Independent School Admissions. More transparency needed?

[pithy]

Do you think private schools should be more open and accountable to the parents of applicants?
We pay at least £50 to register, yet get the scantiest feedback on performance in selection/entry tests - a percentage score if we are lucky - no raw data or return of test papers.
How can we really be sure DCs performed badly/well in the test, when a school could pluck a figure/score out of the air if not satisfied with the cut of one's jib?

You could use the data protection act to get access to data about your DC?

Another point: indie schools can do whatever they like re admissions. So if they don't want your DC, for whatever reason, not sure you can really object....

Actually the Data Protection Act won't help much in this case. You can't use it to get your child's script. You would get to see any comments made by the person marking the paper but that may not be much use.

I agree with you. But they will never do it.
You have to bear in mind that sometimes there are feeder schools so you are not all on an equal footing. They have deals with each other.

One of the main reasons why you can't see papers is so that they do not become common knowledge. Many schools do not issue past papers either for the same reason, so that children cannot be specifically coached for that exam.

If you didn't have a £50 registration fee, you'd have a lot of families sitting tests and getting offers just to flatter themselves. An entry fee deters all but serious applicants.

The question you have to ask yourself is what difference would it make to you and your DC if you knew how your DC performed? If he's got a place at the school then you have to assume that they liked him and that he did well enough in any entrance exam/interview or whatever to be offered that place. If he wasn't offered a place it is because for some reason they didn't want him. If we give schools the benefit of the doubt maybe they thought he wouldn't be happy there, struggle to keep up, not like or fit into the general ethos or maybe the school is enormously over subscribed and there were just better candidates. Such is life. I struggle to see what difference knowing why he was accepted or not makes?
IMO £50 for registration is very cheap we paid £200 for my DS's registration!

Often the reason for a child not getting a place is because that there are more children who are good enough than there are places. On the margin, selection of who gets a place and who does not, could be based on all sorts of things.

I remember one quite ordinary child getting a place, with bursary, at a very sought after school. This made a lot more sense later when I heard a bit about the family circumstances that both feeder and secondary school would have been aware of at the time. In this case all credit to the school. However this was their decision and not one they needed to explain to other parents.

I suspect for most schools a lot of children get good test results so the schools are looking for the child that will fit the school best and for whom the school will be the best fit.

For example, if a very sporty outdoors type of school has two boys with equal scores and one is a mad keen sportsman and the other detests mud and exercise you can see why they might pick the former over the latter.

£50 sounds a bargain. We paid £175 to register for St Pauls and then because he already had a place at his first choice DS didn't even go to the St Pauls interview!
There are usually good links between senior schools and their prep feeders, and the prep head will speak to the school if he/she feels a pupil under performed on the day.
There seems to be less tranparency with 11+ entry as applicants come from 100's of schools and there is no relationship and no feedback. I know locally many parents feel that one of the schools is running the entry exams as a money making exercise, with 500 DCs sitting for 90 places. But then what can the school do? If they close the list at 200 places that penalises DCs with parents who hae poor admin skills, or who were unable to commit to Indy schools earlier.
A school is a business and they don't have vast amounts of time to give to unsuccessful candidates, there are just too many applicants now.

I don't understand your question, OP.

Why on earth would you want your child at a school where they rejected someone who was likely to do well and be happy because they were "not satisfied with the cut of one's jib?".

As others have said, it depends who is applying. We live in London in an area where people apply to a range of private schools and have seen nothing to suggest that they are not looking for the best fit - as parents do. I have yet to meet anyone who does not have a fairly clear idea of why their child was rejected.

If you think £50 covers the costs of running admissions, you are having a laugh. Returning papers and discussing the details would be a complete nightmare for schools with hundreds of rejected applicants, and add massively to the cost. For what benefit? You never do the 11 plus again.

I don't know that a mark would make that much difference because you have nothing to benchmark it against. School X might have completely different papers to School Y and even for the schools that have consortium tests, their numbers of applicants and criteria may be very different. They probably haven't got the resources to say "candidate X did well on spelling but not on long division" etc. What would you do if the papers came back with 100 per cent scores anyway - you can't appeal?

I encouraged DD to help herself to the free biscuits to try and recoup some of the expense; she literally grabbed two handfulls when she was waiting for the interview, people stared a bit but she got offered a place!

