Want your children to be able to go to uni?

[GreatAuntLoretta]

I am really feeling the urge to join the NUS protest against tuition fees on Thursday 9th December. Although my children are both under five, I am really really upset and annoyed to think that if they want to go to university in the future we will be very unlikely to be able to afford to send them. Who knows what the fees will be by then?! Also when my children are a little older I would really like to have the opportunity to retrain and do a degree. That would be completely off the cards. (angry)

Is anyone else with young children thinking of attending? It would be good to stick together with some other parents. A large group of parents will probably be a lot safer than a random woman with a buggy and a toddler in a mass crowd.

Who is with me?

Is there already a family protest group out there?

granted -

"Frankly to fail to get a grade C at GCSE level in most subjects you have to be pretty dim or just very badly taught."

I've seen mixed ability private schools with a high number of SEN pupils, which expect all their pupils to get min 5 GCSE C grades. They seem to achieve it too!

I have heard that they are going for amendments today, ahead of the vote. The 21K earnings limit will rise by the rate of inflation every year instead of every 5 and loans will be available for part time study, I thought the latter was included as it was.

John Hemming is coming on Jeremy Vine to explain why signing the pledge then voting for isn't a contradiction together with 2 of the students who occupied his office.

That's why the FCO send their kids to board when they get posted there then Granted.

The point is that FCO kids and HM Forces kids may need in some cases to be at boarding school so they can have continuity of education, especially from Year 9 onwards. 12 moves in 13 years in some cases does not help with academic attainment imo. It pisses me off when all kids who are privately educated are written off as TNGs, when the majority of them aren't. I have met several very TNGs in the state sector too.

fair enough. not sure that's a worldview that can just be switched off when they get here though!

Hi Granted,

^Of course that's what the Tories want to do.

They want to ensure that only the rich can get to university, however stupid they may be, by removing all competition from bright but poor students.

Isn't that obvious?^

Perhaps I'm naive about the Tories, but I don't think that they want less bright rich children to go to university instead of brighter less well-off or poorer children. I believe that they are completely out of touch with people who are not in their own social and financial world. Anyway, my point is that they have managed to get everyone arguing about whether students should pay for their university education through higher tuition fees and compound interst on loans or by a graduate tax. Either way the student pays; only the detail of the timing and the unfair anomalies differ. I have heard no-one on radio or telly question the premise of their argument.

Labour introduced the notion of having 50% university educated and the Tories have quietly accepted that as the premise of their argument. It costs a lot to give 50% a university education, so we have to change the way universities are funded, they say. I don't believe for a minute that a significant number of Tories believe that we need 50% of the population to be university educated, but instead of coming out and saying that (because they think it is politically unacceptable) they say students have to pay and here's how without acknowledging that students paying will in itself make the cuts in attendance at university or acknowledging that it is the less rich to poor children who will be denied the chance to go.

Why is no-one arguing for a cut in the number of places on the basis of academic ability as a means of solving the funding problem?

RRocks

Because no-one, as you correctly surmise, wants to be seen as elitist, RRocks.

I hope you're right about the Tories, I really do! Not terribly hopeful, though.

Heard Lynne Featherstone on the radio just now (on the news). She will be voting for the fee increase. She said (iirc) that it was the best option on the table.

A number of us on this thread have argued just that, though - for limited free places to be given on merit.

Don't forget that in the US, which the new system is often compared to, there are enormous numbers of bursaries - both my brothers, who did postgrad at US Ivy League colleges paid nothing, as they got one of the many, many scholarship thingies.

There is no system like that here. Oxbridge, for example, has huge wealth, but use it to fund their reaearcg, not their students.

scaryteacher - you're confusing quality of education with continuity of education - you can get excellent education in other countries, but clearly if you move round a lot it won't be continuous.

Not really sure why this is relevant to this thread - the number of private school pupils who board is not that great, and you'e talking about a small percentage of the boarders.

Doesn't really extrapolate out well to the major point being made, that going to private school tends to give pupils a greater sense of entitlement, higher expectations and a better chance of getting into a good university.

Not sure that admission on merit is elitist but, even if it is, the current proposal is definitely elitist as only the wealthy will be able to pay for their children's university education and few students outwith a certain social class will have the confidence to take a debt of, say, £80,000 when they don't know what kind of job they will get.

I feel strongly that the governement is ignoring the best way of tackling this issue and tackling it in a way which is injurious to the life chances of lots of people who would make good use of a university education. If people on Mumsnet think that a return to the old system (not the current system in England and Wales, and not even the system current in Scotland (for now), but free university educatin for a smaller than 50% proportion of young people) is the best system is there some way of expressing that in a poll vote? Would people on Mumsnet want to go back to the old system which was free but restricted to the more academically able?

RRocks

Granyted - it was Newwaves contention that all privately educated kids are TNGs that pissed me off and that they have an unfair advantage over others. You should hear some of my friends who work at private schools having done years in comps on the social problems of those in private schools. Seems to be same shit, different setting.

