers and better resources plus more hours of teacher time than the state sector.

If someone has been used to that environment up until GCSEs they might not be equipped to sustain good grades once all those advantages are stripped away.

Also state schools only measure outcomes on A-C grades, they aren't bothered whether your kid gets an A, and if he doesn't get the grades to go to university it will be a moot point anyway.

Plus university is getting less and less competitive anyway as young people from lower income families are priced out, so good luck meeting the state school quotas, they will fill the places however they can in order to remain viable.

This is mistaken, as several PP have explained.

Holding applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds to a slightly lesser standard, by making them a slightly lower offer, is an attempt to compensate for the extra challenges in their lives.

Pupil A may have their own bedroom with a desk and computer, plenty of school supplies, etc. Parents who provide three nutritious meals daily, make sure they have ample time for revision and relaxation. An orderly household, or households, thanks to said parents. Perhaps a part time job, but largely for personal savings and personal development.

Pupil B may share a multiple occupancy bedroom or sleep on the sofa and get no quiet time at home whatsoever. They may be responsible for younger siblings, preparing supper, cleaning up, even caring for unwell parents. They may work because the family needs the money and the work may not be pleasant. They are much more likely to spend time in care.

Pupil A is more likely to attend a school where learning happens and basic needs are routinely met, as required. Pupil B is more likely to attend a school, even a sixth form college, where learning is constantly interrupted by disciplinary problems. Children may be afraid to use the loo, sanitary supplies and loo roll as well as basic privacy may be unknown - just think for a moment about how that would affect day-to-day life and learning.

Of course teachers prefer to work in the type of school attended by Pupil A, so the good ones go there. Thus on top of everything else, Pupil A receives better teaching.

How can anyone say that if A and B each receive grades AAA at A level, these grades represent the same accomplishment?

To continue, @Jeantheoldbean ,

In the circumstance I’ve outlined above, equal accomplishment (or equal ability if you prefer) is indeed indicated by making B a lower offer - or, if you prefer, A a higher one.

I have a state educated DD at LSE. She had high predicted grades and met the GCSE entry criteria. She had one contextual factor (GCSEs at underperforming school) and received the standard offer for her course. She had significant supercurriculars. I do think that her being state educated probably made the difference in her getting an offer rather than not - LSE have many many more eligible applicants than they have places for.

You were honest in your question and we all want the best for our kids. As you have gathered, changing to a state school now will not mean he has more chance of getting into university. I think this thread provides great evidence as to why the best thing you, and all of us able to make that same choice, can do for our kids is to help them understand and acknowledge their privilege, and to understand the benefits that has brought them. With that honesty, it becomes easy to understand why contextual offers are entirely appropriate and an important (if not remotely sufficient step) to address the negative impacts on those who are marginalised by others privileges. If you DS can acknowledge the obvious reality that it is not only innate intelligence that leads to good grades, but also a huge number of environmental factors, and the privilege of birth is not earned, hopefully he will go forth into the world with excellent grades, and will use his privilege for good.

@IdaGlossop You are losing yourself in a bit of a hypocritical loop here. If lowering grades because of a postcode, the school you sat GCSEs at etc is not to do with social class then why do you accuse me of linking academic ability with social class for opposing it?

How does this innate academic ability get recognised so that one child can gain a place with lower grades at another child’s expense who did achieve the grades?

It would suggest to me you don’t need lower entry requirements if the state paid for your education.

The only school in our city that gets contextual offers is in a challenging area with high SEN cohort. Sorry but a child getting an A there IS a greater achievement than doing so from the other higher performing state schools (who don’t get contextual offers) or any of the private schools. Can’t see any decent person having a problem with that.

This exactly.

Lovely post

I repeat: contextual factors are to do with social class. Innate academic ability is not to do with class. If it were, people of a higher social class would be uniformly more academically able than those of a lower social class. They are not. High-achieving young people from more affluent backgrounds are not denied a university place but in some cases, it may not be at their preferred university.

The crux of this argument is whether you believe action should be taken by societies to enable social mobility. I think it should, because a healthy society is not one with a huge wealth disparity.

