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?

Oh dear. They missed quite a few, didn’t they?

Walkaround are you going to name and shame the ‘quite a few’ that they missed?

Wasn't there a hypothesis that London has a better pool of potential teachers? Something like well educated couples get together, perhaps at uni. One gets a well paying job in London, the other doesn't have the same income prospects but comes to London and potentially goes into teaching? Has any work been done either to follow up on or to debunk this idea?

It is multifaceted, here is one interesting blog
https://educationblog.buckingham.ac.uk/2020/07/29/why-are-schools-in-london-so-successful-by-barnaby-lenon/

https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/education-and-youth/improving-standards-schools-and-teaching/schools-success-programme

The characteristic of London is that it is multicultural city. High-class specialists from around the world have come to London to work. When one examines the boroughs with particularly good schools, a correlation becomes evident between the percentage of educated individuals with higher degrees and the quality of schools. Generally, immigrants exhibit a greater drive towards a better life and improved education compared to many native residents.

There is plenty of evidence that corrupt money finds its way into the UK very easily.

I am afraid it is a case in any country

https://www.withersworldwide.com/en-gb/insight/read/a-spotlight-on-money-laundering-for-independent-schools-and-higher-education-institutions-in-the-uk

Abramovich - Godolphin and Latymer - is another one. Obviously, most names and schools will have been kept secret, because it doesn’t suit anyone (certainly not the establishment or the schools themselves) to publicise where specific children went or go to school, even if it is not a data protection issue. Besides which, to be fair, if the money has already been whitewashed by other parts of the British establishment before it gets passed onto the schools or universities, then why should they question what others who definitely knew better chose not to?

Of course, it all depends on what you count, as it has long been an open secret that (known to be) corrupt oligarchs from former soviet socialist republics particularly liked London, London’s financial services industry, and UK private schools as places to whitewash their money and reputations. Unfortunately, because the money was so enthusiastically accepted by the establishment, this tarnished the UK’s global reputation (except as a good place for money laundering, that is). Increasing numbers of leaks (eg the Panama Papers and Pandora Papers) and investigative journalism (eg reporting behind said papers, and also try reading the book, “Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World”) further harmed the UK’s reputation, as they revealed quite how much the UK, UK businesses and British overseas tax havens had profited from helping hide money and not questioning very deeply where the money came from. Putin clearly believed he had compromised the British establishment so effectively that he could even murder people on British soil and not get much in the way of meaningful comeback.

The invasion of Ukraine has, of course, caused the UK to change its attitude towards certain behaviours by particular individuals it was clearly highly relaxed about when it suited it - not because those individuals have only just been discovered to be corrupt, but because the country can no longer benefit from any association with them.

Whilst the whole world is corrupted by the behaviour of powerful oligarchs, it’s really hard to argue that the UK did not funnel and accept more than its fair share of dirty money in the last few decades, and that this money enriched some more than others (it did not trickle down that much, as it was mostly hidden for tax purposes). So, it’s up to you what you make of that - honest mistakes, because the money seemed legitimate, or eyes so deliberately blind they couldn’t see the harm in accepting it.

@Walkaround - I agree, but now it is Chinese money (and some other foreign jurisdictions) and we have hundreds of thousands of international students vs under 30k internationals in private schools. So we know that the same is happening in our universities right now and some of this money is not clean. However, our Government chooses not to fund our unis otherwise plus worldwide there is an increase of international students and overall, we benefit from them. And we are desperate for skilled immigration.

Hindsight is very easy but there was a time in the late 90s when we were somewhat friendly with Russia and into the mid 2000s. It is only when they attacked us on our own soil with Novichok that things soured formally.

Thank you walkaround for your detailed answer.

So, it’s up to you what you make of that - honest mistakes, because the money seemed legitimate, or eyes so deliberately blind they couldn’t see the harm in accepting it.

