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?

That was covered off in 'live in a deprived area' which was listed. The state school element of it in that case isn't relevant, they would be eligible on the deprived area criteria.

That’s not quite what you said though:

Contextualised offers usually only apply to the bottom 20% of state schools too, decent comps and grammars will need to same level of results as private

For Durham and Edinburgh it’s any state school combined with home postcode - so that would include good / outstanding comps and grammars.

You can qualify for the 'POLAR / deprived area / postcode' criteria for contextualised offers whether you're at state or private.

There are several areas which you can qualify. You only need one of them, not a combination. Bottom 20% state school, postcode, illness, care leaver etc etc. I only mentioned the state school one in first post because that is the topic of this thread.

The other ones don't need to be in combination with state school. You could qualify for contextualised offer based on care leaver, postcode, illness etc having been at a private school.

No-one has the right to be admitted to a university simply because they have the best grades, or are the most meritorious candidates. Higher education is a public good and merit is just one criterion of distribution. So even if it were the case that a state school applicant is less able than a private school applicant (rather than as able, but bad badly taught), universities might still be justified in admitting them.

Not necessarily - at Edinburgh it’s home postcode and state school for students in England / Wales / NI - you wouldn’t qualify on postcode alone if you attended private school. Only Scottish students could qualify on postcode alone.

At Durham you would have to be a carer / estranged / in receipt of FSM in addition to qualifying under home postcode if you didn’t attend a state school.

Has anyone said for “fewer and fewer”

If some employers now recruit "institution blind" it does not matter anyway. None of my 5 children tried Oxbridge form private school and nor did I but it has not stopped 4 of the children and me being London lawyers.
20% of children at sixth form level are at fee paying school. Oxbridge reasonably well reflects that - I don't think it is too pro or anti private school although there will be some unfairness in any system.

Also of a particular university starts recruiting students who are not really very good (IF that were so) for political reasons then market forces and capitalism thankfully mean those people who either never get hired by employers or get sacked when their incompetence shone through (whether they were Tim nice but Dim from a fee paying school or person ticking all boxes for disadvantage but not bright enough). So I have faith in our system.

I was particularly pleased at the wise US court decision recently that universities may not discriminate in breach of equality legislation - a very good principle to set down and indeed to follow. That also is the case under the UK's Equality Act 2010.

Unfortunately, that's not always how it works, and the shitty arrogance of some is unfairly associated with others who are not like that at all.

There were two boys in our local town who were quite often in trouble with the law - theft, vandalism and so forth. They went to the local school so are they representative of state school educated children?

Oh that is interesting I didn't realise that (and think some some uni's it doesn't have to be a combo of state + one of the other criteria).

Just looked up my POLAR4 quintile and we're in a quintile 2 area! So would actually qualify if we were going state, but have chosen Private for DS,.. maybe should reconsider! Although by state do they include grammar in that too?

TheaBrandt · Today 11:21
I need to know their circumstances to do my job

What is your job that you have to know so much about these people’s circumstances?
The only job I can think of would be investigating finance for possible bursaries to public schools but I don’t think that is your line of work!

That doesn't work. Oxbridge classifies private school candidates as ones who went private for GCSE. The admissions teams are 100% onto the ruse of state sixth form. They also classify top grammars as equivalent to private - so if you are at Tiffin, you won't get any leeway for having attended a state school.

The situation is far fairer these days. Very clever private school pupils will still be offered places. But fewer places go to extremely well trained average brains like Bozza's.

You would also need to have State + disadvantaged postcode / care leaver / bottom 20% state etc to qualify for getting in on lower grades.

Isn’t it time that people stopped using BJ as an example of a ‘typical’ product of a fee paying school? He isn’t and it’s insulting to clever, unassuming, hardworking young people to find themselves tarred with the same brush.

this is how the mother of a first at Oxbridge does shit you see.

🤔😁

In answer to OP's question, I don't think the push towards state school applicants is going to go much further than it has already.

State school kids currently produce c 77% of all students who get A-star A -star A or better, which is a near enough perfect proxy for 'Oxbridge standard', and state schools' shares of Oxbridge admissions aren't that far from that total - a little worse than 70% at Oxford, a little better than 70% at Cambridge. In other words, the system is still discriminatory in favour of the private schools but not by nearly as much as it used to be, nowhere near. Given how influential the private schools still are I very much doubt we'd ever get to the stage where the system discriminated against them, I think it's just the last of the discrimination in their favour that will probably go.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-statistics/undergraduate-students/current/school-type

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/23/britain-new-persecuted-minority-privately-educated-schools-oxbridge

Many of us were taught the difference between ‘less and less’ and ‘fewer and fewer’. I was also taught not to use language like ‘s-it’….

AFAIK state means comp and grammar, as both types are state school.

Contextual offers using home postcodes, school type etc are a very blunt tool though, and are not always a guarantee of an offer - particularly for heavily oversubscribed courses. I would think that other data on the UCAS form, school reference, PS etc all play a part.

