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?

TBF, I couldn’t care less what private schools charge. I just thought it was amusing that Lancing College can simultaneously be unrepresentative of private schools, be one of the top 50 UK private schools, be Hogwarts, be upheld as a wonderful charitable institution and fined for price fixing.

It’s quite the conundrum.

It was a ridiculously biased presentation.

"Here's a typical private school" : beautiful gothic buildings in rolling fields. With turrets, ffs

"Here's a typical state school": normal Victorian and 60s buildings, fairly often used for both state and private schools.

The writers should be ashamed to write such nonsense.

It will all be fine. Bright children particularly those with good parents and where the teenager wants to do well at university stage and work hard tend to do okay whatever flavour of the month is for preference by universities or employers (although we women did not do okay back when we were banned from university in the very old days I suppose). If some people don't like private schools that is fine - as we have seen up thread you are more likely to get to Oxbridge if you are privileged in state schools too - grammars etc (my area of NE England abolished grammars in 1970).

Someone asked me above about AI and law. I welcome any tool that helps do the job and complies with the law. I think it unlikely there will be no lawyers needed and have no problems that 4 of my children are lawyers - I have not put them off. One of the things I hope their home life and their private school education has given them is an ability to adapt, even survive on remote islands or whatever challenges they have in an 80 - 100 year life. Some of us even advise on AI law to presumably unless the machines take charge there will remain some scope even if just to regulate the AI

None of those things are at all contradictory.

There's a small number of top private schools, which are huge, wealthy and often in beautiful grounds.

They're not representative of the 2600 private schools in the UK. If you want to see something fairly typical, you could look at the GDST schools. Well respected, but not grand. Generally set in nice but fairly normal Victorian buildings, since that's when they were established.

Something most private schools do have in common - whether grand public schools or more normal ones - is that they were set up as 'wonderful charitable institutions'. Education was a pretty big Victorian charitable goal.

The price fixing really is a non-story. Even in 2005, they were just sharing information.

The only truthful thing you've said is that you don't care about it

So the question is, why are you putting so much effort into shit-stirring about something stupid and irrelevant? It seems you're just 'amusing' yourself with a random, deliberately misleading, nasty dig at private schools. Why do that? I think you should do some personal reflection about why you're so bitter.

Oh goodness, I’m not at all bitter, I have nothing to be bitter about - quite the opposite in fact.

@SabrinaThwaite Probably best to let the price fixing from two decades ago go. Schools which were found to be at fault were fined at the time and as far as anyone knows haven't re-offended. They could have been fined again four years ago, but weren't because there was simply no evidence of it happening. The fact that the story was reported in the Times and the Telegraph only means that they were reporting the spurious allegations, not that they were true.

Why is it so important to you to drag up old news to malign private schools? Nothing that you criticise them for will make the policy to tax education commendable.

Feel free not to use them if you are so offended by them, and let everyone who does use them get on with getting an excellent education.

@Xenia ”It will all be fine. Bright children particularly those with good parents and where the teenager wants to do well at university stage and work hard tend to do okay ”

The problem I have with the above is that there are bright children who don’t have “good parents”. Why is it ok that they don’t “do okay”. Or to put it another way what should we as a society be doing to help them achieve their potential?

The video that goes with the slides is the same - they look like the losing side in a third form house debating competition.

Thirty-seven minutes into it Green gets to private school quotas for university admission, part of his three part plan to achieve "educational equality". Along with VAT on fees, his idea is that this will dissuade people from using private schools. His third idea, and he seems rather keen on this, is to "oblige" private schools, ie parents (soon afterwards he refers to their children as "toffs"), to pay for a third of private school places that would be filled from the state sector

If you keep in mind the differences in progression to good universities from the (equally resourced) best and worst state schools (summarised below pages 32-34), and the numbers involved, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that people like this are mentally ill, vindictive, or both.

https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/access-to-advantage-university-admissions/

Each of my friend’s four children works for one of the ‘Big Four’. I think she just edges you out to win the five pounds.

It isn't OK at all, that is why grammar schools were good, entry depended on the child, not the parents. Parents did have some effect on subsequent progress, nonetheless, educational mobility, measured by the ratio of poor:rich children going to Russell Group universities was about three times better than now.

As long as entry to the majority of good schools is determined by house price the only alternative is religion.

@Marchesman lots of grammer school children have tutoring and do lots of out of school extra curriculum activities. These are rarely the children caring for their parents or involved in county lines.