I honestly don’t know. However re those oligarchs and other dodgy folk who moved to London, I suppose their children had to go to school somewhere. This is a genuine question - do state schools check up on the background of the students before they accept them? I suppose one difference between state schools and private schools is that with the former no money is being handed over.
What about universities?
I also wonder what will happen to the oligarchs’ frozen assets. In the case of property will it just remain empty until they deteriorate beyond repair?

State schools have to check age and identity (eg birth certificate, who has parental responsibility, passport), and home address (eg council tax bill), to ensure entitlement to attend the school applied to in the year group applied for, but as no money changes hands, money laundering is of no relevance to them - they are obliged to accept pupils who are legally living in the UK, entitled to state education here, and who satisfy their admissions policy (eg on catchment). They aren’t allowed to refuse a place to students who satisfy these conditions. Private schools, so far as I’m aware, don’t actually have to accept anyone they don’t want to, and they are subject to money laundering legislation.

The British government is certainly keeping very quiet on what is happening to oligarchs’ frozen assets, or even how many assets have successfully been frozen, given that a major attraction of the UK for such people was always the amount of expertise we have in the UK in helping high net worth individuals and businesses hide the real ownership of their assets.

The overfocus on oligarchs/non doms is another ruse to trick the common man. It is fake news. This lot can go wherever they please anyway and jurisdictions like Dubai will welcome them with open arms.

What I am interested in is what our Government are going to do about the huge shadow economy worth at least 10 per cent of GDP. That is 350 billion a year that we are losing in people not paying taxes.

Your pushy alpha middle class parent paying for private school is the least of your problems. At least they are paying taxes in the first place and keeping the country afloat. The Tories have pushed them hard and squeezed them and every other working person dry. We should do better by all workers and all who have children and prioritise education.

State schools have let some adult asylum seekers into schools because until now the home office did not require things like teeth xrays to check who is lying and saying they are a child when not and who is. London will be schooling in the state system plenty of children of our enemies.
I read the Barnaby L article linked above which gives 6 reasons why London schools improved. Another is that int he 90s London had a huge population reduction and property crash which may have also meant schools were particularly bad in that period - then we came out of that economic problem and things got better. He mentions they found that Teach First etc helped and of course lots of new graduates tend to want to move to exciting London after university where all their friends are rather than Newcastle where my mother taught classes of 40s in the 1940s and 60s.

State schools have let some adult asylum seekers into schools because until now the home office did not require things like teeth xrays to check who is lying and saying they are a child when not and who is.

That’s a lot if rubbish sorry.
But the idea dental X-rays could tell you how old someone is in a precise manner has been debunked countless of time. The fact the U.K. immigration system might still be using it is NOT sign it’s reliable or should be used unfortunately

That is rubbish not because the dental X-ray method doesn't work (it does work broadly) but because it doesn't need to be precise really and also there are other ways to prove someone's age albeit more expensive.
So in a nutshell she dental X-rays is the way to go. I don't care if you get it wrong by +/- 1 year. After all, these people will on average need to catch up with education at the point they have entered the country (which would be subject of a separate thread).

Cambridge University scraps state school admission targets
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cambridge-university-oxford-b2511061.html

@wtficc

Is that a boost for the private school lobby or is it an admission that .most state applicants are from leafy comps or grammar schools?

The focus seems to be now on schools from deprived regions or those with historically low numbers of successful applicants

On WATO today, they were saying that significantly in excess of 50% of 2022/3 entrants from state schools were from London and the SE - so they want to ensure a wider geographical spread, more diversity in the types of schools...and they will be taking wider criteria into consideration - ie FSM children.

So I'm not sure whether it is better or worse for private school pupils...perhaps Ampleforth and Sedbergh pupils will be given preference over Eton and Harrow ones now 😉

Reform of the admissions process should return to its foundational goals of ensuring merit-based admissions and enhancing social mobility. A superficial goal of merely increasing state school admissions is inadequate, as it may disproportionately benefit high-achieving comprehensive schools or the majority of middle-class grammar school students. The objectives need to be more precisely defined to truly serve their intended purpose.