Independent schools have enormous leverage in the scrimmage for tertiary education. I do not think it is impertinent to ask them to account for themselves over the methods they use to admit!
Sutton Trust figures show that just five private schools sent more students to Oxbridge in a year than nearly 2,000 comps/colleges, or two thirds of the country?s state schools.
When you look at those with similar attainment points at A level, 32 per cent of this cohort at RG universities are from comps, while 50 per cent are from independents.
Private schools, including:Eton, Westminster, SPGS/SPBS, are running what?s tantamount to a legitimate cash for access scheme.
You can understand why parents dig deep into their pockets to ride on this particular transmission belt of privilege!
Apart from a brace of foreign languages, acres of sports fields, and more polish than the bonnet of a Daimler, parents pay for covert advantages, rarely to be enjoyed in the state sector.
By that, I mean that masters at such institutions, will enjoy dining rights with key decision makers at top colleges. A whisper in the ear of the right person over a port or two may do wonders for the prospects of young Persephone come admissions time. And there is a great deal of horse-trading that goes on between such colleges and schools.
On top, there are invites, via long standing ?old boy? networks, to unadvertised, residential, study courses at elite universities - a great opportunity to make your mark as a prospective student. Not to mention the one-to-one lunches with media editors/NHS executives, that are routinely set-up, to find pupils? internships. All this, before we even start on the networking opportunities provided by the other parents.......

Pithy do you mean the figures in this report?

www.suttontrust.com/research/degree-of-success-university-chances-by-individual-school/

They do indeed show stark inequalities. The Sutton Trust suggests several explanations, including subject choices, students from some schools simply not applying to the most competitive universities (and quotes evidence for this), best practice in preparing students for HE. It specifically excludes bias towards a particular type of school as a possibility. This fits with the evidence that the numbers going to Oxford and Cambridge from the different sectors are proportional to the numbers applying with broadly the right qualifications.

For example, as possible explanations: "Over the past 15 years, there has been a significant fall in the numbers of ?facilitating? subjects taken, with comprehensive schools and colleges introducing a disproportionate share of the other subjects in order to appeal to a wider range of young people." And: "The curriculum in independent schools is designed with university entrance in mind." It cites an example of one genuinely all ability comprehensive that has excellent HE succcess rates, as the result of meticulous planning, ambition and focus.

If the inequalities are to be addressed, we need real evidence about how they arise, which this report provides plenty of.

pithy I fortunately am gloriously unfamiliar with 11+ admissions but know about 13+ admissions. My DS school (approx. 39% go onto Oxbridge every year) have a lengthy admission process including often a mixture of written and verbal tests refs. from current prep school and an interview of at least 1.5 hours by the housemaster of the house chosen by the parents and by boy as that being most suitable. The boys that are chosen are done so not just because they are academically able but because the housemaster has a gut feeling that this boy is right for his house and the school in general. In contrast when we looked at Eton the admissions process was a complete contrast: each step of the process was exceedingly transparent in fact it was clinical and there was I felt no room for a masters gut feeling that contrary to what reports or maybe even test results showed that this boy was right for the school. We choose my DS's school because we liked the fact that personnel choice featured heavily in the decision. Many schools have become corporate machines and by making the admissions process more transparent is this not another step down the corporate road one I personally don't want my DS's school to head down any further than it has too. If he hadn't got a place we would not have gone back to the school asking for reasons why, we would have accepted that in the housemasters extensive judgement and experience my DS was not right for the school and gone and looked for somewhere more suitable instead.

When the Sutton Trust looks at progress to the top 30 unis from comps, indies and grammars, over three years ( not one year, as I originally stated in error) it concludes that subject choice is not the "sole driver" of different university prospects.
A separate key finding says:"The differences in the admission rates to highly selective universities cannot be attributed solely to the schools' average A-level or equivalent results."
Plus, the report does not exclude bias towards a particular type of school. It merely states that there is "no suggestion" that universities are swayed by the type of school a candidate has attended.
There is "no suggestion" because the researchers were not looking at the attitudes of those charged with admission. This variable is less reliable and more difficult to measure, because admissions tutors would be unlikely to admit to having such a bias. An academic may not even be self aware of holding any prejudice in favour of one group compared with another.
IMO the best way forward is for schools/unis to be as transparent as possible over the opportunities on offer to prospective students.
What's to stop schools giving every exam candidate a number - to retain anonymity - and publishing entry exam scores in rank order on the web.
Selecting on actual A-Level results could ameliorate some of the murkiness, over university access.
And what's to stop unis with a collegiate system from publishing a list of access events/courses at one easily referenced source.

Absolutely. It attributes it to several factors, including subject choice but also ambition and other factors. And produces evidence for them affecting outcomes. And looks at a state school that does guide subject choice and has very tight planning geared to university entrance - and gets excellent results.

Surely when tacking inequality we should look first for factors where there is robust evidence - and tackle them? As I said, the bias you are suggesting is not borne out when you look at proportions of applicants with say 3 As applying to Oxford or Cambridge.

Publishing a rank order with anonymised data would not help transparency would it?

Grades, subject choice, motivation, guidance - all crucial. But there's still an unexplained bias towards independent schools.
Look at the record of the top fifth of performing states and indies, where "A" grades are the norm.

