With Oxbridge taking less and less private school students, is it still worth it??

[SillySmart]

stats shows that the number of private educated students Oxbridge enrolled has dropped 1/3 in the past 5 years. Any thoughts?

So you have a sample of people who are oblivious to the world around them. They went to private school. Correlation is not causation though.

I know of several people who went to state school who are in prison. Doesn't mean that all state school kids will end up there, does it?

You have to be really clever. Like really. Not just A* A polymath. A problem solver. In love with your subject. And REALLY REALLY hardworking.

thats it really.

Must stop saying really.

😬

I think that it's a bit much to equate being "in tune with the world and humanity" with having a awareness of social differences in the UK or your town @artyblartysmum. A UK state school pupil has no more lived experience of poverty in India, religious extremism in Afghanistan or the impact of climate change on African agricultural society than a private school one. However there is probably a higher chance that they have parents or parents of schoolmates who are aware of, or perhaps even professionally involved with, such issues. It's also true that understanding the world requires an understanding of economics and politics, which are more likely to come up in conversation in privileged circles than less privileged ones.

It's also worth pointing out that that chances are that a child whose parents could have gone private but chose not to, will have a fairly comfortable home life. They still go home to that comfort after spending the day hanging out with their school mates who are less privileged. I'm not sure that simply observing their schoolmates, maybe going round to their houses for tea now and again, is really enough to give them more than a superficial sense of living with financial and social constraints. School social groups still tend to divide along lines that reflect social strata, influenced by subject choice, bus route home etc.

I'd go so far as to say it's a bit distasteful to think of your children's less fortunate schoolmates as a convenient way to give them a social conscience.

I don’t think anyone is crass enough to think that. They are in less of a bubble though. That said money can’t insulate from everything. Dd socialises with the private school set now and my god the wealth is incredible.

I know of quite a few people who went to private school who should be in prison ..... several of them current MPs.

I nearly posted about this yesterday and decided against because I thought it might cause a row! But there's an interesting wrinkle in the Oxford admissions process (I have no idea whether Cambridge is the same) that does actually incentivise this, and I think my older DS inadvertently benefited from it. And in summary yes, if you were the kind of parent for whom Oxford entry was the only thing that mattered (which would be weird) you might well be better off deliberately sending a clever child to a bad school. (This isn't so much about state versus private, as high achieving versus low achieving schools - which isn't the same thing given that some state schools achieve brilliantly and some private schools achieve poorly.)

Because Oxford score your GCSE results against the average achieved by other pupils in YOUR school in YOUR year, clever kids (especially those with home support, educated parents, books everywhere etc) taking GCSEs in badly performing schools do have a significant potential advantage over kids with exactly the same potential and exactly the same social background taking GCSEs in high-achieving schools. So you could have two kids with the 'same' level of cleverness/potential attainment [however you would define that], but if Kid 1 is at a school that achieves very poorly at GCSE and Kid 2 is at a school that performs very well at GCSE and they get the same GCSE results - or even if Kid 2 gets markedly better GCSE results - it's basically impossible for Kid 2 to score as highly on this measure as Kid 1.

DS1's school was epically shit - I think the average GCSE grade is a 4 - so his handful of 8s and 9s made him look like a flipping genius (which he isn't, although perfectly good enough to be at Oxford and doing well there now). In a year of 150 pupils he was the only one to get a 9 in any subject and he knows one other person who got an 8.

Kids who have family support and other social advantages and who are good enough to be at Oxford or Cambridge (or imperial or LSE or warwick or Manchester etc etc) will do well at GCSE with the minimum of handholding. I don't want to be insensitive but the truth is GCSEs should be easy for these kids (NB not talking about kids from difficult backgrounds/young carers/SEN etc), and they should be able to get grades in the 6-9 range whatever school they're in.

So yes - although I would never have done it deliberately - sending a genuinely academically clever child to a low-achieving school is actually a tactic that might materially benefit an Oxford application. Whether it's healthy or sane to pursue this course of action is another thing altogether of course.

Although I was delighted DS1 got in to Oxford and I do think he's there on merit, this bit of Oxford's admissions scoring obviously doesn't account for families like ours (middle class, university educated, full of privilege but politically stubborn enough to send kids to the local school even if it's a bit crap). But maybe there aren't enough of us to be statistically significant - most families like ours around this area go private.

(Disclaimer: obviously the GCSE score is only one of several elements in Oxford admissions decisions)

Not all independent schools are academic ones but they do provide an easier environment to learn

Most kids at your average independent couldn't give a flying monkeys if they end up at Oxbridge or not

The very bright ones at any school know they have a chance because they know how much easier they find the work and just get on with it without parent input or tutoring

The right ones get in to Oxbridge because it's obvious how clever they are compared to other pupils. No amount of tutoring can change that

Completely agree with @carben and @beeswain. Thank you for articulating exactly what I was trying to say.

@PacificState he still had to get those results though under more difficult circumstances. Plus placing a value on education and learning and passing it down to your children is not the prerogative of the rich or the middle class.

Lots of independent schools are full of SEN, those that have been bullied elsewhere or those that have been bullies elsewhere.