Sounds like a good plan and they need to ensure they comply with the Equality Act 2010 too which prohibits some forms of discrimination (eg in the US it has been found by the Supreme Court that Asians suffered as blacks had preference over them at university stage even though the Asians had higher marks. So these are not simple issues.

I wonder if there may have been a tendency of the best private school students applying to Oxford instead of Cambridge because of the previous policy? So they then effectively lose out on the very best from private schools to Oxford? Does anyone know whether this may have been the case?

We have certainly had more applications to Cambridge than Oxford from our grammars and I wonder why. May also be because the courses are different but difficult to tell.

I don't know about private school/Oxford admissions - @Intergalacticcatharsis but DS is at Cambridge and a friend from Bucks recently contacted me asking for advice in relation to her son's application. Her son's grammar school had advised them not to apply to Oxford for STEM, but go for Cambridge because Oxford 'don't like the grammars'?!

One of the senior staff at my boys school (Kent grammar) said that they have not had much success with STEM places at Oxford recently, but have had humanities success - which they haven't traditionally managed. They have had two fabulous years for Cambridge places/offers for various subjects however.

I don't really know precisely what "scraps state school admission targets" means, but I'm fairly certain it's not a return the days, as recently as the turn of the millennium, when the private schools were getting over half of all Oxbridge places.

The state schools churn out over 75% of all students getting A-star; A-star; A +, their share of Oxbridge places needs to reflect this and will surely increasingly do so.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-statistics/undergraduate-students/current/school-type

@wtficc

it's an interesting discussion. From a diversity perspective it makes sense to focus on social deprivation and areas of the country which have been not well represented in terms of Oxbridge admissions. However do we now replace state targets with targets based on socio economic status, school performance and geogrpahy? My fear would be that I'd we use a metric such as this then in reality you will find a low proportion of successful applicants from such backgrounds because of the simple fact born out by statistics you are incredibly less likely to get the required grades to be in a chance for admittance of you come from a poorly performing school in a deprived region of the country. The reasons for this are complex and in my view is due to structural inequalities within education as a whole.

you would therefore still get the left leaning press publishing pieces about shockingly low admittance rates for poorer schools/areas with accusations of inherent bias in Oxbridge's part. Can the universities win here?

I think the argument can get quite circular. Go for the brightest and best independent of schooling then you need criteria e.g. A levels and interview performance to judge that and invariably it is private, grammar and comps in wealthy locations that produce the vast majority fulfilling the criteria. The universities then will then continue to be put under scrutiny and there will be more hand wringing pieces in the press about the 'bias' of elite university admission.

There is no manic bullet and perhaps Cambridge have realised target setting hasn't had the desired effect in terms of changing the overall background of successful applicants so they have given up or at least we prioritised this area.

Sorry for the typos

@mids2019 i think that's a very good post. Lower attainment among children from socio economically deprived backgrounds is something that university admission policies at Oxford and Cambridge can only help address to a very small degree. People often talk about the universities looking for 'potential' - but once you get to university level, there isn't a lot of time for potential to develop into attainment. I found the adjustment from state school to Oxbridge pretty full on, and that was from a middle class grammar school background with a clutch of top A Level grades. From what I hear, the academic pressure is if anything greater now than it was back then. Students who have got a lot of academic catching up to do, or who are poorly supported at home, or who will need to work a lot to support themselves financially, are likely to find it really challenging, I suspect.

Of course, there will be students from poorer backgrounds who are absolutely ready to do brilliantly at Oxridge, and the universities absolutely do need to find those students, and that's got to be part of the picture. But a general raising of attainment among poorer students needs to come from below.

The other option is that Oxbrridge and the other top universities become less academically elite, in a bid to widen access further - but as a country, in terms of global competitiveness and cutting edge research, we probably do need those 'best of the best' institutions.