Addendum to: Cambridge University discriminates against children from private schools.

[Marchesman]

"From 2013 to 2023 the proportion of UK state-school admissions rose from 61 per cent to 73 per cent. This increase was made possible by undeniable discrimination against another group of students – those who, whether through a choice made by their parents or a scholarship won by their talents, attended fee-paying schools."

For an insider's perspective on Cambridge University's descent into mediocrity see: "Decline and fall: how university education became infantilised" D. Butterfield, Spectator 26th Oct..

I think state school vs private school
provision effect is already very visible in some subjects - Classics, Music, MML admissions. Either not taught or at a much more patchy level.

I would also say that being able to view studying at Cambridge as ‘simply for love of the subject’ is a huge marker of privilege, so in seeking to set itself up as ‘for pure scholarship’, the University will automatically be selecting against those who do not have the luxury of seeing a degree in this way (again, private school % in certain subjects tells its own tale).

Also, it seems to me that scholarship is enriched (not diminished) by drawing from as wide a variety of backgrounds as possible - history from the point of view of the ‘mass’ not the ‘elite’; inner city architecture from those who have lived there; music from the streets as well as the concert hall; medicine delivered by those who have as wide a life and social experience as possible; linguistics that recognises street argot as well as standard formal language. It is not ‘a diminution of scholarship’ to admit those who bring a different perspective, even if those new perspectives aren’t recognised in today’s exam mark schemes.

In mark schemes, is a ‘first’ a truly objective measure, an absolute standard? Is it a criterion referenced mark? Or is it norm referenced, subject to marker expectations and bias? Do those who come with different perspectives, with the same ‘absolute ability’, get rewarded with the same number of marks, or are some regarded as ‘better’ than others?

(I would absolutely agree this is subject dependent- but unless it has changed dramatically, eg. science exams rewarded writing vs experimental skills; ability to remember previous theory rather than ability to formulate new ideas or directions for exploration. Medicine rewarded raw knowledge not empathy or curiosity etc etc. The decision on what to examine and what to reward and at what level does have an influence on outcome for specific students who may be ‘of the same ability’ - or even reverse their outcome compared with success in the next step of their career, where eg a PhD may reward experimental skill and identification of direction.)

Wow @Marchesman , while there is a debate to be had here, some of your responses really show the kind of bigotry you represent.

To be fair, @Marchesman was simply mirroring the completely unprovoked insult from @blacksax aimed at all private school parents.

"Posh nobs get their noses put out of joint because they discover that money can't buy everything."

@Marchesman was at least only aiming the insult at @blacksax and (admittedly rather rudely) pointing out her lack of comprehension and apparent lack of care for the subject of the discussion.

"thick plebs unconcerned by tripling failure rate for their demographic at elite university."

@blacksax then continued with the even ruder comment directed to @Marchesman

"pompous, bigoted, condescending twats can't see any further than the end of their pampered noses."

I'm really not sure why people are taking @Marchesman to task rather than @blacksax.

We really don't have to just take whatever shit people want to throw at us without responding.

I am also not sure how ‘thick’ someone is who has met the admissions standards for Cambridge and then got a 2:1 (which is the demographic group OP is talking about).

A 2:1 from Cambridge is not a failure.

Apologies, cross posted. I would agree that insults - from anyone - aren’t a helpful contribution to the debate. Unless it was said on the other thread, I don’t know whether Marchesman is, or has children who are, privately educated or rich, or whether they are involved in this debate at a more theoretical level, and therefore have no evidence whether they are ‘posh and pampered’, any more than that comprehensive-educated Cambridge students with 2:1s have ‘failed’. The latter is more obviously disprovable, perhaps.

It is heartening when people analyse the data, or respond as @User37482 did with presumably recalled evidence but then go fully analytical.

More often than not I think, analytical systems slumber through the whole thing because the heuristic came up with images like this.

Their comment was a response to the one made by @blacksax who said "And in further news, thick plebs unconcerned by tripling failure rate for their demographic at elite university."

Anyone genuinely trying to make sense of this, and most people are probably not, should bear in mind that personal experience, theirs and anyone else's, is entirely irrelevant. Cambridge's data is unbiased, or rather any bias would be inclined to minimise the effect of school type. It is also the case that the issue has much wider ramifications than its effect on the chances of a privately educated child getting into Oxford or Cambridge, most of whom could not care less.

I went to a comprehensive school, and then the top university in the country for my subject, which wasn't Oxford or Cambridge, where I passed degree examinations with distinction. My privately educated offspring went to Oxford leaving with a 2.1 and firsts when admission was still meritocratic. For two decades I had roles in admissions, and undergraduate and postgraduate education at a Russell Group university (not Oxford or Cambridge) - making not the slightest difference to the conclusions that may be drawn from the information that is being discussed.

Once insults start flying it gets very confusing. My response was in retaliation to "posh nobs".

I would say that admission to Oxbridge has always been ‘meritocratic’ - it is the (often unconscious) factors taken into account in the measure of ‘merit’ that has varied over time.

