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?

@periodiclabel - all the very bright children got A stars. Look at the London grammar results, more than 40% of all grades are A stars with 50 plus kids getting all A stars at A level in several of the superselective grammars.

Here is just one example: https://www.saintolaves.net/23/school-performance

“55 pupils securing 3 A* grades or more”

Wilsons, Henrietta Barnet, QE - the results are along these lines. A significant amount of children are getting all A starts at A level and mostly if not all 9s at GCSE. Not all are getting Oxbridge offers, of course.

And Westminster School
“93 of 199 of pupils were awarded at least three A grades (or equivalent Pre-U D1/D2 grades). Of this 93, 45 achieved four A grades and three pupils each took five A* grades.”

But in Westminster, you now have Harris Westminster Sixth Form too (selective) which does very well for Oxbridge too. So Westminster private school parents could also save their money, should they wish to do so.

There is even a girl that took 27 subjects at Slough grammar... All ending in A* and As...

@RedFluffyPanda - there are so many high achieving students now, it is really difficult to differentiate on results alone. And there are so many selective state Sixth Forms as well. So I think “private school” is a stupid marker. It should be disregarded. I also think how children achieve compared to their cohort should be disregarded. And only the very poor and properly deprived young carers, FSM should be given a proper leg up.

I also think what would be great is if all children who are really clever across the country could do online programs provided by private schools/successful academies like Harris, to support more. Like an official program for gifted children. I never understood why they got rid of that. With online resources it would be so easy to do more. And I think some of the private schools have the capacity to help and probably want to. Instead of a handful of bursaries, I think they should be doing more and more of that.

The University of Oxford or Cambridge on the CV only helps a bit to secure job as a graduate. Later on it is all down to the job specialty and experience accumulated over the years. Not to mention that nobody is particulary interested on earlier education if you were in St Paul's school, selective grammar or state comprehensive but what experience you have and how you present yourself.

Yes, as has cropped up over and over again on MN Education threads, only Magic Circle law firms and big city financial outfits – plus a handful of others – care what A level grades you got once you have a degree.

The English education system is really set up to be all about moving onto the next stage – what top A level grades give you, primarily, is more choice when selecting a university (and course), and a measure of personal satisfaction. That's it.

For example, the vast majority of universities do not ask for your A level grades when you apply for a Masters – university teaching and learning (especially at post-graduate) are so utterly different from school that they don't really mean anything once you are in your 20s and have 3-4 years of university behind you.

@Intergalacticcatharsis Those stats are not the same as "all bright kids" - you've already qualified by adding "very" - it's more like "a reasonable proportion", it's 1/4 of students at Westminster for example. I just don't like the inference that three A stars are easy to come by, they're both intimidating to those who won't hit this high and diminish those who've achieved something very impressive, whatever their educational background.

I also think what would be great is if all children who are really clever across the country could do online programs provided by private schools/successful academies like Harris, to support more.

That sounds like a good idea but I wonder what the take-up would be. On mn there seem to be plenty of posters who at the mere mention of private schools run away waving crucifixes and garlic cloves.
Or they say they would never send their children to private schools even though they earn £10 million p.a. because they are decent, moral people.
Or they say they’ve met lots of privately educated people who are invariably entitled, arrogant and insist on being addressed as Your Majesty or whatever.

Therefore plenty of parents with clever children would not allow them to take advantage of such a scheme.

Excellent news, bravo.

The tuition fee doesn't pay for the vast majority of the training, I'm afraid. So yes, I do agree that they should have to work in the NHS for a number of years before leaving for the private sector or abroad for better salaries, much better conditions and facilities.

@periodiclabel - I am not diminishing. A levels are just milestones at the end of Sixth Form that students pick up, celebrate and then they get ready for their next stage. We never made a fuss about our top grades nor those of our DCs. Just like when some DCs did Grade 8 in instruments age 11-13, we said well done, got them a small present and the next day they asked to order Diploma music, so what? And they themselves stated that now they can start their proper musical journey and focus on performance/choral singing, whatever they wanted to do. A levels are much the same, why so much fuss? Equally, if you drop a grade or two because 1 exam does not go well, enter clearing and move on. For me, it is very important to not get hung up on stages in life too much. They are a means to an end, that is it.

However, I am now starting to wonder why so many of my friends are looking at European unis and whether that is just a trend in my friendship circle and why that may be.

In my DD’s friendship group of 15, not one kid did not get all A stars. Only 3 wanted to apply to Oxbridge. The rest had no interest in Oxbridge. I think some of them went to have a look and just decided they did not like it.

Yes, I don't think it's very easy to get 3 x A stars either. Tbh, Westminster has a great track record for Oxbridge presumably because of it being extremely selective. I know several very bright kids who were top scorers in 11+ grammar tests and who were offered places at some of the top state grammars (Wilsons/Olaves) and scholarships to some of the leading London private selectives who DIDN'T secure a place at Westminster. It's very difficult to get a place there.

