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?

I’m an immigrant, daughter of illiterate parents, who went to Oxford from a shit state school. DS attends a state school. Our income would easily cover a private school, but I think private education is unethical.

EarthlyNightshade - sorry, I don't know how to link, but if you Google "percentage of sixth formers in private education" quite a few studies / articles come up (eg. one by UCL) that put it at 17% or so, whereas it's only 7% at primary level.

Fewer and fewer

Going to Oxbridge is only part of the picture. There’s a whole lot more needed to get a great job against tough opposition from the best grads from other universities. The rejects still do well. Ambition is key at university. You can be bright but lacking ambition.

Boris is bright. At what he studied. No doubt Truss and others too. Doesn’t always translate into being great at a job though.

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

It's better to compare the numbers of students who do very well at A level. A huge majority of these are in the state sector: 73.7% of students who got Astar Astar A or better at A level in 2019 were in state education.

But only 62.3% of the Oxford intake that year came from state schools.

The privately educated are still over represented, unfortunately.

I disagree with the assumption that if you could pay for private school you would. Build into this assumption is another assumption, that because you pay for something it is inherently better. Not so, the country is full of many mediocre and frankly rubbish private schools. It doesn't guarantee a better education. Similarly, there are some astonishingly good state schools where the quality of teaching is immense, because it has to be.

There is also a wider dimension that both dh and I discovered ourselves as we both went from state schools to Oxford. There is so much benefit in learning to get along with people from all walks of life, get a sense of the immense challenges other kids face, learn to work and focus despite distractions and poor behaviour from classmates sometimes, learn to work independently, read widely because you want to, direct your own research etc (esp in 6th form). All of these things are of huge benefit to a bright child and they are found in state schools more than private.

My DH is on the slt of a selective private indie. We would get a generous discount to send our own children there. We have chosen not to.

Apologies for typos. 🙄

SoTedious - I see your point. I just had a look at the Oxford admission stats. The overall offer rates for independent, grammar and comprehensive applicants are all exactly the same though - 20%.

Also was it not 68% from state schools, not 62% (maybe I was looking at last years stats though)?

Yes @iljaa I used 2019 since the grade info was from that year. I think 2020/21 may not tell us much for covid reasons.

I don't think the offer rate for each sector is as relevant as the fact that ~74% of the very brightest young people in the UK come from state schools, but only ~62% of the Oxford intake. (In 2019.) This is what they are trying to rectify, since they want the best people, and it's getting better slowly.

it will utterly depend on A level subjects taken! I know my high achieving DD in arts subjects wasn’t going to Oxbridge! Ditto people who get high grades in media studies, photography, PE and drama! They will need the strong academic subjects to go with them. Some Dc getting high grades simply won’t have the right subject combinations, the desire to go or find the Oxbridge offer attractive to them. Or have the stomach to be bothered! Or even want to move out of their comfort zone. Therefore pupils will rule themselves out even though their results look good.

This is not true and I think it’s a bad idea to spread this message because it can put good pupils off applying. Yes you have to be clever and hard working but you DO NOT need to be a genius. Plenty of normal-clever kids at Oxbridge wondering how they got in but the reality is that the super geniuses are the minority.

Good for you!! But your child has you behind you. Above is only half the story (throw addictions, suicides, drug dealing etc etc in immediate family into the mix) I want to protect my kids from
the shit I grew up with.

PS I notice the ‘S’ he as privilege my DDs won’t by male privilege. Not comparing like for like here.

PPS @Dzogchen are you of colour? And you’ve got your DS in the same shitty state school you went to? I doubt it? You probably live in a decent area, nice housing, top state school - screw ethics then! You’re playing the system, just another way!! Don’t bring ethics into otherwise get yourself to your bottom rated state school and send your DS there. Unethical my arse.

Yes because not all areas have grammar schools. None within the county we live in.

