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?

Luckily it’s for my children. My life has no hope😤

If your child is relatively intelligent and academically minded they will get into a good university no matter what school they go to. You can always get them a tutor if they struggle in some areas. If they are not academically intelligent, they are not going to enjoy a high pressure environment heavily focused on grades (private school) and probably not well suited to/would get into Oxbridge anyway. This is also quite a heavy burden you are placing on your child before they've even decided what they want to do in life, what if they choose not to go to uni at all? Would you feel hard done by having paid for private school for years? I am personally very against private schools, but I understand as a parent you want to do what you think is best for your child and give them the best start in life. However, if it's really all about Oxbridge and uni for you rather than e.g. getting a leg up in more middle class social circles (again yuck to me, but some people are into that) the opportunities that private schools offer in terms of extracurriculatrs etc, then I'm not sure why you'd fork out for it!

Higher education is not just about oxbridge...

And grammar and private school has very similar social economic profiles is subject to similar treatment under the contextual offer regime.

Bright students from nonseletive comprehensive school deserves better.

Pretty ineffective as a tactic given the Oxbridge colleges look at school til 16, rather than post

Entirely depends on the school, doesn't it?
Somewhere like St Pauls Girls or Westminster still send more kids to Oxford and Cambridge than multiple state schools combined.
Many of those stats for Oxbridge state entries ARE grammar schools.
Where I live it’s much easier to get into a selective private school than grammar, which in turn is easier than an outstanding academy, so again it depends where one lives.
To be blunt, some private schools are rubbish, some grammar schools are rubbish, some state Academies outperform Eton.
So, your question should be is it worth going to Indie school X over Grammar School Y. You can't ask it generically.

Contextual offers from Oxbridge won’t matter a fig if middle classed university educated parents who can even consider private school- send their child to grammar school, it won’t help one bit getting your child in.

Yes that's true that grammar school kids won't necessarily be given contextual offers. In fact there's a Comp near me that Bristol don't offer school based contextual offers to because their results are too good.

They look at where an applicant did GSCEs to prevent gaming system and same for other highly competitive unis/courses but they ask for all candidates to contextualise - if you go to a school where a clutch of v good GScEs are expected then they expect similar. A student who has a bunch of 9s from a school with v low attainment then they are likely to have shown aptitude against the odds. They may ask for just one A* from state student but two from Eton or wherever

The only thing being played is the dumb parents who think the Oxbridge colleges will fall for this.

Jesus, your parents occuptation, and education and school are all asked on your application! What's an Oxford educated barristers son going to do, leave it blank?

I totally agree.😁

You wouldn’t want to send your offspring there, OP. The proles are taking over and stringing up Old Harrovians from lampposts around the Sheldonisn, or so I hear.

There is life beyond Oxbridge! Send your kids to the school that’s going to support them the best and allow them to achieve what they’re capable of. Second guessing something that they may not even want in ten years time is a fool’s game.

Ds has a Cambridge offer along with 8 others (oxbridge) from his state school and I was surprised to hear that at the private day school for girls there was only one! I definitely think they’re upping their state school quota. Also this y13 year had their gcse grades teacher assessed so they had to go more on interviewing and assessment than gcse grades because that year the private school grades were better than ever.

Calm down. I’m merely asking how to choose between paying big money to go to private schools and free grammar school, from the perspective of maximising chances of getting into a good university.

all the things you mentioned and you hate are not what I meant to discuss. Like it not, it’s the reality. We all have to play along with it.

I didn't choose private education for my children with Oxbridge as the ultimate aim. I wanted their school life to not be stressful, and that's been achieved.
My brother went to Cambridge and struggled, he's still quite scarred by his experiences there. So I have no intention of encouraging my children to apply there. Having said that, my brother earns quadruple what my DH and I do combined, so he can soothe his scars with pound notes, swings and roundabouts eh

Yeh, I think people are being really harsh to the OP here. It's a fair question. OP, I still think kids in good private schools have a much better chance on average of getting into a top university than in most state schools. I work in a private school and the opportunities they have compared with what I used to have in my comp are staggering.

Not all parents send their kids to private school to get in to a good uni.

There are more good uni's than just Oxbridge.

Not all areas have a decent grammar option.

Not all areas have a decent school option.

The reasons to send your child to private school vary hugely from parent to parent and child to child.

You sound like a shitty journalist.

You’re overthinking it. Send the child to the school they will be the happiest and most fulfilled in and the rest will follow. Know numerous very bright kids who flatly refuse to apply to Oxbridge as they don’t want to!

The reality? For who? And playing along with what? Can you really not see that you have the option to ‘play the game’?

Same in our area!

Discriminating against applicants from private schools is no good for the competitiveness of the country

Your child might have to actually deserve and earn a place all by themselves!

I think this is exactly why I’m asking this question

Agree. But it’s actually quite difficult to know which school they would enjoy most before they start the school

No university in the UK does that @uk2020

Expecting better grades from a top school like Westminster ( which has one of the best Oxbridge acceptance rates in the country) than a school in a deprived part of the North East where hardly anyone even goes into higher education, never mind Oxbridge is GOOD for the competitiveness of the country.

going state for the last two years doesn't get a student classed as a state school applicant any more

Private school students have the advantage of smaller class sizes, that is quite rightly taken into consideration when universities look at what the exam results say about the potential of the candidates

so no, going to a private school does not buy you a better chance at university places, not should it

Your child might not even want to go to university, or go to a "top" university - their priorities might be totally different to yours.