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?

Exactly this.

Unfortunately the problems in the state sector are largely to do with deprived disengaged communities. You cannot have a successful state school without an educationally engaged and motivated parent group as a whole. Where you don’t have a certain percentage of engaged parents, it all crumbles.

The state schooling is designed by politicians so a percentage of kids and schools have to fail by definition. There will never be a situation where all schools are good or outstanding and it is sometimes non academic metrics that make a school requires improvement.

Investing in Special Needs schools and PRUs would improve comprehensives too because schools have their hands tied when it comes to the children who need that kind of placement but can’t get a place. Too many kids are used to seeing the behaviour issues but nothing being done because the schools don’t really have any choices in how to deal with things. Social services only deal with the extremely dire situations because of underfunding too.

The link above shows that achieving universally "good comps with sets and streams" without a lottery system is impossible; and I cannot imagine the sort of people who are hostile towards private schools being big fans of lotteries - if they were we would already have them.

After nearly 60 years, comprehensive schools have sorted themselves into a hierarchy. The most popular ones (those with house price premiums that would be large enough to pay for private education), are more socially selective than grammar schools and many are academically selective. Using Oxbridge entry as a metric, children in the top quintile of comprehensive schools are 24 times more successful than children in the bottom quintile.

It seems to me almost impossible for educationalists to investigate or address this. Firstly it would require acknowledgement that there could be a problem with the socialist ideal of a school that any pupil can attend, irrespective of their social class or ability, where they are all taught together. Secondly the problem has no plausible and acceptable solution. Thirdly the schools that "toffs" use are too attractive as a target and attacking them is a proven means of academic progression. (It is interesting that the most hostile educationalists were educated in what would have been, while they were there, called minor public schools which might explain their fixation with Eton on one hand, and their disinterest in state schools on the other.)

I had low expectations of finding an answer to my original question but thanks to info, analysis, and help keeping the discussion on track from @Araminta1003 @EmpressoftheMundane @Fishgish @nearlylovemyusername @strawberrybubblegum and others it is, I think, possible to understand the behaviour of the people at Cambridge who were responsible for discriminating against privately educated applicants.

The encouraging thing that I have taken from it is that, the maddest ideas of educationalists probably eventually fail if there are grown-ups involved.

i take it you will be happy to more tax to support this (in addition to private school fees)?

Lol

... or it could have something to do with the fact that many privately educated people at elite universities breeze through their courses while being generously subsidised by parents/trust funds, whereas state educated pupils much, much more likely to have to work full time during the holidays and part time in term time, which obviously impacts on study.

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

I completely agree with this. In absolutely every industry, competitors benchmark one another's pricing strategies. The private school sector isn't in the business of ripping off parents - many schools are not for profit and aren't operating in some sort of cut throat secretive competitive capitalist industry focussed on shareholder value.

It could - were it not for the fact that socioeconomic status has zero effect on degree outcomes.

Indeed. Socioeconomic status of parents most definitely has an impact during child development but somewhat inevitably parental influence dwindles with the years, especially when children leave home and enter other environments. UK undergraduate degrees are, IMO, fantastically well structured and the environment is generally very supportive compared to most other countries - which is the great leveller

@Marchesman
"After nearly 60 years, comprehensive schools have sorted themselves into a hierarchy. The most popular ones (those with house price premiums that would be large enough to pay for private education), are more socially selective than grammar schools and many are academically selective. Using Oxbridge entry as a metric, children in the top quintile of comprehensive schools are 24 times more successful than children in the bottom quintile."

The 'most popular' comprehensive schools by and large have the same or fewer resources per head as the 'least popular' schools, and double the number of teachers per pupil as your average fee paying school.

To try to suggest some sort of parity of provision between a state school with a predominantly middle class intake because of catchment, and private schools, and use that as evidence that inequity is just as bad in the state sector as it is between state and private - that's just silly.

State school intakes - at least at primary - by and large reflect the social demographic of the area in which they're situated, and 'pupil demographic' rather than 'resources' or 'quality of teaching' will by and large shape the 'output' more than anything else.

But if you want to judge the quality of a school by the degree of improvement it effects - many of the state schools with the highest rates of 'value added' in the country have incredibly diverse student intakes and a high percentage of children on FSM. In other words they're schools that aren't selecting either socially or academically, are getting about half the funding per head as your average private school.

So just to clarify the points above, if you look at the report Cambridge published, they separate out the impact of coming from private school from the impact of being wealthy (SES status).

When you look at the Cambridge report, richer students (who may come from either type of school) aren't more likely to get a first.

Ie whilst not having to work during the holidays seems plausible as a mechanism, the numbers simply don't bear that hypothesis out. Equally wealthy students from state schools don't get more firsts: only the private students do. So it isn't being wealthy that makes the difference.

Students from private school are more likely to get a first: because they were discriminated against at the point of entry. Ie, only the very best private students got offered a place. Whereas a wider range of state students were offered a place: both those who were equally able as the private students and also those who were less able. (Then the less able state students ended up getting more of the lower degrees)

Can you link to the evidence on this please?

