Cambridge University discriminates against children from private schools.

[Marchesman]

MN threads persist in claiming that Oxford and Cambridge Universities do not discriminate against private schools. Now two "academics" have written a half-baked book that argues for further reductions in the number of Oxbridge students from private schools (to 10% of the intake).

In 2023 at Cambridge 19.9% of students from comprehensive schools obtained first class degrees (23.5% from grammar schools) compared with 28.6% from private schools - evidence of unequivocal discrimination against the latter at the point of entry.

Cambridge's own analysis shows that British state-educated students already significantly underperform relative to foreign and privately educated British students. If more of the latter are excluded, the inevitable outcome will be that at these universities the best students are foreign, while the best British pupils decamp to US universities.

Is this really what the Left wants? If so why?

Oh well, this one was published in 2014 by KCL. This is complete blasphemy now, I'm surprised it's even in open domain.

If you're not willing to put in the mental effort to understand things, then you'll always have a over-simplified view - which often leads to wrong conclusions. The nuance in any argument often changes it.

Do try re-reading it. The OP uses precise language for good reason.

This is all a red hearing anyway. The real concern isn’t the nuance of who gets into which top university 🙄 the worry keeping me awake at night is post graduation employment.

Anecdotally almost every graduate I know of with firsts / 2:1s from excellent universities (state and private school attended irrelevant) are struggling to find work in their field. Most are back working in the restaurants dd1 is now working in on her gap year.

Herring obv before I get jumped on for being an illiterate oik.

So... Choosing social engineering over ability damages the economy and does the students no favours. Who knew?!

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reception-baseline-assessment-information-for-parents/reception-baseline-assessment-information-for-parents

As regards the early assessment in Reception. Anyone can request their DCs results.

As a country we collect and track a ton of data on children in state schools.

@TheaBrandt - the graduate employment market will differ from year to year based on sentiment. So those graduating in the financial crisis in 2008 probably had the very worst time, before that the dot com bubble etc. It is another reason this current Government really needs to change rhetoric fully and start instilling confidence. Graduates are an investment and cost money. They are only taken on en masse into a confident economy.

It terrifies me! These children do all the right things work hard go along with the system get excellent results then…no professional jobs!

Dd working on her shift today with a girl with a first from Edinburgh in history and French.

Why are the privately schooled more ‘able’?

Sorry, I didn't answer your question @Marchesman

It's been reported that Cambridge are dropping the percentage target for state schools and instead creating a new access plan which considers individual students rather than categorisations such as school type.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-68545303

Whether it ends up being more accurately meritocratic remains to be seen!

lol - looks like the OP’s literature review was incomplete

My child has a learning disability, is at private school. So, to answer your question … more able than some & less able than others.

Also, 100% certain DC educational outcomes are better than at our “local offer.” worth every penny and the vat …

You're over-simplifying again.

No one has said that all private students are more able than all state students.

(the genetics-based study the OP just posted actually does show a link between parental SES and children's IQ, which would be a mechanism for there being proportionately more academically highly-able children in private schools than state schools - due to having a higher proportion of high income/high SES families. Please don't over-simplify this as well and invent more offense. But that wasn't the point I was making anyway. )

This whole thread has been about the bias at the point of admission to Cambridge, evidenced by more private students getting firsts than state students: because the bar was higher for them to get in.

The point I was making is that meritocracy works pretty well in our global, knowledge-based economy. Prioritising social engineering over student ability for admission to our top universities seems pretty likely to be damaging to the UK. It would certainly warrant a bit of impact analysis, rather than just ideological zeal.

Not having read some news is really neither here nor there.

I'm also wondering whether she was drawing attention to the fact that we don't actually know what will replace the state-student target...

Thank you. I haven't read the whole thing but you are right, they no longer have a stated aim to further decrease the proportion of privately educated students.

They plan to address the other factors that were identfied as independent determinants of lower degree attainment, in "Analysis of student characteristics and attainment outcomes at the University of Cambridge" (2020), but of school type they say only:

"In addition to these six objectives, we will continue to report the proportion of entrants from State and Independent Schools. We recognise that school type is a measure that masks a range of educational experiences and socio-economic backgrounds, and that it is not a measure used by the OfS in assessing risks to equality of opportunity. It is, however, of enduring interest to the public, politicians and the media, notwithstanding its limitations as an indicator or relative (dis)advantage, and so we will continue to report it." (My italics)

Whether they will revert to a meritocratic system or whether they will maintain the present ratio of private/state educated students is not certain, but I think it is reasonable to assume that, since it is of "enduring interest to the public, politicians and the media", there will be no change.

https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/access-and-participation-plans

edit: thanks

It would have saved her the bother of starting the thread.

It's not yet clear how it will change. It seems the philosophy may not have changed: just the implementation.

It's also been a really interesting thread, going in lots of interesting directions. That genetics based study is fascinating. All the best threads on mumsnet give you new ideas and things to look into more.

edit: I think they've said they'll continue to report on the outcomes as well as admissions.

Lots of it actually looks very good. But 'priority selection criteria' is basically code for 'social engineering trumping meritocracy'.

Out of interest, would any of those who have claimed the privately schooled are genetically superior regarding intelligence, be in favour of testing for this as part of uni selection processes?

@Marchesman

Thank you for sharing the link.
So their first target is to increase IMD 1 and 2 and FSM participation to 25%, then to focus of racial and ethnical representation. They will do this by both outreach, which is great, but also contextual offers.

Absolutely! Hell yes!

I would LOVE to see some kind of IQ testing and then just ranking and selecting based on this.

I don’t want to jump into the idea that private school kids have higher IQs. Feels a bit icky to me.

However, aptitude/IQ tests for university entrance sounds like a good idea. Of course, if it didn’t cut the right way, folks would be arguing that they are actually biased and unfair.

To add to my post (can't edit it anymore).

My DC attended private prep school. They did CATs every year starting in Year 4.
The school is not selective. First time year group average was 123. National average is 100. In Year 5 is jumped to 127. There were a number of kids with their own average scores of 138.

Edited to add for those who are not familiar - the max score possible in CATs is 141.

They do this test for medicine - a friends Dd has just done it. There are so many applicants before you even apply everyone does a cognitive test similar to the driving test one but tailored to medicine If you fail it you can’t even apply - end of. Irrelevant what school you attend / who your dad is etc.

They brought it in as they found a correlation between those that succeeded in medicine and those that scored best on this test. My friends Dd (state school) was in the top 8% of the candidates doing the test so she’s in.