Agree about the expectations, but that is surely the fault of the state education system at the moment, that it's the league tables that are the drivers as opposed to getting the kids to do solid academic GCSEs if they can. I do not think that 50% should be university educated; as I said elsewhere, 50% of my students would not have been suitable, and some should have been gently discouraged from doing AS levels as well.

Let me just point out that currently about 35% go to Uni. Roughly 30% of boys and 40% of girls.

50% was the Labour target.

Just nit-picking - no real point to make .

Thanks for the clarificatin, Jack.

RRocks

Jack

That is a very important point. Many of us tend to think too many people go to uni in the UK (myself included) but on a relative basis the UK is close to the average.

Average graduation rates as % of age cohort for OECD countries are around 38%. Germany is surprisingly low at 25%. The US is 38%, Australia 48%, Canada 34%.

Of course this all depends on the defination of "graduate" since a German degree isn't 1:1 comparable with a UK degree.

sending them to a private school does them no favours at university level though

'Doesn't really extrapolate out well to the major point being made, that going to private school tends to give pupils a greater sense of entitlement, higher expectations and a better chance of getting into a good university.'

Could that be why Diane Abbott sent her son private? It is many Tories who are in favour of grammar schools, which allow poor children to go to schools equally as good as many of the top private schools. David Davis, Ken Clarke, Margaret Thatcher went to grammars. John Major became Prime Minister and left school at 16. The Tories are not anti the poor, they want to give them the opportunities that people like Diane Abbott can afford to buy.

Slug

The've proven after a 5 year study that a BBB comprehensive student is likely to perform as well in their university degree as an independent/grammar school pupil with AAB. I don't think that is a startling result. Better schools can enhance the results of students by better teaching and focussed coaching.

If you read the actual study though it also mentions that "students attending highly selective universities - those with a high percentage of students with A level grades ABB or AAC or above - were less likely to achieve as high a class of degree as students from less selective universities with similar attainment." In other words a AAB student at Cambridge does worse than a AAB student at Hull.

So since grammer/private school students end up at better unis than comprehensive students (because of better A level results), do they often end up with a lower degree classification because there is more competition at the higher quality uni.

They need to compare students at the same uni doing the same course. I assume that will require another 5 year study ...

Yes - I read that article. The point that came to my mind is summed up by one of the commenters - realgonekid:

"But remember, at the end of the day it doesn't matter how you do as a state school pupil at uni, because the chances are 'the system' will have pushed you into a 'lesser' institution anyway, marking you down, regardless of what grades you get in the end."

And that was my certainly experience. My time at poly gave me a very low opinion of privately educated kids. They dominated the HND courses, whilst the state educated students dominated the handful of degree courses.

It's only when I got into the working world that I realised that the 'privately educated' intellectual peers of my fellow course members, had gone to superior universities. Whether we were 'pushed down' or they were 'pushed up' the effect was the same.

'They need to compare students at the same uni doing the same course. I assume that will require another 5 year study ...'

very good point. It's all about standards. But we know that they deny that there are any differences in standards, and that there has been a decline. The study you suggest will take until eternity because the results wouldn't fit their progressive agenda.

Just heard John Hemming who clearly knows nothing about applying for a mortgage.

When applying you have to declare all outgoings,you also have to provide bank statements so all outgoings/debts are totally transparent.

Student fees will have an impact on getting mortgages. Mortgage companies decide who they want to lend their money to,lib dem MPs don't decide it for them.They have their own rules,nobody can force them to lend anybody anything.

If a mortgage company decides you have too many outgoings and a job with little wage increase prospects they will simply turn applications down(which goes against your credit rating every time it happens) .

However the gov wants to dress up student fees it's still something that will have to be paid back and will give future mortgage payers less choice so bigger mortgage bills.

I cannot believe how out of touch with reality and real life this gov actually is.

Mmm. And being liable for a graduate tax won't effect the mortgage a graduate can get?

Nb - the graduate tax will also need to 'kick in' at a lower rate thatn the £21k.

slug, I don't think the article proves that going to a private school means you do worse at uni than if you'd gone to a conmprehensive - it just seems to demonstrate (hardly rocket science) that of 2 academically equal able students, one of whom goes to a private school and one of whom goes to a state school, the privately-educated pupil will get slightly higher grades. But that when you put them together in the same institution, they will then perform at their natural level.

It ignores that the privately educated one with better grades is more likely to get into the university in the first place - the one with 3 B's isn't likely to get the opportunity to prove s/he'd actually be just as bright as the one with 2 A's and a B, because they won't ever get offered a place.

Which is the problem.

The research is all very well, but either it needs to be applied, or - my preferred solution - education at state schools needs to improve by a hell ofa lot so that this research ceases to reflect reality.

The problem of kids who have gone to private school doing better than those who go to state school needs to be adressed long before it gets to university level. Rigging university admissions is morally questionable and won't do anything to narrow the gap in the quality of education between the 2.

Yes it's about increasing the standard of schools. Not blaming poor parents for not helping out enough, not arguing for redistribution so that everyone earns the same.

It is about providing top quality schools like our old grammar school system, which formed and educated Margaret Thatcher. All schools should be raised to that standard. Is that what the free schools are trying to do?