Edited to say this was meant to be @ArseInTheCoOpWindow

My son is similar. Currently year 13.

Undiagnosed ASD caused school refusal and a complete mental health breakdown. He couldn't access formal education at all years 7 to 11 and barely accessed any form at education for approx 3 years. Despite this he made it back to state mainstream for A Levels having self taught for 6 GCSEs.

He did put all of this information on his UCAS form & had specific teacher references pointing this out and applied to Oxford and 4 other (all Russell group) universities with a 3 A* at A level prediction having done amazingly well in year 12.

He did well enough in the admissions test to be interviewed at Oxford, they don't interview those who don't score highly enough, but wasn't made an offer. He was fine with that. The process was enough for him. To have done well enough in the test was reward in itself for a child from his background.

He has 4 other offers but none of them are contextualised despite having more context in his education that most children I would hazard a guess! Conversely we know children who've had no gaps in education, spent some of it in independent schools but have had contextualised offers because their parents have split up and they live in a poorer postcode area. We're not rich ourselves by any means!

I just wanted to clarify that having clear detriments in education, missing out on 5 years of it, did not result in any contextual offers for my child.

He has an offer for UCL. If he manages to get the grades despite all of his disadvantages then I would say it's a marker that he has a level of natural intelligence.

I think we can all get very hung up about which is the most disadvantaged in terms of university admissions. Everyone takes it personally. Ultimately most kids end up with the degree & career they deserve. Parents seem to be much more hung up about the Oxbridge brand than the kids as far as I can tell.

I understand what you’re saying. But isn’t the disruption at A level?

If it was and they didn’t apply it, then I’d be looking at the Equality Comission.

I don't understand your point?

If there is disruption at A Level that impacts the exams then you apply to the exam boards and they might adjust the grades if the criteria are met.

You can't know there will be disruption at A Level until the exams take place.

Things don't happen in a vacuum a child who has vastly disrupted secondary education has disadvantages as against those who've not had the same disruption when it comes to A Levels because they haven't received the same standard of education or in my son's case any education for a number of years. He is also still under the care of CAMHS and medicated for anxiety disorders, all of this was disclosed in the additional information sent with the application.

As far as I can tell none of the universities my son applied to count ASD or anxiety disorders for contextualisation purposes. Obviously some might, they don't all contextualise in the same way. I'm not sure that that's terribly fair as this is as much, in my opinion, if not more of a disadvantage than your postcode area or which school you went to.

But ultimately if he's to cope at university he should be able to achieve the grades. He's fine with it and he is on track and short of a major blip shouldn't need the contextualised offer anyway.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

And given that Oxbridge, well Oxford specifically, look at where GCSEs were taken when they contextualise GCSE grades as part of their admission process, where GCSEs are taken is definitely the relevant period.

*1. Information about your schoolThis helps us to understand the whole school context in which you have achieved your grades. To do this, we access the following information from the Department for Education in England or, where available, equivalent data from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales:

• The performance of your school or college at GCSE.
• Your attainment at GCSE compared to GCSE attainment at your school or college.
• The performance of your school or college at A-level or equivalent level.
• The percentage of students eligible for free school meals at your school or college at GCSE or equivalent level.*

https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/applying-to-oxford/decisions/contextual-data

I know they are.

But what l was saying was disrupted studies tend to be about A level. You can recoup on disrupted GCSE. You can’t recoup on disrupted A levels unless you resit them.

I was a secondary teacher for 25 years. I know what disrupted studies account for.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow but what has disrupted studies got to do with contextualisation, that was what I was responding to?

They are different things? I was responding to your posts on here about contextualisation, perhaps I should have quoted rather than linked because I think that's what the confusion is, we are possibly talking about different things.

ArseInTheCoOpWindow · Today 10:28

Londonforestmum · Today 10:15

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow
Yes but the ones 'on the websites' are the ones where they will actually take a child with lower grades, taking their disadvantaged background into account.

I imagine what you're talking about is if they are comparing two students with the same grades they may be inclined to take the state student, partly to fill their quotas. But this is totally ignoring the fact that children are more likely to get better grades from a private school (a good one anyway), so they are still at an advantage and therefore would argue it is still 'worth it', not to mention grades / uni application isn't the only benefit of choosing private anyway.
No. As a parent we had to fill in contextual background as part of UCAS application. E.g illness etc. We had to do this at the end of Year 12. School then put it on UCAS forms.

So it is just an outline on uni websites. If you have any context it would be considered.

The point i was trying to raise is that I haven't found that universities (at least the ones my son has applied to) have taken notice of this kind of contextualisation. It had nothing to do with disrupted studies as such I didn't mention that in my post at all- although obviously my son's studies were disrupted the JCQ made access arrangements but didn't amend grades because he didn't meet the criteria.

@lifeturnsonadime
Yes I suspect it's a case of you can write it on the form if you like... But unless it fulfills the stated criteria for contextualised offer on the website they are not going to lower the grades needed for you to get in.