This is from the HOC library:

Equality of access and outcomes in higher education in England
Research Briefing
Published Thursday, 25 July, 2024

"Pupils eligible for free school meals are much less likely than other pupils to go into higher education, particularly to more prestigious universities. They are also much more likely to drop out before the start of their second year in higher education. Graduates who were eligible for free school meals are somewhatless likely to be in employment or further study and they earn around 10% less than other graduates.
There is a very clear pattern showing students from areas with higher levels of deprivation are more likely to drop out of university. There are also clear links between deprivation and achievement of first or upper second-class degrees and progression to highly skilled employment or higher study. Students from areas with higher deprivation levels have poorer outcomes than those from areas with low deprivation."

The 2019 Cambridge paper 'Analysis of student characteristics and attainment outcomes at the University of Cambridge' here:

https://www.cao.cam.ac.uk/admissions-research/app-research-papers-2020

(4th file down)

OP shared it earlier on in the thread. It's what most of this discussion has been based on. The thread was started to discuss discrimination against students from private school in Cambridge entrance.

Wider questions about the link between general higher education success and SES are a much broader question - with much less clear causality.

"Students from private school are more likely to get a first: because they were discriminated against at the point of entry. Ie, only the very best private students got offered a place."

Students from private schools take up a disproportionately large number of places at elite universities, and on courses like medicine, dentistry etc.

But obviously not disproportionately enough for some of the posters here. 😂

BTW - I have no doubt that having vastly more resources poured into your secondary schooling than 93% of other kids has lasting benefits academically.

This analogy might help you to understand why there aren't necessarily 'too many' private students at Cambridge, even though there are a higher proportion than there are in 6th form.

Then when you read and think about the Cambridge analysis study, it becomes clear that there actually aren't as many as there should be, if entrance was meritocratic.

You could read the thread if you are interested. There's some good information in there, and if you read it with an open mind instead of jumping to assumptions, it might help you to understand why the OP and others in this thread have reached this conclusion.

I agree. I also think that GCSE and A-level results are a very reductive measurement of achievement. The higher the socio-economic status of the family, the more likely a child is to have done all sorts of other cultural activities beyond the official school curriculum that are not necessarily captured by formal national examinations but contribute massively to their development.

Again - this is not what the evidence shows.

There is plenty of evidence in other countries that more resources lead to better academic outcomes. The issue is what resources. Beautiful buildings, manicured lawns and delicious food are not likely to have huge effects long term - even though they are resource intensive.

The problem for poor children lies within state education - Cambridge selects predominantly state educated applicants from the highest socioeconomic quintile.

The university's efforts to change this over a ten year period achieved only an annual increase in intake of lowest quintile SES students of around 20.

Fiddling around with private schools will not change this and neither will reducing the proportion of them at elite universities. Cambridge reduced top SES admissions from private schools by about 100 pa, and increased top SES admissions from state schools by about 150 pa.

Your point is taken. What I was disagreeing with was the implication that there is a resource driven dichotomy between state and private attainment. The type of school - private, comp, grammar - is not reflected in academic attainment. What matters is pupil selection.

If the argument goes that privately educated students are overrepresented at Cambridge then you would have to say that grammar school educated students are also overrepresented - and set a target to reduce them.

This is probably one reason why you never find educationalists attacking grammar schools and private schools at the same time.

"The problem for poor children lies within state education - Cambridge selects predominantly state educated applicants from the highest socioeconomic quintile."

I think it's actually vastly. more complex than what's going on in schools.

As evidenced by huge disparities in educational outcomes for children of different ethnicities who are in receipt of free school meals.

"Fiddling around with private schools will not change this and neither will reducing the proportion of them at elite universities."

You don't think elite institutions should adjust for the vast inequality of resources invested in an applicants' prior education? My son was taught further maths in a class of 18 at his comprehensive. His girlfriend was taught further maths in a class of 4 at her expensive day school. She got an A* in further maths. He got an A. They're on the same engineering degree at an RG university. She had access to superb sporting facilities at her school and is a county level swimmer. My son's school had to resort to teaching children in tents in the car park because the site was so overcrowded and in such a poor state of repair.
You feel it's right that institutions shouldn't consider the impact this vast inequality of prior provision of academic, sporting and arts in education when it comes to admissions? And you want to see the top universities stop making contextual offers or make fewer?

What do you think state schools could do to improve their provision - given they can't possibly compete with private schools in terms of resources, or in regard to the fact that private schools are able to more or less completely exclude all the most difficult to teach and socially challenged children in country?

Would add - my son's comprehensive is one of the most oversubscribed state schools in the country, and is on a road where no house costs less than a million quid. The school still struggled to recruit or retain STEM teachers and A level STEM students had inadequate access to properly equipped and functioning labs, because the school was so skint and overcrowded.

Nobody has said that there shouldn't be contextual offers. The aim should be for universities to balance their offers to give equality of opportunity - based on the candidate's actual ability.

If they did that correctly, then by the time the students had benefitted from 3 years of outstanding tutorial-based teaching, there would be no difference in the outcomes.

Unfortunately, the reason the OP started this thread is that politics has got in the way. The desire to create equality of outcome (rather than equality of opportunity) has resulted in Cambridge discriminating against more able private students in favour of less able state students.

The good news is that Cambridge has realised this after doing the numerical analysis, and have said that they will no longer specifically discriminate on school type.