I can make up any hypothetical situation for child A, B and C to claim they need lower entry grades than D. There is no way in gauging the effort a child makes or the different challenges each one face, it can take huge effort and stress to maintain a scholarship at an independent school or gain entry and compete at a grammar school. You can’t gauge family struggles, bullying or illness through postcode.
The fairest way is to set transparent entry grade requirements and that’s end of it really. I accept there is some leeway if it comes down to two candidates with equal grades, but that should also be done fairly and not open to political ideology. We need to get rid of this divisive identity politics out of education full stop.

Thank you.

We are less than two generations away from an Oxbridge admissions system which favoured men from independent schools, in particular those whose fathers had attended the college to which they were applying. Your anti-progressive stance would, in the 1970s, have argued against moves to make colleges co-educational, to admit greater numbers of state school pupils, and for places to be allocated purely on the basis of academic merit.

It's got nothing to do with identity politics and everything to do with actual objective outcomes at university

Vast swathes of the country don't have grammar schools at all.

Again, you’re in some weird logic loop. Are you accusing me of saying that academic ability is innate to social class because I don’t think entry grades should lowered because of social class (or to do with social class)?!? Can you at least be clear of what you’re accusing me of and why.

That isn’t the crux of the argument though, the crux of the argument is should different children have different entry grades for university placements. The answer is no. Children shoyjd be protected from political inclinations for social engineering

What are the objective outcomes at university?

Are you now arguing against a hypothetical me based 56 years ago ? I don’t know how to get into that really. But interesting point.

Yes I do want places at university allocated on academic merit, what do you want them allocated on?

I happen to be married to a personal
opinion on this. (I was educated abroad and never applied to UK HE. )

DH was a scholarship boy at a public school, back when public school pupils stayed on an extra term to prepare for an entrance exam, if trying for Oxbridge. He didn’t want to do that. His offer was brutal; when he got to Cambridge he found it had been the hardest one made in his subject that year.

But he was fine with it. His thinking was, pupils from public schools ordinarily sit the entrance exam. The others being admitted on A levels and S levels (the precursor to to the Cambridge STEP; DH had to get top grades in both Maths and Physics) are from state schools and haven’t had my advantages. None of which included a love for his school.

I agree you can’t gauge personal struggles (until a child goes into care, and then contextual admissions function well). That is no reason not to address systemic inequalities that create unfairness.

My 'weird logic' would be better expressed as 'a view not the same as yours'. As you haven't stated whether you think academic ability is innate to social class, I cannot be accusing you of believing it is. I am not accusing you of anything. You are perfectly entitled to hold a different view to mine.

Your answer is no, young people should not have different grade offers for the same degree course. Mine is yes, because I want our imperfect society to improve, not stay the same. All of us alive now benefit because people who came before us wanted society to improve. It's why we enjoy employment rights. It's why we have a health service free at the point of use. It's why virtually all adults are literate and numerate. It's why women have the vote.

Typo

The difficulty, as you well know, is in measuring academic merit objectively.

Academic merit does not equal exam grades obtained, for obvious reasons - those exam grades are also dependent on quality of exam preparation, which can be affected by teaching, school, housing etc etc.

If grades obtained in the last exams before university were a true measure of academic merit, then there would be no statistical differences in the spread of final university grades obtained by any subgroup - by sex, by previous schooling, by socioeconomic group, by ethnicity etc etc.

As it happens, there are differences in this final spread, so A level grades obtained are not a measure or predictor of true academic attainment.

The really, really tricky question is how and how much to compensate on admission for the observed differences in outcome. Any way of doing this will be imperfect - an exceptionally able student in an otherwise disadvantaged school cohort might come from a family with all other markers that are in their favour. Conversely, a student in a private school may come from a family with all other markers of disadvantage.

What we do know, though, is that treating all students with the same grades as ‘academically equal, likely to do equally well on a selective university course’ is unfair.

What would report your posts for? What are you thinking of saying?

I agree I didn’t mention it, which is why I’m asking you to clarify what you meant by ‘Another offensive notion from you: that academic ability is linked to social class.’ Again which one of us arguing for social clsss to dictate entry grade requirements? I think that should tell you my view as it tells me your core belief.

This is gold, you want lower entry requirements to help perfect an imperfect society? and this is linked to NHS and women being able to vote?

This is exactly what I mean when I say identity politics and social engineering should be kept out of education.