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?

@Charlemagne38

I agree but take @Walkaround s point.

it would make a press piece if she was rejected now and there would be much hand wringing about bias and Oxford 'not selecting the best of the best' and lowering standards. The press would use the case to promote their own social agendas.

could it be that the family allowed a piece to be written about her to put pressure on Oxford to accept her as as you say how could they reject her?

The case also throws into light whether there is a great difference between very good grammar schools and the private sector in reality. Do they both take from the same demographics with the only difference being one set of parents pays and the other doesn't?

@mids2019 Interesting to see how they would cope with accusations of bias.... She is at a state scchool, after all

@Charlemagne38

I guess someone could always about bias. If she doesn't get in someone might claim there is an anti state bias?

I would actually think tantalizingly a clinical research career may be more appropriate given her obvious love of knoweldge . Being a juniour doctor isn't that easy and there actually other ways to help people.

I think the point should be that multiple A stars can't lead to shoo ins as every selective state/private school would focus on maximising the number of A levels taken and I don't know if that would necessarily help widening participation.

@Walkaround
totally agree.

I would actually think tantalizingly a clinical research career may be more appropriate given her obvious love of knoweldge . Being a juniour doctor isn't that easy and there actually other ways to help people.

Or possibly combine the two. DH has a cousin that took biochemistry as a first degree and medicine as a second degree - she now splits her time between being an oncologist and cancer research.

“I think the point should be that multiple A stars can't lead to shoo ins as every selective state/private school would focus on maximising the number of A levels taken and I don't know if that would necessarily help widening participation.”

You can take that view but this girl is an exception, a genius, with a special educational need being her very rare intellect. Of course Oxford should get out of its own arse and make exceptions for children like that from their usual mundane and highly prescriptive admissions process. Or else they just go to Harvard, Yale, insert any other elite institution worldwide which will be more than happy to have her. That surely was the main point the mother was making in the press - that the grammar had not allowed her to do more A levels, because it is pointless. Why would learning ever be pointless? Unless the elite institutions are stifling some children.
If you are going to make allowances for SEN of all kind and deprivation, you need to logically make allowances at the top end of gifted as well.

The same may have been the case with the state school girl who did not get into Oxford in the 2000s. How dare she combine Biology and Chemistry with English if she wants to do medicine? Surely everyone knows that you must do Maths and 2/3 Sciences for Medicine and tick the work experience boxes etc. To me this is just a very narrow view. Lots of medics in other countries have done IB/Baccalaureate type qualifications and are excellent.

The same may have been the case with the state school girl who did not get into Oxford in the 2000s. How dare she combine Biology and Chemistry with English if she wants to do medicine? Surely everyone knows that you must do Maths and 2/3 Sciences for Medicine and tick the work experience boxes etc. To me this is just a very narrow view.

Spence didn’t pass the interview, so her entry qualifications were certainly adequate for medicine at Oxford. Only about 1 in 4 applicants get an interview, and only 1 in 3 of those get an offer.

Interviews are by their nature subjective. She may just have had a bad day. It happens.

Learning is never pointless. Taking lots of pointless tests is pointless, however.

Love this story of the girl who took 34 GCSEs and 20-something A-levels. Is that a World Record, I wonder?

I bet when she applies to Oxbridge, she'll apply for about 10 degrees - "Hello, yes I'm applying for Medcine but by the way, I'll be doing PPE, Maths, Law, Philosophy, English, CS, History, Geography and Classics in the side (with my mum). Please plan ahead to avoid exam clashes. Thanks!"

“Learning is never pointless. Taking lots of pointless tests is pointless, however.”

In your opinion…
I have 2DC who love music. One wanted to do every ABRSM grade on their main instrument and also on 2nd and 3rd instruments. They enjoyed the process and validation. It motivated them.
The other refused and did not want to do that and only did Grade 8 and Diploma.
They are just different personalities and maybe they enjoyed doing things differently to each other as well. I just let them get on with whatever they wanted. The former is much more perfectionist, structure driven etc- the latter is more creative/loves composing/making music up on the spot. Both are great, but very different, musicians.

If a child wants to do multiple GCSEs and A levels because they really enjoy it, I really do not think that is pointless. Just because the parents forked out some fees to get these bits of paper does not make it “pointless”. It is inverse snobbery again.

Equally, a homeschooled child who has just done 2 A levels but is a complete maths genius should not be prejudiced if they score amazingly well in STEP. I don’t really care if they did not do 3 A levels.

It should be driven by the child for the outliers not the “process”. Some are specialists, some are complete hungry all rounders.

Incidentally, I do know one genius child at a grammar and said school are letting the child take multiple GCSEs early and some A levels early too. Exceptions have to be made in some cases.

