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..

If I had really wanted to insult, there are plenty of other words I could have chosen instead of those two. Not sure you understand what gaslighting really is anyway, so think what you like, I really don't mind either way.

😂

Between 2013-14 and 2018-19 "the University’s Applications Committee reported that the number of exam allowances granted on the grounds of mental health, anxiety and depression had more than doubled". Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2018-2021.

Now according to Butterfield, disability is declared by one in four students mostly due to ‘mental health conditions’ and ‘specific learning difficulties’, and the number of students with ADHD has doubled to nearly 1000 in the last four years.

This has coincided with the admission of lower ability students from state schools. Since mental health problems and learning disabilities predict poorer exam performance and the gap has widened between the performance of state and privately educated students, and furthermore, the number of students from state schools failing to achieve a third or better has increased nearly threefold, it is likely that the rises in state school admissions and disability are causally related.

Do you think removing "barriers to their success" is the solution, presumably following the precedent set by other universities of replacing final examinations with coursework. Or, considering the university's importance as a world leading academic institution, might it be preferable to select applicants who can rise to the challenge of a difficult degree?

This has coincided with the admission of lower ability students from state schools. Since mental health problems and learning disabilities predict poorer exam performance and the gap has widened between the performance of state and privately educated students, and furthermore, the number of students from state schools failing to achieve a third or better has increased nearly threefold, it is likely that the rises in state school admissions and disability are causally related.

As cited long ago in this thread, far more private school students than non-selective state school students have special considerations applied for public examinations for extra time on the basis of having SEN. Iirc, the figures are 39% in private schools, 24% in non-selective state schools and 13% in selective state schools. There is no reason to suggest that that disproportionate number of private school
pupils - having paid for the reports etc to qualify as having SEN - do not continue to declare themselves as having SEN at Cambridge. So in fact, the position may be the reverse of that you state.

It is also relevant that for all young people in all settings are suffering poor mental health in increasing numbers. I do not know of data that states that private school pupils are immune to this, and would thus suggest that there is a correlation to the increased number of students as a whole who have MH difficulties, rather than a link to state schooled pupils specifically.

If you go to see a doctor, I suspect that you are more interested in their ability than the certificate on the wall.

Do you think removing "barriers to their success" is the solution, presumably following the precedent set by other universities of replacing final examinations with coursework.

No. I am suggesting targeted bridging courses, summer courses or even foundation courses that demystify the Cambridge experience and carefully fill specific gaps that very able students from non-selective schools may have. As I have said upthread, it is interesting that one of the pioneers of bridging courses is flying much higher in the college tables than it has traditionally done, and it would be fascinating to see the trajectory of their bridging course participants vs matched students who did not have that experience.

Exactly - the ability that you state is to do with their degree class is in fact utterly unrelated to their academic qualifications, and very much to do with skills that are not examined.

So low ability does not equal lower performance in exams. High ability does not mean higher performance in exams. It is interesting that group A statistically does slightly less well than group B in exams, but it does NOT follow that members of group A are of lower ability.

I am slightly baffled by your comment about coursework. As I am sure you are aware, there is at least 1 course at Cambridge that is already examined only by coursework. This does not appear to have affected either its popularity (one of the most over-subscribed courses) or prestige?

Why is ‘attainment as measured in an exam’ more valuable or more valid than ‘attainment as measured through coursework’ provided that adequate plagiarism checks are in place? Would I prefer to be operated on by someone assessed on the standard of their ongoing operation ‘coursework’ or their ‘3 hour closed book theoretical exam’? Trust research by an excellent lab scientist or an excellent timed essay writer?

Ranking of students by ‘coursework attainment’ may well be different from the ranking of those same students in a closed book exam. Neither represents their ‘underlying ability’ completely faithfully - but why is one valid and the other not?

Tbh, though, a reading week would almost certainly be of more value than a move to coursework in terms both of mental health and ability for all students to consolidate their learning, without negatively impacting the challenge of the content of any course in any way.

I think this is a really interesting point - alongside your comment of exams testing for specific skills.

I do think the university should choose the most rigorous, appropriate assessment - whether that's exam, practical or coursework (as you say, that might vary between courses) without taking prior education etc into account. Oxbridge is meant to be the academic peak.

But if bridging courses are necessary, that would be a far better way to equalise results than lowering the bar due to poor prior education.

It could in fact be opened up to help students for many reasons. Scottish students for example only have 13 years of school education against the English 14 - and the curriculum stays broader for longer - so they are likely to have done far less Maths than their English counterparts. Some students may have changed direction after selecting A levels and be missing some areas.

A difference between Oxbridge and other universities is that the others usually spend the first year getting everyone up to a base level whereas Oxbridge expect the prior knowledge to be there and teach to the top of the class. I always thought this was just part of what Oxbridge is: they're aim is to create the top researchers of the future, and the rest (even those who came in with sufficient prior knowledge, but are a bit further down the class ability rank) are secondary to that.

It comes back to the question of the purpose of the University. There's no point in coming up with solutions until you have accurately identified the problem you're trying to solve.

Cambridge already offers both bridging courses (offered through individual colleges - I could find 5, of slightly different lengths and formats) eg https://www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate-study/why-corpus/corpus-bridging-course

and a Foundation course, but only for Art and Humanities:
https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/courses/foundation-year

Both interventions are relatively recent. One would hope that, if successful in representing how Cambridge can reduce the barriers and close the gaps that specific groups of students have through no fault of their own despite underlying high ability, they might expand (in particular, that all colleges might start to operate a more standardised model of bridging courses, as the current variability could have unintended consequences eg that a ‘pooled’ student might be denied an opportunity available in their first choice college.)

