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?

Maybe think about Ireland, which has very few private schools, has a highly-educated population and attracts considerable foreign investment.

“Between 2011 and 2021 Manchester's GDP per capita, a measure of output, has increased by 44 per cent from £35,739 to £51,330 – the largest increase of any of the UK's major cities and any Greater Manchester district.”

It’s sad that with such an allegedly highly-educated population Ireland has chosen to go down the unscientific gender ideology route and is becoming increasingly totalitarian by the day (ref the new hate speech law, the most draconian anywhere in the world). That really isn’t progressive.

Ireland attracted a lot of international investment by lowering taxes and becoming a quasi tax haven? It is also a much smaller country than England? (5 million in total) Greater London is more than double the size of Ireland. If London was its own country we would be doing incredibly well.

Are you aware of the CT rate?

I hear you.

I’m not sure why you’re peppering this with question marks. I’m well aware of the relative sizes of our countries, and I lived in London for a decade. And of the corporation tax rate. My point about the Irish education system remains, and I’ve had a child in education in both countries, and have studied and taught at universities in both countries.

@Dzogchen - you made the preposterous suggestion to ban private schools (the equivalent of a communist style asset appropriation with consequent dire foreign investment implications) and then throw a tax haven in as a suggestion. Very contradictory reasoning, in my humble opinion.

Surely it’s easy to see that without the same lower CT rate we need something else to attract international attention

In our case an education system people move to and pay for

Maybe @Dzogchen will agree that for a talented young person with passport/visa options nowadays Ireland, Switzerland, Germany etc are indeed increasingly attractive options to both study and settle down in.

If London were its own country, it might feel rather hemmed in by the country surrounding it. It would make for interesting border control issues. Might want to expand City Airport, too. 🤣 Interesting suggestion that Ireland’s state education standards are linked to it being a small quasi-tax haven without much in the way of access to private schools. When the tax rate was higher, did the schools do less well?…

With the possible exception of Ireland, you’re also going to need a funding source for studying abroad as UK student loans are not available.

ETH Zurich may charge minimal fees but it estimates annual living costs at around £20k.

@SabrinaThwaite - but if I could front 60-80k living costs for my child to study at ETH by remortgaging and if they can then get a job there afterwards, it makes sense.

Have you looked at how much graduates earn there? It is loads and their quality of life will be better. Vs stay in U.K. pay 9 per cent of extra tax forever more on your student loan and fund the NHS and general mismanagement and gimmicky politics. If you can do it, it makes sense. Even just politically speaking - if there is hope to live in a country where the actual population gets a say, I think that might be worth it.

I recently took my DC on a ski trip to Norway, we are genuinely considering all
EU and EEA countries now.

? If you can remortgage for Switzerland, you can remortgage to avoid getting a student loan, too.

It’s a minority of people that are willing and able to remortgage in order to stump up £60-£80k per child (and as @Walkaround says - you could do that in the UK and your child would graduate debt free, so no 9% extra tax).

You do also realise that going on holiday somewhere is very different from actually living there?

Salaries are higher in these EEA / EU countries because the cost of living is higher. And I say that as a family that’s turned down long term postings to Nordic countries because the sums didn’t add up, even allowing for the initial tax breaks and schooling deals on offer.

The application form asks if you have ever been educated at an independent school.

“The application form asks if you have ever been educated at an independent school.”

I think only if you are a home student. Let’s take 2 Etonians - one whose parents live and pay taxes in England. 1 whose parents live in Russia.
Oxford and Cambridge only care where the prospective student went to school in the case of the “home student”. In the case of the Etonian whose parents live in Russia - that student has to pay overseas fees. So if those students are exactly the same academically, then the Russian student is more likely to get in.
I think this is where lots of the issues are.
So the English tax paying Etonian has to go to the US to uni. And pay there.

Which therefore means that if you are a middle class tax paying English person whose children want to go to university in the UK then it makes no sense to pay for private school.