@puffyisgood apologies for stalking you on this thread. I need to ask you something, (nothing serious!) Is there any chance you can PM me?

Thanks

Boiled

Excellent if true re Oxbridge, not before time.

@SoTedious this data is actually misleading. They used to publish percentage of AAA by sector which showed 62% of triple A achieved by private school pupils, which suggests their share of Oxbridge places exactly reflects top A-level performance. They have mysteriously stopped reporting this and now only show A-A* percentage whch is misleading bc with grade inflation up to 30% achieve A's, even more in some subjects. The reality is especialy for the most selective Oxbridge subjects (STEM / Maths), an A just doesn't cut it.

I would like to see the 2022 % of A taken by private school students rather than A-A, the last data that was published publicly showed 62% so no overrepresentation based on results.

The main inequality does not happen in the Oxbridge admissions stage but of course in everything that goes on before. Of course it is easier to obtain an A* with small class sizes, specialist teaching, tracking, coaching. I believe even at Sixth Form level there are many initiatives now to address this, it is likely up to GCSE that some children in the state sector don't receive the same level of support and challenge on average.

We chose private not because of Oxbridge as that is not really our aim but our supposedly outstanding state alternative (which gets as many if not more children into Oxbridge per year than the private we chose) did not offer computer science, did not set in Maths till much later, did not offer the languages we were interested in, did not offer Latin, did not offer any sports we were interested in, did not offer fixtures, had a very, very limited range of clubs, and then the staff were awfully unfriendly and strict during the banding test to the point that our daughter refused to go there.

Results wise, I am sure she could have received the same results on paper with our support or supplementary tutoring but not in the subjects that mattered to us as they weren't on offer.

@SoTedious unfortunately due to some formatting issue the above says AAA whereever I had written "A star A star Astar", somehow the formatting removed the star in "A*" in the post which is why there will now probably be a lot of replies saying the numbers are wrong. 2014 data (last available) shows 62% of triple A star comes from private sector, haven't seen this statistic publised after but if anyone finds it, I would love to see it, especially for 2022.

From what I see you definitely get better sport better wrap around care when they are younger and no poorer families. You don’t escape bullying / general teen worries. Whatever floats your boat! On balance we decided it’s not worth it.

Not of colour. I no longer live in the same country I grew up in, so no, DS is not at my old school (which I gather has improved). He’s in a city centre school which has no particular academic reputation (no OFSTED equivalent here) and which has a huge social mix — the child of the surgeon who took out DH’s gall bladder goes there, as do the children of our cleaner, as do a lot of recently-arrived Ukrainians. I’m not ‘playing the system’. DS, who is clever, will sink or swim on his own merits.

@ncsurrey22
I think it's more relevant to use grades equivalent to the offers the students will be trying to fulfil - and as far as I know, 3 x A star would an unusual offer for Oxford.

The point I was trying to make is that the vast majority who achieve A level results good enough to match an Oxford offer come from state schools, yet that is not yet reflected in the intake.

If Oxford were trying to attract candidates with 3 x A stars then presumably that's what the standard offer would be, and your stats would be more relevant.

For some subjects the standard Oxford offer is AAA, and the difference is even wider then.

ncsurrey22 - you are correct. It is the percentage of A star, A star, A star (not A star, A star, A) that needs to be considered, as this is what most accepted into Oxbridge actually achieve (about 70% overall, though the proportion will be higher for STEM). When you look at the proportions of those achieving 'at least three A stars' in either sector, the Oxbridge admissions rates do seem to broadly reflect this. I will try and find the data I saw to evidence this (if I can find it)! I think it was in the Oxford admissions statistics.

The irony is that our universities are stuffed with privately educated children from overseas paying full whack for the fees.

No one is suggesting that your friends daughter shouldn't get a top uni place. Sounds like she totally should.

What Oxford offer and the results of who they recruit are two different things. The offers are usually way below actual results. The AAA is to ensure applicants.