Long ago, merit was measured through previous schooling, personal recommendation and some element of exam / interview.

Then it was measured through exam (taken often in an additional school term, not offered by many state schools) and interview.

Then through an evolving balance of prior attainment, grade predictions, interviews and subject-specific tests.

None are wholly bias-free measures of merit. What each does is select a slightly different cohort from the pool of ‘admittable candidates, which is much larger than the number of places.

It’s interesting that when auditions for certain instrumental music posts became genuinely ‘blind’ (numbered candidates played behind a curtain) the results were different in terms of gender (and iirc race) from when the auditioners could see the candidate, despite the fact that auditions were always ‘on merit’.

So I genuinely don’t think there is a shift from ‘not on merit’ to ‘on merit’ - in the sense that ‘merit’ has always included subjective judgement of eg accent, confidence, articulacy and unconscious bias in terms of ‘like / unlike current successful students’ - just a shift in how the different elements of ‘merit’ are scored and balanced. If in 2015/16 the shift was slightly too far in terms of allowance for prior education, the 2019 analysis can inform the 2019-2021 admissions, and we may see a change in the coming years of results (or not, as Covid may have introduced a further variable).

@TheCultureHusks
Wow , while there is a debate to be had here, some of your responses really show the kind of bigotry you represent.

Do you think BlackSax’s comments were acceptable? If so, maybe you’re the one who’s a bigot.

Marchesman you do yourself no favours. The data is relatively sound and your ideas around contextual offers vs blanket admissions criteria are not terribly controversial.

You are clearly not unintelligent, so I have no idea why you present your ideas in such a dogmatic way. Are you deliberately trying to stir up discontent? I don't know any Oxbridge grads (which I presume you are) with such poor skills of persuasion.

FWIW I agree with you that contextual offers would be better than a blanket weighing towards state school pupils. However, the data you cite is simply inconclusive. There are too many variables omitted and your certainty is misplaced.

Insofar as anecdata goes, there is a huge crossover between the highest performing state schools and the lowest performing private schools. Advantage can be 'purchased' even within the state system: tutoring, catchment area, transport costs for out of catchment schools and so forth. Many comprehensive schools are selective by simply virtue of their location. My experience is, yes, private school parents are 'playing the system', but no more than many state school parents.

IMO the missing variables are mostly around the classification of the state schools. I would like to see a variable that considers the percentage of children from those schools routinely applying to Oxbridge, average house price for the core catchment area and average socio-economic status of the other students from the school.

The other variable that seems to have been omitted (unless I have missed this?) is degree course. Are the pass rates consistent across all subjects?

No, sorry it wasn't me who said that, it was @Marchesman in their post at 15.54 yesterday. I quoted their post when replying to it.

Hope that clears that up. 🙂

Marchesman insulted me, so I insulted them back. All's fair in love and war.

Oh, another insult. Missed your target by miles.

Actually you said

blacksax · Yesterday 14:35

Shock news!!! Posh nobs get their noses put out of joint because they discover that money can't buy everything.
Now... where's that tiny violin of mine?

Hope that helps

The specifics of the admission process are unimportant because their reliability is tested at the end of the period of study. The results will show whether one demographic or another received preferential treatment at the point of entry or whether it was meritocratic.

A necessary, but not sufficient, requirement of a meritocratic admission system is that applicants are assessed as individuals.

The left, to which most educationalists belong, are obsessed with taxonomies so at Cambridge applicants are not individually assessed - or at least they weren't until they dropped the quota for school type.

Before it was introduced, state and privately educated students did equally well in degree examinations, whether they will again is a moot point.

@Marchesman

Lower ability.
What is your assertion based on?

An interesting parallel is with disabled students who, depending on the nature of their disability, also receive fewer first class degrees.

Only a subset of these students will be disabled upon admission - there are those who, through accident or through their interaction with the University process become or are diagnosed as disabled.

Of the ‘disabled on admission’ group, who were obviously ‘deemed of high enough ability to admit’, it would be interesting to consider whether - as the OP’s posts might suggest - fewer such students should be admitted until those who are admitted are of such ‘extra high’ ability that they can manage both a First and the challenges Cambridge poses to the disabled (the administrative load alone of applying for and co-ordinating support is hugely cumbersome, a drag that non-disabled students simply avoid).

Or, alternatively, that the support to those who ate admitted should be improved and made sufficiently non-burdensome to access that those students succeed at the same rate as their non-disabled peers.

Similarly, the question for private vs non-selective state students is whether historically state students had to be ‘extra high ability’ to overcome barriers that their private school peers did not have to, and therefore whether the better step is to admit fewer or really examine and remove their barriers to success (often before their course starts).

Oh come on stop gaslighting. It was clear you meant that as an insult

Poorer performance in tests of ability set by the university at the end of a period of study, published in annual examination statistics and analysed in 2020.

I would argue that is lower attainment, as university examinations are not necessarily tests of ‘ability’ in any broad sense. They are tests of particular skills and knowledge, in a particular format.