If our genius children of the nation are not given spots at our top unis that would be a very sad state of affairs, in my opinion.

That ignores the argument that GCSE exams are not really fit for purpose and that a gifted child should be looking for other forms of structure and validation beyond taking so many examples of the same style of test that the tests begin to overlap and become phenomenally repetitive and lacking in real challenge. Basically, it is ridiculous to argue that taking pointless tests is not pointless - it only makes sense to argue whether or not you agree the particular tests are pointless beyond a certain point. Imvho, once you’ve mastered the particular box ticking technique required for passing 11 GCSEs, you’ve mastered it for 40. Time to find a different challenge.

Yes agreed. I have kids who are not genius category but got all 9s in GCSEs. These exams largely are an exercise in memory and exam technique. Some of the subjects allowed zero creativity and the kids were essentially taught how to get top marks.

I see zero point in accumulating more GCSEs. I would be more impressed by a kid doing more in a subject they loved eg making a YouTube channel about a particular topic of interest, or trying to get to speak to an expert in that field and writing a blog or even publishing an article about it. Amassing more mindless grade 9 GCSEs feels silly to me.

The other refused and did not want to do that and only did Grade 8 and Diploma.

Intergalactica I thought you had to do grade 5 practical and grade 5 theory before you could take grade 8?

You just have to pass grade 5 ABRSM music theory to take grade 8. That is it. It is easy for a relatively intelligent child. And some kids do not even bother now, they just take grade 8 Trinity board which requires no music theory.

@ScareBrow

I agree and I think we have to be careful with the word 'genius'. In reality it means creating it discovering something novel for humanity. Einstein was a genius as by the power of his own analysis he modified Newton's laws to form special relativity and understood the reasons for the curvature of space time that allowed general relativity. No one really gave two hours about IQ. He could have scored 120 on a test if he had ever taken one and his discoveries would still qualify him as genius. Anyone know the IQ of Shakespeare by the way?

This is silly. Applicants have to state the schools attended for GCSEs and A levels. The results are then compared to the average for the school they attended at the time they took them. This has been the case for at least 20 years.

The idea that anyone is fooling Oxbridge by doing this is ridiculous.

Unless you are suggesting that Oxbridge would discriminate in favour of state school applicants regardless of their performance at interview?

My DC and pretty much all their friends at grammar got 9s at GCSEs across the board. When you are doing 10-12 GCSEs it isn’t a big deal and many kids achieve that. But managing 34 GCSE is a totally different thing. It is truly extraordinary to manage that level of work load alone. You would have to have a brain that works faster and memorises far more than a standard intelligent brain.
There will always be value in learning eg another language to GCSE level and beyond. Some people can learn and properly master 10 plus languages. It is rare but possible.

I did 1 marathon in my life which again is quite common place. It is very different than doing eg 3 a year until you are gone 60 or doing the Marathon Des Sables in the desert with the die hard runners/troopers.

I went to Cambridge with tons of Westminster kids. I can assure they were not all “gifted”. They were all smart, confident and rich.

The two on my course in my college got a 2.1. All the people who got firsts were state educated.

My child got into Westminster, but we did not take up the place as we decided against a commute into central London. He was not ‘gifted’. He was academically bright and good at passing exams. There are hundreds of kids if not thousands like him. I think we throw around words like gifted and genius, far far too much.

Not true, the number of this cohort who got 11x 9s is 188. Westminster got 20 around 11x9s. It's not that easy to get all 9s.

Gifted and talented means 90th per centile and above. State schools used to have an actual gifted and talented register along those lines.
Most kids getting into Westminster will be in that cohort, easily. London superselective grammars are typically aimed at kids in the top 2-5 per cent.

Genius is a different category. It is top 1 per cent and above. Many people think of it as the true outliers. 1 in 10000 kind of thing.

@Uni2024 - don’t quote the 11 9s because many schools simply don’t allow kids to take more than 10 GCSEs. Even though many could easily do one extra GCSE.

Those parents thinking they are playing the system by going to a good state for 6th form need to do their research. If it’s a state school in a leafy area it almost certainly won’t be getting contextual offers. Hardly any state schools here qualify for that just one that is very challenged no way on earth would any former private school parent send a kid there contextual offer up for grabs or not.

Weird obsession with Oxbridge in this country putting going there above your child’s daily happiness is actually insane. Dd1 flatly refused to apply anyway / one wonders if the offspring of these Oxbridge obsessives get a choice in all this?

https://henrietta-barnett.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/31150806/GCSE-Results-2023-Results-Day_-1.pdf

here you go - 31 per cent achieved all 9s. That is almost 1 in 3.