(I would add that I think both were set up around or after the 2019 data - and data series - about private / state school attainment that the OP focuses on, and I therefore wonder whether they are part of an experimental University response to this data, as an alternative to a reflex ‘let’s go back to admitting more private school pupils who we know arrive ‘Cambridge ready’. I would like to think so, though it would not be atypical for some parts of the University to be acting independently and somewhat oblivious of what other parts are doing or needing!)

@cantkeepawayforever

I am completely with you on the issue of foundation years - at least until there is data on outcomes.

Regarding coursework, I could not disagree more. Exams and coursework test different things. Exams test subject specific skills and crucially knowledge, coursework tests generic research and writing skills.

As an aside, while I was looking at the requirements for Oxford's optional Greats dissertation - which can be chosen as a replacement for one paper by examination (or as an addition to the full complement of exam papers) - I came across this example of the recommended citation style, I'm not sure which is my favourite:

O. Wol, Orthographic Conventions and Individual Choice (Oxford 1969), 523. (Later citations may use a shorter form, e.g. Wol, Orthographic Conventions, 306-9.) W.T. Pooh, ‘Elevenses customs in the Sussex Weald’ CQ 37 (1987) 23-54. (in citing journals, use standard abbreviations and quote both volume and year.) K. Roo, ‘The stripey Other: Tigger and domestic chaos-theory’, in Roo, More Essays on Imperialist Oppression (New York 1992), 28-45, reprinted in Wanda Brownblott (ed.), New Historicism in the Nursery (Cambridge 1995), 859-74.

Regarding coursework, I could not disagree more. Exams and coursework test different things. Exams test subject specific skills and crucially knowledge, coursework tests generic research and writing skills.

Surely that depends on the subject? Genuine practical coursework in experimental science subjects; clinical medicine and veterinary science; architecture/fine art; music; computer science; modern languages (to name a few off the top of my head) test specific skills and subject specific knowledge in a much more appropriate way than writing timed essays in exams.

I think it is a question of where the utility of the ‘standard single timed written exam’ model of assessment runs out in the educational timeline.

Pre-16 assessment (GCSEs or equivalent) is generally exam based with some specific coursework elements in Art, Music, Drama, MFL. 16-18 academic qualifications are similar, with similar exceptions; vocational more coursework based. The need for ‘mass, standardised’ (even if imperfect) exam-based assessments during compulsory education is obvious just for logistics.

On the other end of the timeline, postgraduate degrees - Masters and PhDs - are generally wholly based on coursework. And of course almost nothing in most careers resembles a written 3 hour closed book essay paper.

My question is whether undergraduate degrees are best assessed by examination, or by coursework (or by a suitable combination of the two), as it seems to be not clear cut from first principles why eg an undergraduate historian must be assessed solely through a timed exam while a postgraduate historian must be assessed wholly through a research dissertation.

A three hour post-take ward round resembles a three hour closed book examination in medicine quite closely, and postgraduate medical career progression is by examination.

I am interested in a subject that is heavily based on a Non-Indo-European language, but a few years ago I knew nothing about it. I have since had research in the field published in the speciality's most cited journals. In the first six months of this year I researched and wrote three papers, two accepted one still being reviewed, with an average length this year of 7000 words inc footnotes. I cover a broad area and if I were to write a cv, my research output - coursework - would suggest that I am an early career academic in this subject.

But I am not. I can't think on my feet, translations are time consuming, I am always suspicious about their reliability and they are only possible with the resources of a library that I have assembled for the purpose. If you constructed a pie chart of what an undergraduate degree in the subject should cover, my knowledge and skills would look more like a badly constructed bicycle wheel.

So the answer to your question is that undergraduate degrees are best assessed by examination. Assessment by coursework is fine once mastery of the basics has been demonstrated.

@cantkeepawayforever - my answer to your question, there may be others.

Cambridge is very vague with its admissions statistics for state sector students. Unlike Oxford, it doesn't provide a breakdown on admissions between selective state grammar and comprehensive schools. This lack of detail might suggest just a shift from one elite pole to another.

I'd be interested to know how students from Hills Road are classified. I believe it's still second in the country for Oxbridge admissions (?) and a very popular sixth form for students from independent schools.

@Flustration admissions from Hills Road are classified as state sixth form college in the statistics.

@PreplexJ interesting, thank you.

So a student with 11 years of private education applying from one of the top sixth forms in the country for Oxbridge admissions is counted alongside a student who completed all of their education in underperforming state schools.

@Flustration

In terms of contextual admissions, an applicant who completed their GCSEs in a private school and then applied from a state sixth form likely won't gain any advantage. However, they are still included in the 70%+ state admissions target that Cambridge used to have. That leads to, anecdotally, the "winter pool effect" , where each college might favor state schools in admissions to achieve the target.

Acceptance figures for school type and socioeconomic status show that between 2017 and 2021 high status students from private schools were replaced by high status students from comprehensive schools: POLAR4 q5 acceptances for private schools dropped by 109 (to 551) p.a., for comprehensive schools they rose by 135 (to 478) p.a..

The number of q1 acceptances from comprehensive schools rose by only 19 (to 61) p.a..