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?

Why do you keep talking about Tony Blair's nose?

If the admission tutor thinks that the state school pupil would be a better student than the private school kid then of course he should get the place. As I said before leave it up to the admission tutors to decide who they think would make the best student and I'm happy to back them.

This is circular, TNG will have been coached to do well at the interview whilst Johny (mostly) will not have been, this is an unfair advantage. Also some admin tutors have been shown to be class biased

Newwave- Why do you appear to hate children from private schools so much, calling them Toffeenosedgit is pretty childish. My DS goes to a homework club and the majority of the volunteers who help are from the two local secondary private schools so I don't get your hatred for them.

TBH I am being facetious with the TNG bit but my points regarding unfair advantage stand up to scrutiny.

Our older 3 children have all been through university recently. None had an interview anywhere (although that not Oxbridge and it may just be the subjects they did) so any tutoring for an interview for a huge number of universitys in the top 20 is totally irrelevant.

The universities have always done and will give some preference to smoeone from a state school who does terribly well for that school which I think most parents can accept but apart from those rare cases it's entry by ability. See other threads to see the asy GCSEs some state schools pick. Make sure they all are forced to do proper core GCSs as childrren in all schools used to do for school cert - indeed they used to have to pass all 8 subjects to get the qualification and that would include English lit and lang , maths, geog, history 2 sciences and French (and in those days RE). The private schools know that the core subjects are harder and better and do them. The state schools don't always do so.

Also stop the bias by left wing working class teachers in state schools against hard universities to get into. They can put pupils off. If something is hard and you might not get in then haev a go. Failure is fine. I am not sure the state system is quite the sale always as private. Yes Johhny can fail, He can get all his sums wrong,. he can get red marks all over his book and told he hasn't been done enough and he will develop the robustness to put himself forward for challenge.He can even take part in sports day and be useless and know that he is but he will hate a talent somewhere else to make up so it doesn't matter if he was last in his race but don't make them all think they are winners when some are not very bright and some not very sporty. i think the sort of ethos of the private sector works too, no sense of entitlement and you will win but have a go and in the trying is the fun and challenge, just learn to pick yourself up from the failure and crack on.

As no one pays up front under the new system unless they choose to it should not put off the ambitious although it might put off someone who thought flower arranging at an ex poly might allow them 3 years to laze around before they start work in the local flower shop which they might as well have started at 16,.

Xenia - what world do you live in?

Have to pick you up on this bit:

"i think the sort of ethos of the private sector works too, no sense of entitlement "

• "no sense of entitlement "???? Eh? Have you ever been to a private school? What do you think the current cabinet are all about if not a screaming sense of entitlement.

The whole reason why huge numbers from Eton etc appl to Oxbridge, and then handle the interviews confidently, is because they feel it is their right to go there.

Unlike the pupil from the poor state school who feels anything bu entitled to be there. And therefore probably doesn't even bother applying.

"Unlike the pupil from the poor state school who feels anything bu entitled to be there. And therefore probably doesn't even bother applying."

You hit the nail on the head granted. The top universities are dominated by the 'top three sections of society' because, in part at least, they apply in great numbers.

If more 'less affluent' pupils applied - more would get in.

Also worth noting - that the '3 richest sections' are not all privately educated. They are a number of state schools which send a significant numbers to RG Uni's.

I don't agree. Whilst chidlren can have confidence at private schools, they are used to competition to a greater extent than the state sector. I was just suggesting things that the state sector could do to help itself.

There is an Oxford article below which I just noticed today which is quite interesting:
www.ox.ac.uk/media/behind_the_headlines/101307.html

I think some of those points in the link are fair, Xenia - but speaking as someone who went to Oxford, thinking back, no I can't remember ANY black fellow students. Literally. And what the article conveniently brushes over - and which I think is the root of the problem - is how much admissions' decisions at Oxford and presumably Cambridge are based on the whims and personal preferences of individuals - at many colleges, the tutors who make the decisions are themselves male, white and public-school educated, and they prefer little clones of themselves, because they feel a personal 'link', and they know they're a safe choice. Not the same thing as deliberate, active discrimination - in most cases I'm sure they're unaware they're doing it, they are just picking someone they'd be happy having one-on-one tutorials with for 3 years, which just happens to be a younger version of themselves.

I remember a tutorial I shared with a male student, who was public-school type, in the cricket team etc - the (male, white, public-school) tutor spent about 40 minutes of the one-hour tutorial discussing cricket with him - not a whole lot I could contribute. Made me feel about so big. (And not something I would be happy with if paying 9K per annum for the course!) But very typical of a lot of Oxford tutors, I'm afraid.

agree with granted. I don't like the interview system for that reason. People tend to pick people like themselves. It is not objective. Selection should be on academic ability, not on social skills or personality or any other factor

I agree selection should be on academic ability. However, with A levels so devalued, too many students are now getting straight A/A* grades. Unis are going to use subjective indicators if 40% get A grades!

At least Oxbridge attempt to differentiate by using their own harder exams (like STEP papers for Math degrees) rather than just using interviews. The problem of course is that better schools (whether private or state) will be better at coaching their students for STEP papers or interviews. That isn't Oxbridge's fault though.