Surely just based on numbers it is harder for external boys to get into Westminster at Sixth Form? Because many existing boys stay and they are aiming for girls and state school kids. Just like there are hardly any places at Eton in the Sixth Form? Like under 20 and mainly state school kids?

@Intergalacticcatharsis I'm sure it's probably even harder then but I have no experience of anyone applying at that stage. I do know that for 11+ I only heard of one child who got in at Westminster out of many, many that applied from a range of highly selective (private) and top performing state primaries. As I said, these boys got places at Olave's, Wilsons, and selective indies.

Westminster fills many places at 7 and 8 plus so even 11 plus is only like 30 places. All these things are number games. You have to go at the main intake to have a better chance. Same applies to Oxbridge courses, the information regarding the most competitive courses is all available online. It is quite clear which courses are very difficult for private school students to get into.

There are a number of such parents where I live too. Many of them are spending £2m+ to move 500m to get in the catchment of the outstanding loc comp. But they are inversely snobby about anyone who “buys” an education at an independent school because as you say they are decent moral people 🙄

@Intergalacticcatharsis - why have you claimed at least twice now that private school students are being particularly discriminated against with regard to computer science offers from Cambridge? Is this just an assumption of yours, because you know how popular computer science degrees are?

According to Cambridge’s own statistics for 2022, Computer Science has the lowest percentage of offers made to maintained school applicants versus those from the independent sector for undergraduates of all the Cambridge science subjects it lists other than medicine, and the lowest percentage actually converting to acceptances, other than veterinary medicine, despite having one of the highest percentages of state maintained school student applications. Around 30% of Cambridge computer science students are privately educated.

https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/files/publications/undergrad_admissions_statistics_2022_cycle.pdf
(See page 6)

And NB, that’s 30% of those being privately educated at time of application, not 30% who have ever been privately educated. I am having a hard time seeing discrimination against the private sector there - computer science is below the Cambridge average for state maintained school students, not above, and 30% is significantly above the percentage of sixth form students in the private sector.

@Walkaround - that would be just 2022 Computer Science and 2021 tells a very different story. So it can vary substantially year to year and surely it also depends on how many flagged applicants there are. Clearly Law is more of an issue for private school candidates. I just said read the Statistics and draw your own conclusions. Law/Economics are very competitive.

I would be quite interested in the stats of those applicants who were not successful. How many got all A stars? How many from private schools, for example, that would tell us more.

Many of them are spending £2m+ to move 500m to get in the catchment of the outstanding loc comp.

But the house they lived in was not much less worth and often they have already a house with mortgage.

I don't think that they rely on the outstanding badge but more about GCSE results and pastoral care

I don’t think the outstanding badge is the main reason they move. But they’re not willing to accept the “good” schools (one of which has ironically just been rated outstanding) that they would have got into if they hadn’t moved, because there is a lot of snobbery about those schools and they’re seen as inferior/rough.

So they pay huge sums to for the kids to get the education they want (results/pastoral/whatever) by moving house but are inversely snobby/sanctimonious about people who pay to send their kids independent.

In three instances that I know of people have bought a second home in catchment, worth a minimum of £1m, then will move/have moved back to their original home once the first child is in.
Another sold their home for £1+m and bought a new one for north of £2m solely to get in catchment. But loudly declare how appalling it is that some people buy their kids educational privilege by sending them private 🙄

I don’t really care about them moving into catchment and the admission rules allow them to do the second home trick. But the hypocrisy of their stance on private schools rather riles me.

@Intergalacticcatharsis Surely, if it varies substantially from year to year, this is evidence they are looking for the genuinely best candidates, not just filling quotas? And given the crisis in state education at the moment, I really don’t expect the percentage of successful state educated applicants to go up in the near future. This whole argument just has the flavour of the wealthy and powerful wanting to control the agenda and decide who to throw crumbs to (with, eg, scholarships to their schools and a stranglehold over “their” universities) and who to insist should know their place.

I would do anything for my son not to attend rough school. And by rough I mean famous for bullying. I also wouldn't like my son to attend the school with GCSE results
below national average.
But I completely don't care if the school is badged as Outstanding because nowadays Ofsted turns most of Outstanding to Good and the measure may be inadequate.
I don't think private schools are bad but it is a solution for very affluent people and going bread to mouth to keep a child in the private school is absolutely insane.

“And given the crisis in state education at the moment, I really don’t expect the percentage of successful state educated applicants to go up in the near future.”

What crisis? My children have attended excellent state schools throughout. It just appears that the quality may really vary. One thing to note is that all schools they attended were full of educationally motivated parents.

Anyway, Greater London and London Grammar recently has excellent Oxbridge statistics. However, I doubt it will last. Someone will take umbrage to grammars. This isn’t about finding the best, it is about applying certain criteria in certain ways.

What crisis? My children have attended excellent state schools throughout.

but they attended in the past. Now quite openly everybody talks about crisis in education. School have had a significant cut in budgets UK wide and are expected to manage with much less resources than before.

Tbf we have very good state schools too