It makes much more sense to move into catchment of a great state school and top up with tutoring, if need be. Afterwards, you will make money on your house when you sell it and that money will be entirely tax free. You can then gift that cash to your children to buy their own house or pay off their student debt. If they stay in the UK the majority of students will now have to pay 9 per cent extra tax for 40 years to pay off their student debt. It compounds with interest and we have just had record inflation so students right now post Covid are going to be utterly shafted with ballooning compound interest.

So private school parents in exactly the same position financially as a state school parent who did not choose private schooling are being penalised for their choice. And are about to be even more penalised by VAT on private schools. All other things like income/educational attainment, being equal.

Those who are going to lose out the most are those on the highest marginal tax rates. What they should be doing is paying cash into their pensions to bring their salaries down below the 100k mark. If they choose private schooling instead, it is costing them a huge amount of money.

My advice to the OP would be to model it carefully and seek tax advice, bearing in mind all your circumstances.

And if you have some money, then apparently Hills Road in Cambridge which is a feeder Sixth Form college for both Oxford and Cambridge, allows boarding for 18k a year. So 11-15 local comp followed by that if you want Oxbridge and your child is very intelligent. Or Peter Symonds, which also allows boarding. There is also a grammar school in Kent called Cranbrook which is a bit like a private school. You just pay for the boarding. If you are not anti boarding, that is.

“The application form asks if you have ever been educated at an independent school”

Do those in charge of admissions check up on every student application?

They most certainly will post interview if they want to offer you a place. And if you’ve found to be lying then your whole future there will be out in jeopardy.

They most certainly will post interview if they want to offer you a place. And if you’ve found to be lying then your whole future there will be out in jeopardy.

Do you mean they will warn other universities not to take on a student who lies?

Oxford and Cambridge only care where the prospective student went to school in the case of the “home student”. In the case of the Etonian whose parents live in Russia - that student has to pay overseas fees. So if those students are exactly the same academically, then the Russian student is more likely to get in.

That’s very unfair. Since they want to increase the number of state school applicants then they should check the education of overseas candidates.

@Barbadossunset - I think it might be too time consuming to go investigate every overseas student’s schooling and in some jurisdictions, there is a much higher proportion of private school pupils too.

Personally, I think private schooling isn’t that relevant. Far more relevant is educational achievement of the parents (eg both university educated, in particular, Oxbridge, Russell Group/Ivy League) and total household income and homeownership. I am willing to bet that having an Oxbridge or similarly educated parent is the biggest factor. So I think there definitely should be a box to tick for highest parental educational attainment.

I have been following a young man called Tom Henderson on X who is Ivy League, but from a properly disadvantaged background and he makes very interesting points about privilege. One of his points is that having an Ivy educated parent immediately makes you “upper class” educationally speaking. I think that is true and we need to get away from these very old fashioned ideas of British class. Besides they are very partisan and outdated. For example, Labour don’t like private schools because that is where Tory MPs were largely educated. The other point Henderson makes is about stability in home life and how important that is.

There is a box on the Cambridge form that you can tick for extenuating circumstances like illness and bereavement and there is also a FSM box, now or at any time in the last 6 years. However, pupils can tick “prefer not to say”.

Let’s say you have an orphaned emotionally neglected Etonian being pitted against a Hills Road pupil from a stable background with 2 phd don parents - one would hope Admissions would realise the latter is more “privileged” in many ways, or at least treat them equally.

Thank you intergalactic - lots of interesting points there.

For example, Labour don’t like private schools because that is where Tory MPs were largely educated.
Yes, I bet that’s true. I wonder how Labour MPs reacted to old Etonian fellow travellers like Tam Dalyell and Mark Fisher. Maybe they forgave them for being OEs since they saw the light and became Labour MPs.

Targets (formal ones anyway, as stated in their Access plans) are only set for home students. Certain data, including ethnicity, is only collected for home students.