MumTrying - over the past 5 years Oxford saw a reduction in state school kids. Perhaps this will be reversed and in another 5 years they will have caught up with Cambridge, we can only hope.
Sendsummer - you have quite literally 0 proof of this. We have people further up the thread with experience of admissions that the only that matters is grades, and that the PS is not worth much, neither is expensive work experience.
Which is it? It would contradict what Oxford & Cambridge say publicly, which is that A level grades across modules are the most important factor.
Ontopof -
There are numerous discussions here and elsewhere on the way schools select. You are assuming that all selection methods are equally robust (remember private schools interview and receive reports from primary schools). You are also assuming that the teaching and learning at the grammar schools and the private schools are identical, despite class sizes and teacher pay. Maybe, just maybe, the private schools are using their vast resources to actually deliver a better education, particularly at the very top end where fine distinctions in performance make the difference. Many are offering Pre-U and IB which offer a different type of study.
Grammar schools say that they have invested a lot of time and money to having the best systems to identify future potential. They would certainly disagree that they are not selecting the brightest!
Grammar schools are harder to get into than private schools in London. I applied to all the grammar schools; the only school I got into was SHHS - similar story for many of my peers. I also went to a state primary school, so don't assume that all private school applicants are coming from prep schools, because they're not.
We don't need to guess about teaching and learning - the excellent A level results of the elite grammar schools tells us all we need to know. We can see that with very similar levels of A* grades, NLCS gets 3-4x the number of girls into Oxbridge that HBS does.
There is no evidence anywhere to show that smaller class sizes positively effect learning & results. And anyway, SHHS had/has class sizes which are around 25 - hardly tiny!
Gloria - OK then, what about NLCS? They don't do that. What about SHHS? What about Habs? What about the deeply mediocre private school Forest, which gets roughly the same number of Oxbridge offers a year as some of the most selective Grammar schools in this country with way way worse A level results?
Are Oxford and Cambridge telling pupils the wrong thing when they say the most important thing is academic success?
But how are you defining 'selective'? It seems like you're just going on numbers, which is meaningless. A prep school will go to great lengths to convince parents not to sit their children for the top schools if they think there's no chance of success. These parents are not going to appear in your data.
The normal way. You know, more applicants per place, kids getting offers from NLCS/SHHS/Habs/Highgate that won't get offers from the elite grammars. Not all pupils at private schools come from prep schools you know...
To say nothing of the fact that the grammars are free, so parents will just take a shot whereas most parents will have to think long and hard about whether they can afford the expense of private education.
In London lots of parents who have kids in private schools at the prep stage will apply to grammars for secondary, and most of the parents at primary schools applying for private schools will also apply to the state grammars. It is much much much harder to get a place at Latymer/HBS/QE Boys than it is to get a place at almost every private school in London.
Of course this is just the unconscious bias, there is still the whole issue of parents donating to colleges & parents who are mates with the admissions tutor getting places for their kids. At least these days you have to offer your friends' children a normal offer and not EE like in the old days!