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?

Ie London has squeezed out the lower performing demographic, rather than dealing with it. Now it is just haemorrhaging young people altogether. Proving my point that choice is not available to most people.

Happy you think money has little to do with it - that means London parents should be happy to have funding for their schools significantly reduced, as they don’t need it, whereas schools elsewhere have knottier problems to deal with.

London schools still have plenty of lower demographic

Are people posting without experience of London schools?

I was about to say the same thing

“Happy you think money has little to do with it - that means London parents should be happy to have funding for their schools significantly reduced, as they don’t need it, whereas schools elsewhere have knottier problems to deal with.”

Stop talking nonsense. Firstly, we in London already subsidise the rest of the country. Secondly, we need to pay teachers in London more because their living costs are simply higher.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/education/how-many-international-students-study-at-swiss-universities/72921721

“The university is able to select the most motivated and talented students from abroad. This leads to a positive competition during the study programme and ensures that Swiss students must also be better. This also has a positive impact on the reputation of the university,” he told SWI swissinfo.ch.

“For example, the 2023/24 annual tuition fee at ETH Zurich is around CHF1,500 ($1,700) for all students (Swiss and non-Swiss, the university makes no distinction) compared with an average $50,000+ annual tuition fees for foreign students for many top US universities.
The fact that in Switzerland many doctoral students are employed by the universities and earn a wage during their studies, which reduces their financial burden, is another factor, says the OECD.”

“On December 19, 2023, it was announced, following debate in parliament, that the Swiss government would revisit and improve the procedures to allow the many graduates from non-EU/EFTA states to stay in Switzerland to work after their studies.”

@MarshaBradyo - I think you’ll find London has a lower proportion of white, working class boys than other parts of the country.

Either London is stuffed full of aspiring families who want to get on, or it isn’t. Admittedly I was being tongue in cheek, but you can’t have it all ways. Either London’s extra money and demographics makes a difference, or they don’t.

It’s funding generally, not just teacher pay.

We have plenty of non white lower demographics so I’m not sure they need to be white to count?

Generally schools are competitive and people pay a lot via house price to get close but there’s still a big mix in the top comps because of where housing estates or other not so expensive housing is in the catchment

So you get competition via house price and mixed demographics. They both happen

The future is a bun fight globally over the most educated and skilled graduates. The young themselves are a rare commodity we desperately need to support our ageing demographic.

Stop with the regressive leftie thinking of the past, it will hold our country back. Even the Swiss Government (traditionally regressive) has realised this. It is absolute stupidity to tax private schools and encourage those students to go abroad and penalise them here.

What has this thread got to do with tax? Bit of a weird thing to mention.

When it comes to bun fights for the most skilled, globally, making this country less appealing globally by leaving the EU was an odd choice. Running down public infrastructure and services also not great choice. Whether using public healthcare and education or not, international people considering settling somewhere would rather choose somewhere where services run smoothly and efficiently, the local population are well educated and employable, there is political stability, and it is easy to get from A to B, for both people and goods.

Agree it’s such a bad policy

@Walkaround - the thread is about private schools isn’t it? And private schools are currently vilified in England are they not? There is going to be VAT to pay for private school parents and the university allocations do not work in their favour. That is the whole premise of the thread.

My point is simply these are young people and families with options and other countries will be more than happy to have them. That is why I linked to the Swiss article I found. The British exodus is a real actual thing happening right now - an outward brain drain started by Brexit and it is coming in waves. Doctors to Australia, lawyers to Dubai, phds to other unis etc etc

Private schools are of little to no interest to most people in England. I think you’ll find most people are more concerned about what is happening to state schools.

My point is very simple - forget about the British class war fare of the past. It is simply totally irrelevant in todays world of the young educated mobile elite. And yes, I will include comprehensively educated first and second generation immigrants from London with talent in that. They are very relevant because some of them lack asset wealth.

So let’s abolish private education altogether and invest in making all state schools as good as possible.

As it is, VAT is not paid in private school fees and university allocations do still work in favour of the most well educated and the brightest.

The British exodus is not because private schools no longer buy advantages, it’s because the country as a whole does not have much to offer at the moment - poor infrastructure, high cost of living, increased red tape as a result of Brexit (oh, the irony), and massively run down public services.

Exactly, any policies should focus on how the population at large can be better educated. This will make much more difference than if a tiny minority get access to a private education slightly cheaper. I do think any money raised from VAT should be put into the pot for state education.

Most importantly though, needs to be a change of thinking around policy making away from the Tory idea that the country can just rely on a tiny privately educated elite to create wealth for the country while the rest of the serfs grub around doing low paid (albeit often essential) work.

Absolutely this.

Switzerland is a good example. They have great state education. They are not threatened by a minority of private schools used by the internationally mobile coming in to do specific skilled jobs. They also want the best graduates.

The incoming Labour Party is not offering up more funds for state education. They are selling a gimmick of taxing private schools. The lie is as big as the Brexit lie sold to the country previously. The Brexit lie harmed all of us.

“:So let’s abolish private education altogether and invest in making all state schools as good as possible.”

Oh yes, what a great idea!

Absolutely not, that will just make us look crazy and attract even less foreign investment. Private schools in the UK are just brands that mean we stay internationally attractive for Education, including tertiary education.

It’s utterly mad where people go with this

Yes. London’s state education sector is evidence that where government shows a willingness to invest and believe in the importance of a project, success can happen. London state schools used to be dire, and this was bad for UK business generally, so they received disproportionate amounts of attention and funding to help tackle this.

Successive governments have focused on making an already successful London ever more supported, thus advertising to the entire world that if even the English parliament can’t be bothered to support its regions properly, why on earth should international business invest much in it? We have advertised globally that we think the rest of the country is a basket case propped up by its capital city. Nothing has really changed on this, except rhetoric not backed up by action.

All some people on this thread seem to want is to make more of the same mistakes - make sure a tiny bit of this country looks safe enough to live in, insulated from the issues of the majority of the population, and pretend this will be enough to encourage a massive influx of innovators and money makers to settle here and hope that they see potential in the bits the locals dismissed out of hand. Ha, bloody ha, ha.

Those who want to abolish private education:
Would you object if the private schools became international schools for overseas students only and British students were banned from attending?

To encourage foreign money into London, there was also a very relaxed institutional attitude to money laundering. Far too few questions asked about the source of money for investments. We do not have a healthy economy and didn’t when the country thought it was well off, either.