Starting Year 13 - September 2015

[hellsbells99]

Welcome to Year 13!
Their final year of school;
Applying for university/college/work/apprenticeships;
A year of 18th birthday parties;
Going to their first nightclub (unless they already have fake ID!);
The year they turn into adults!

DD2 has been back at school for 3 days and has lots of work already.

That Bristol list is well weird, I'd love to know their criteria

Sparsholt college is not a natural feeder for Bristol Uni

I agree. A couple of schools near to us, Lilian Baylis and Stockwell Park (both in Lambeth, the latter rebranded Platanos College) ought to be obvious candidates for any contextual offer yet are not on the list, yet a nearby Independent (Portland Place) is. Yes the latter is known for having a less selective intake than other London Independents (not hard!), but I have never heard it suggested that they don't do well for the pupils they have - indeed the reverse.

OMG, our leafy home counties comp is on Bristol's list (75% A-C, 25% A-A at A2 last year according to the website), every year they get students to Oxbridge and to do medicine - how on earth does that qualify for a contextual offer?

Contextual offers are not fair and shouldn't be allowed.At A level if a student has a poor teacher they should be able to take up the slack themselves.There are oodles of free resouces on the internet.

Brioche
I have to disagree.

My local school had no science teachers for a term and no MFL teachers for 2 terms
find me the kid who can make that up on their own.

What if they are from the 1/3 of households without books in their homes
and the parents are not supportive of learning
and the local library has been closed

But that Bristol list is daft.
Firstly the list should be private
and based on a mixture of school code and home postcode I admit that my kids benefit from that because our postcode is predominantly poor
and it is not nearly targeted enough
far, far too many schools and colleges that are

• already suceeding
• never going to send a kid to Bristol

I disagree as well Brioche. A student from a school with poor results and low expectations, from a family with no academic background or no interest in education is competing against those who have been groomed and tutored from an early age, who have teachers familiar with Oxbridge and able to coach and extend and stretch every student.
Yes you can work alone, there are online resources but they go no way towards bridging that gap.

What state school coaches and extends and stretches every student?
My Ds is in a class size of 21-26 for all of his A2 subjects (maths ,FM,phys and chem) He is predicted 4 A*s and got well over 90 UMS in every AS unit-mostly above 95 and for maths 100%.Any help with STEP? you have to be kidding!
DH and I have not been to Uni (although I have a professional qualification ACCA)
I don't get involved in his school work at all.DS is the best mathematician in his grammar school but that is purely a combination of good genes and his own endeavours.he has never been tutored in his life.My elder DS, same story .And let me tell you there are some shocking grammar school teachers because they can get away with it.

Brioche I passed my ACCA exams in a past life too.
The fact that you have that attitude to learning gives your DS a massive uplift already.

DDs college is NOT on the Bristol list, neither are any of the Academic 6th form colleges round here
so it is vaguely accurate
but TBH well targeted contextual - rather than Bristols very broad brush is a good thing

some contextual just use the first half of the post code
the good ones use the first number of the second half as well we still win on that one
and it should be combined with school attended
to split out the kids with less dynamic parents

I agree with Brioche. Ds is at a sixth form college. It's a good one, but in a different league from many private schools, in particular with regard to their assistance with university applications. I read somewhere - I presume on MN! - that one public school ship in a professional writing team during "personal statement week". And then there is the interview practice with relevant people and work placements arranged.

Ds is not deprived in any way and neither are any of his friends, but certainly no one has given then the slightest leg up. Their effort is all their own.

Well, I've just changed my mind and I agree with Brioche to a certain extent, but not the whole extent! Obviously those who are able to do well in spite of attending a poor school/difficult circumstances should be given a slightly lower offer. But that Bristol list is preposterous!

Brioche201 DS1 was at a sixth form college, not a grammar school but not on any contextualised list either. He got the same as your DS and he got a Cambridge offer. There was no help with STEP. None of the maths teachers had the time or knowledge to help him one of them laughed when he asked. He worked hard with online resources as you say but in the end he didn't get the required STEP grade. He did have the benefit of a school that was good if not outstanding and a great deal of family support.
I still believe contextualisation is important in spite of that, provided it is properly targeted at very low achieving schools with a record of sending very few into HE.

Depressing to see that DH's old school, which was a high achieving grammar when he was there, in now on the list

That Bristol list is definitely, well, surprising is probably the most polite way to put it. I searched for my local areas, and there are some obvious yeses, some perfectly well-regarded comps (parents there would be surprised to hear that their school was in the bottom 40% of anything, I think), and a couple of indies. I really don't think privately-educated candidates should be getting lower offers, that seems very wrong.

Gloria
Because we live in a deprived postcode I can tell you that lots do
they just do not shout about it.

Just to clarify that, according to this map
dclgapps.communities.gov.uk/imd/idmap.html
we are not the bottom decile, but the next one up on deprivation
but walking distance from top decile areas

Here is an example of a more nuanced approach to context
performance

and on that map, if you look at "Education, Skills and Training" domain, my house is in bottom Decile

The map does not work at all for Central London, which shows as a really pretty patchwork of colours. I spotted one "bottom 10%" patch just off Victoria Street, which will be top 10% in a year when a big new block of minimum £1 million flats are complete. The kids in the neighbouring Peabody flats will be no better off. It also does not work for boroughs like Kensington and Chelsea where the majority are educated privately leaving some state schools picking up quite a deprived catchment.

Bristol's approach put DS off. He would not mind at all a kid turning up from Lilian Bayliss school with less good qualifications as achieving anywhere close to Bristol's entry requirements would suggest they were very bright and dedicated and would bring a lot to the party. However allowing students in from a good, if not selective, private school simply because the school's overall achievement was lower (bound to be given it is not selective) suggests that the course would have to be dumbed down to accomodate some students. Better to find another course seeking similar grades who look at contextualisation in a more nuanced way.

Needmoresleep
The map does not work at all for Central London, which shows as a really pretty patchwork of colours. I spotted one "bottom 10%" patch just off Victoria Street, which will be top 10% in a year when a big new block of minimum £1 million flats are complete.
but as at right now, the map is spot on

I've just checked it with a couple of SW and W street s I know well and its pretty darned good
for what is there now

BTW
the Exeter link was the first I picked on, not the first I'm aware of
the whole RG and top200 use Context
some better than others

I just discovered this thread and have found it very useful, so thanks. DS pressed the button on his UCAS application last Wednesday and has been checking emails every five minutes since . Were slightly worried that he's saying that if he gets a good offer from his favourite option that he'll want to firm straight away. We're inclined for him to visit any of the other options he hasn't seen yet (they automatically interview if you make the grade in your predictions), but are cautious about pressing him too hard at this stage as it may just be nerves speaking.

I'm intrigued by those of you who've seen school references. That certainly hasn't been an option here. Equally those of you whose DC have a predicted grade for EPQ. Again, the school has been very circumspect, though we thought his oral presentation as well as his written report were excellent (no bias here, oh no).

imposter you can't firm/reject anything until you get all 5 offers/rejections - a very good fail safe in the system!

What you can do though is register /apply for accommodation before you accept an offer

home, I'm not sure that that is completely true. If you get two offers you really like for Firm and Insurance, you can somehow cancel the other applications. Its really helpful when people do, particularly those with Oxbridge offers, as this then helps what are often second choice Universities (Bristol, Durham, London etc) to know how many more places they can offer. As it is applicants for those Universities often don't hear will mid-late March.

Interesting needmoresleep - I'm just going on what DS has had drummed in during numerous UCAS sessions at school told me!