We just need to go a system where sensible Gaussian distribution is applied. Grades should just be relative to that year's intake. So every year the top 10% get A grades, 20% B grades, 30% C grades etc. Even better get rid of grades, and just give people a % mark for each course.

Well the big problem is many averagely intelligent pupils at private schools get top grades, whereas their state educated counterparts do not.

The privately educated are not more intelligent (in most cases), they have just got the present examination system down to a tee.

So the Oxbridge system of extra tests/interviews etc can weed out those who have just been taught (very well) to the test. Obviously the privately educated may be more 'confident' in the interview, but arrogance and sense of entitlement confidence doesn't equal raw intelligence.

The problem is getting pupils from not v.g state schools applying to the top universities in the first place (and actually taking the 'right' GCSEs and A levels in the first place).

The whole education system is deeply unfair at the moment, if anyone is particularly interested in 'fairness' that is??

The problem is not so much that we have independent schools, it is that some of the maintained schools are so dreadful and so many kids get fobbed off.

One of the main reasons I stopped classroom teaching because I couldn't bear to watch this happen any more. Bright kids who would have been considering joining some of the professions after going to my (independent) school were being actively steered towards low level clerical type jobs with little chance of progression, jobs that were well beneath their capabilities. There was a poverty of aspiration and expectation. It was somehow fine for them to just get 5 GSCEs with A-C as they were other people's children.

This is what we have, first class education (best of independent), business class education (more prosaic independent and highly selective maintained schools), standard class education (comprehensives in leafy suburbs) and no-frills education (the rest). Too many kids are dumped in the last category.

Incidentally you will find a lot of ex-grammar school and independently educated people running things in this country. It's not because we all subverted the examination process. It's because we learned to analyse things in depth and present a case when necessary with some substance and authority. These are skills all schools should be promoting.

God forbid that everyone should be able to question what public authorities and private businesses do in our name, though. Then they might be called to account! Much better that 80% of people are kept fairly ignorant so they work hard and spend money and never question their elders and betters.

I see private school students' sense of entitlement as quite natural. Their parents have paid a lot of money to ensure they get a good education and achieve their academic potential. The whole point is so they will aim high and expect to do well.

It's the wide spread lack of this attitude in the state system that's the problem.

It does exists in many grammar schools and in academically focussed comprehensives.

But, IMO, where academic ability is perceived as nerdy by pupils and elitist by teachers, bright state school pupils will have no sense of entitlement to Oxbridge or any other RG Uni.

I don't think many of my school mates had this so-called sense of entitlement, and I certainly wouldn't say that's something I suffer from. There was a major expectation we would work in meaningful jobs, most likely in the public sector, and give a lot back. That seems to have manifested itself in real life.

I do remember being taunted for the school I went to, and called 'posh' and a 'knob' and suchlike, but when I think back to those who did this taunting the most, they seem more bothered by the type of car they are driving or whether they can dress their kids in expensive football strip. Who are the snobs now, eh?

So agree, BoffinMum - both with the analysis of the existing school system and suggested subtext.

The poverty of aspiration is what really, really infuriates me - I went to grammar school, my DH went to bog standard comp (now in special measures). I've seen his books - his teachers failed to pick up on basic errors - even English teachers not correcting spelling etc.

So many people I know have no understanding of what they are capable of, just accept what the school tells them with no concept they could achieve more than that. My kids do well at school at least in part because I have very high expectations for them - I believe very, very few kids are not capable of 5 good GCSEs - certainly nothing like the astonishing numbers that fail to get them now.

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.

Dare aay that's pretty controversial, though.

jackstar, I find it very intriguing that you conflate a sense of entitlement with high aspirations and a commitment to fulfilling one's own potential. IME as a university lecturer, they are more often in opposition to each other - i.e. the student with the sense of entitlement thinks they can just sit back and expect to have their 2.1 provided by the university without any further effort on their part.

I am not mapping that onto educational background, because I don't generally have that info about my students - it's an observation of their behaviour.

Exactly Jackstar - I once had a colleague who accused me of encouraging the students to aim too high, of raising unrealistic expectations of what they could achieve. My argument has always been educationally that it's better to try and not succeed than to be too scared to have a bash in the first place, as if the kids are encouraged and shown what the the qualifications they need for their career.

Her argument was that they were better staying in their comfort zones and not try to achieve too much after GCSEs as they might fail.

This was in a comp....so agree with your comment on the lack of expectation in some of the state system.

Newwave, have you thought that some kids go to private schools and board as their parents have mobile careers, and some places they go won't have suitable schools; Kazakhstan and Afghanistan for instance? That doesn't make them TNGs, but kids whose parents want them to have an education.

Campergirl. I was talking about a 'sense of entitlement' to go to a good university. I'm can't comment on their sense of entitlement to a good degree.

As for the navigating the exam system comment - perfectly possible to do that in the state system, if the teachers are prepared to take on the examining. Doing that improved the grades for my department no end, and in one case, a series of lunchtimes on how to structure answers for one child who just couldn't pick it up in class raised his predicted grade from an E to an actual C grade achieved.

scaryteacher - I taught in Kazahkstan - if you're on a Western salaary, you can get a very good education! And make some pretty useful contacts with govt ministers' kids, mafiosi kids, etc.

There were a number of Westen kids at our school.

Can't speak for Afghanistan.