It provides a more nurturing setting for the pupils to learn due to the smaller size and activities.

They do learn a lot more as the schools are strict and they have a huge sense of belonging by the way they're run

It won't make your DC more intelligent as such but they'll come away with better results and feel more confident about themselves and their place in the world

Where I live we have decent state and private schools so pupils have a good mix of quite affluent pupils (millionaire parents) in state schools alongside those from deprived and quite abusive homes.

They all mix and help each other navigate through life. Academically they have great teachers and do as well as they could do. Pastoral support is there

I find it quite offensive to suggest that a child is not "in tune with the world and humanity" just because they go to a fee-paying school.

The only private school students I know well are my niece and nephews. Their lives consist of going to school and doing activities at school. The oldest ones don't even have part time jobs as they need to focus on studies. They don't do anything outside of school as they don't need to as everything they want to do is available at school. They are even driven to and from school as the school is not local and hard to get to on public transport This is apparently the norm for their school - the only students that do activities out of school are those taking part in top flight music or sport (county or national) where they are mixing with a niche range of others. I suspect my own children are the only state school pupils they know.

I'm sure other private school students at different schools are more involved in their local community and do mix with different people outside of school. However common reasons for choosing private school are that it enables you to select a peer group to some level, and also that the private school does provide all music, sport etc. on site so that you don't have to source it yourself - so I suspect this may be anecdotal but also quite common.

But your local community is not the whole of "humanity"!

But your local community is not the whole of "humanity"!

Of course not. But it's an awful lot bigger and more diverse (in all meanings of the word) than just "people who go to my school".

Not saying it isn't. For what it's worth, I can see that a private school child/ parents would have to work harder to avoid being in an insulated bubble. But my point is that it was offensive to suggest that private school children are not in tune with world issues and humanity in general.

And I've given reasons below why private school pupils might actually have more perspective on world issues than their state school peers.

A state school student is far more likely to be sitting next to a child from an impoverished family in India, a refugee from Afghanistan, or someone impacted by climate change in Africa

In state schools that I have taught in, we have welcomed refugees from all round the world, I have taught ex-child soldiers, an ex medical personnel, illiterate children, trained on the battle field, and with an awesome understanding of human biology

In state schools we come up against children suffering homelessness and lack of clothing - any private school classes ever clubbed together to plan a 16th birthday party for a boy living in a dormitory in a shelter? To find ways of clubbing together to buy iron- on tape to share to make their shoes last longer? To listen to the horrors unfolding in the Congo, from classmates who know the true cost of the parts of mobile phones, and pledging to go for recycled and refurbished ones?

Just a few of many examples I could give

Nothing like that have I ever seen in private schools

Yes, state school students see far more of the world, and understand it better, as a whole. Not every single one, obviously, but they are far more likely to have their feet on the ground than their counterparts in private schools

I think that true. Pacific your son sounds awesome! When Dh got to Cambridge his head teacher was so excited dh had to open his a level results live on local radio 😀 look we got a child to Cambridge!

If two applicants are equal and only one offer can be given, the person from a state school will win over the other from a private school.

It's so dumb to call this discrimination. Of course the state school student who has achieved the same results in more difficult circumstances will be more attractive to a university.

What is the difference between a child from private school, a grammar school or a house price selective state comp? All of them give an unfair advantage to children from wealthier backgrounds.

This is irrelevant in Oxbridge admissions - they don't assess applicants by the type of school, but by how well they have done compared to their peers.

Also as various have pointed out, there are no contextual offers at Oxbridge, everyone still has to get top A level grades, no matter what their background.

Those private school parents fretting, remember that privately educated students are still disproportionately represented at Oxbridge, so don't worry, they are still taking places at the expense of more deserving state school students. Their privilege may have diminished a bit, but it hasn't disappeared completely.

Not sure any state schools have refugees near us. Mostly middle class. No one vastly impoverished in any school. Especially in the grammars. City living is very different. Makes no difference who you sit with at school regarding being a decent person. More to do with upbringing and tolerance.

My kids leafy comp is still pretty mixed. Lots of kids from social housing / free school meals etc

First of all, it is not 7% of students in the independent sector at 6th form level, it is 20%.

The highest offer ratio at Oxbridge is grammar school pupils, not those from the independent sector.

It stands to reason that selective schools in either sector will always have higher Oxbridge success rates than non-selective schools. This is obvious.

The average independent school in London (where most of the top independent day schools are) will be more ethnically diverse than the average comp in a white suburban area.

Some London independents also have significant bursary programmes. At the one my DC went to there were indeed refugees. There were children from some of London's most problematic housing estates. There were also children of oligarchs and everything inbetween. Few students had two white British parents. Far more diverse and 'life exposure' than the comp my nephews attend in Guildford, where all the families are drawn from a very narrow catchment demographic around the school - ie white professionals living in nice Guildford homes.

Yes, our local nice leafy comp, and very nice religious secondary modern both have a real mix of children, those currently from the Ukraine, and those from local families on free school meals. However ‘nice’ an area is there is always an mix of people.