@LoveLolly I was referring to a time when grammar schools were ubiquitous and no one was tutored. If they were everywhere now, with entry dependent on aptitude tests and children were familiarised with them in primary schools, it would be a lot fairer than the present situation.

Feel free not to use them if you are so offended by them, and let everyone who does use them get on with getting an excellent education.

Why do you think I’m offended by private schools? That’s a very odd conclusion to come to. I think it would be more accurate to say I’m mildly perplexed about the love for private schools when many are pretty mediocre.

Fortunately, state schools can and do provide an excellent education too.

@SabrinaThwaite are you about 90? This is like having a conversation with my mother. Non sequiturs, gleeful discussion of decades old news as though it was current and claims not to care about things you've been nit picking about all day.

It was OP opining on Lancing College not being a typical private school that sent me off down various rabbit holes, nicely fuelled by Hogwarts comments and bigging up Lancing as a bastion of charitable endeavours.

Loving the ageist comment by the way. Well done you.

what should we as a society be doing to help them achieve their potential

That is what the £115.5 billion per year UK education budget is for, paid for out of general taxation.

I'm all for increasing the education budget, so long as it's paid for by everyone from general taxation. Educated children are our future.

It is obviously not up to the approx 500,000 parents who pay for their own childrens' education to single-handedly improve education for the other 10 million children in the nation.

There is no test that cannot be tutored for.

Just have good comps with sets and streams, it is not that hard.

This whole system does seem to lead to an awful lot of angst (evidence this thread). How much simpler to have decent comps with streaming that everyone attends end of. Think of the headspace that would be available for many posting on this thread!!!

😂😂😂😂😂

The problem @TheaBrandt is that there is no consistency in the comprehensive system in setting, whatsoever. Many do not set properly until GCSE years which does not work for all children. If you don’t progress much in Maths in Year 7, 8 and sometimes even 9, then it is much harder to do the AdMaths GCSE which many comps do not even offer and it is the one which really helps with Further Maths at A level. Same for language sets and kids who are semi bilingual etc. There are massive cognitive differences between children and some schools set very well and others do not. And when looking at schools it can be difficult to get to the bottom of how they do it and then quite often there are frequent changes. Our local all boys’ comp for example sets for Science and Maths only but if I have a boy who is really gifted at English and Humanities that won’t work for him.

If indeed they do, and I suspect they don't, it would be the smartest thing they'd done since inception.

Think she meant OP, not you. And no, OP clearly has a child who didn’t get a place.

Discovering the structure of DNA, pioneering IVF, educating many of the greatest scientists of the last 800 years including Newton, Turing and Stephen Hawking...

Hmm, I see what you mean. These insignificant achievements are nothing compared to the 'good work' of offering places to less capable children from state schools in an attempt at social engineering.

This country is so anti-intellectual it's depressing.

When was the time when no-one was tutored for grammar schools?

My aunt went to a grammar school (her four other siblings went to boarding school but her parents had run out of money and so sacrificed her private education for the sake of that of her much younger, surprise baby, brother...) and was tutored by her mother/my grandmother (Cambridge graduate). This was in around 1953/54.

I went to a grammar school and was tutored by my private prep school (1976/77)..

IMO the equality police are inestigating the wrong end of the stick. Focusing on Uni admissions and who gets into the elite schools is getting headlines and feeding the politics machine.

It ignores the stark facts of numbers leaving school with no/ few GCSE, 10% of secondaries are inadequate (or worse) and 20% of primaries inadequate or worse (Ofsted).

Pointing the finger at the small % in private, smaller still in “elite” private and even smaller group of these private going to Oxbridge, has been a successful strategy to shift focus away from what’s REALLY wrong with state school system in UK. And dire consequences for economy and “equality”

Ofsted: more than 20% primaries in state sector are underperforming. 10% of secondaries.
How can the solution to “Improving Education outcomes” be:
If a student can get passing grades in an underperforming school it “equals” an A from an elite private school??? (Exaggerating to make a point, but there is no way there is equivalence in mastering material between A and C. It doesn’t make sense to conclude bright kid crap school would get an A* at an elite school. It’s just a political excuse designed to make the problem “private school”

That is an insult to the students who are not getting an adequate, or better educational provision in State School.
Suggest energy spent on private school hate should be directed at fix the problems in state sector. Go volunteer or raise money or write to your MP and show them that you care about the secondary & primary schools struggling …. Focus on bottom 25% & show them how much you care about social equality. Bring them up⬆️