Per cent of students getting to Oxbridge from indies - just under eight per cent. Successful pupils from comps - two per cent.

You are four times as likely to be successful at an Indy - even with similar grades as those at the comp.
Re: anonymous scores on a rank. Some grammars do this already to some degree. They will tell you the lowest score on the test to be successful at gaining entry.
Whilst, obviously, not providing full transparency, it gives parents some idea of how wide of the mark a pupils' score was.
A near miss might result in a second bid at sixth form level. Feedback of a high score (not uncommon in the south east, where many highly able children are rejected due to sheer numbers applying) might provide some crumb of comfort that the revision had produced a good result, if not the pay-off parents had expected!
Apologies for delay in replying, was on vacation.

Yes, all those things are crucial, and could explain the difference in results, surely? "Similar grades" is a very blunt measure, as others have pointed out, when it comes to the most competitive courses, and it is a weakness of the report that it does not specify beyond this. Of those applying for medicine, nearly all have "similar grades" - very high ones.

Subject choice, motivation, guidance, focus and so on, are all crucial, and the report provides evidence of differences between the sectors. And, as I keep saying, of one comprehensive where they addressed all this, and got excellent results.

There may be an unexplained bias, but none of the figures you quote demonstrate it, I don't think. There are real inequalities in the system, with sound data from lots of sources to show how they arise. IMO, these inequalities should be addressed, urgently and by raising taxes if it comes to it.

Other sources provide similar evidence:
www.ox.ac.uk/about_the_university/facts_and_figures/undergraduate_admissions_statistics/school_type.html.
(including the fact that 33% of those getting AAA at A level are from independent schools).

I live in London and the independent schools I have encountered do tend to provide feedback for children who narrowly miss the mark (often those who are interviewed), as well as encouragement to try again later if they wish. If someone is wide of the mark, I am not sure anything would help really - probably best to forget about it and move on! I seriously doubt anyone making the choice of sixth form would rely on comments about how good they were at fractions aged 10 to guide them - they will have a host of other results including public exams by then.

I'm sure that teachers in the country's top grammars, as featured in the FT's top 50 schools, would be mystified to learn that their pupils were lacking in ambition or academic clout.
Grammars are, arguably, more selective than some of the best indies. So you would expect their charges to be taking the lions' share of Oxbridge places. This is not the case.
Despite doing incredibly well in the respected FT league table - which excludes fluffy "A" levels - they lag behind by three per cent in the race for Oxbridge, according to Sutton. Not much, I know, but you might expect them to be huge drivers of social mobility.
And where the report does mark out excellence at comps, these are comps in very affluent areas with tiny catchments.

Camden School for Girls, for example, educates the scions of Hampstead's elite, an outpost for the arty Oxbridge parent.

And while there's no doubt Hills Road Sixth Form in Cambridge, is a beacon of scholarly excellence, (it is the top non-selective state represented at Oxbridge) the fact that it educates the children of dons and is entrenched into the town's academic network, can't actually do it any harm either.
I agree that it would be interesting to have more specifics on the most competitive courses.
If I were a teacher in a state school, though, I think I might be feeling rather bitter about the constant criticism. Lots of them spend many hours preparing promising students for RG entry. It would be nice if their efforts were to be rewarded.

The school it names is in Cockermouth, hardly a bastion of privilege. Look at the figures about who does which A levels in the other link I posted and similar. Yes, Camden has a tiny catchment, Hampstead will be way outside it. I'm bowing out now, I just wanted to point out that there is real evidence in this report, from an organisation that seeks to promote the best in the state sector and redress inequality, about why there is disparity in admissions. We could talk about addressing those.

(I am not being critical of anyone - but yes there are implied criticisms in the report and some of the other data, some of which come down I suspect to a focus on league tables rather than what will get individual children the best outcomes.)

Lagging behind by 3 % (state grammars) compard to selective independent schools though is hardly anything, is it? It can easily be accounted for by parental expectation. I know sttae school eduated people who are happy for children who are almost the brights int heir state comp to go to an ex poly with their friends and who go on and on about children only doing what "makes them happy". Surely the fact the difference in parents and income and verbal skills, accent, wider hobbies, whole private edcuated family expect great things etc if it only leads to a 3% lag for the state grammars shows there is not really that much wrong.

Bump

@Minnie2022, it's not the done thing to bump a 9 year old thread, especially without comment. Are you the same user who started the Education thread "Upset with some private schools dishonest admission just for the registration fee" yesterday?

The information in this thread is a bit out of date. If you look at the Higher Education forum you'll see a long thread on how "top" private schools are getting many fewer Oxbridge offers these days, because Oxbridge and other unis are taking steps to redress the balance.

Actually it's in the Education forum, not Higher Education forum.