Oxford uni (and just unis in general)

[law4569]

Hi all!

Just wanted some advice. My daughter is applying for spanish + beginners German and wants to do a law conversion after. She's decided she wants to apply to Oxford, Edinburgh, ucl, durham and bristol or warwick. I wanted to know people's experiences with these unis as durham and Edinburgh are very far from where we live + warwick we're unsure if it's good for her degree. For anyone whose children went to Oxford, did they do well at gcse? She got 999888777 but she's worried because of the context of her skl (she did okay) then she'll be disadvantaged. if anyone has any sort of experience on any of this id appreciate it :)

Thanks to everyone who clarified that IGCSEs are not counted in the official total!

Yes in our school alone (not Eton but independent) in DS1's year about 45 kids got all 9s. They do a mixture of GCSEs and iGCSEs

The GCSE exams taken at independent schools are counted in national grade data. Only IGCSEs are not.

So how exactly are Oxford Uni contextualising the schools doing a mix of IGCSE and GCSEs or mainly IGCSEs? I do not think Cambridge IGCSE languages is easier than AQA, far from it from what I have seen. Nor Sciences for that matter?
DD’s grammar picks OCR for eg Physics which is quite difficult. All the exam boards and all the GCSEs are meant to be the same.
And let’s not forget all the controversy over English language GCSE markings in the last few years. Do Oxford take any of that into account or not. Or is it really just simplistic to cover their own backsides and their “process” because they have such a large pool of strong candidates it needs not be entirely fair, just protect the institution first and foremost?

Oxford evaluate applicant GCSE grades in the context of overall results from their school. IGCSE grades are reported separately but for some reason they are not counted in the government’s aggregate dsta.

OK so Oxford do not use official Government data for private schools? Because they can’t. I am really confused now.

Why would they need to? They evaluate each candidate's results against that school's data, not against national data.

As for why the government don't include igcses in national aggregate data, I really don't know. Might it be because it would tip more schools' results into being below average?

The DFE and the National Pupil Database - does that include data for every single child’s results whether state or privately educated (including IGCSEs) at GCSE level?

I am just interested from a data perspective and what information the Government holds on every child. And if they hold it anyway, I am not sure why it is not included in the aggregate data as I thought IGCSEs are mainly numeric too now.

My kids are state educated. I just do not like the concept of all this data out there that they (institutions/government etc) hold without us knowing exactly what and how it is used and what it says exactly.

My instinct is very much any data that is of my child’s or mine (whether health or education or whatever) belongs to my child or myself primarily.

Hence all this stuff on “contextual data” - I would like to know exactly what and how they use it all.

Hi, @Araminta1003 -

Oxford are interested in how you performed at GCSE given the resources available to you; hence contextualisation with respect to your school’s performance.

I agree the data question is interesting and hope someone can help us with it. I would doubt that GCSE grades are linked to pupil names in official databases but that is only a guess (and a hope).

Thanks, he is both clever & sensible (and just fabulous, even if I do say so 😀).

That's so interesting about the skim reading (would have driven me mad!), and the fact you were presumed to know stuff. Funnily enough we had this conversation just last week about 'stuff' that private school kids just know that both he and I didn't. It wasn't relevant for his degree (STEM) but he was talking about how his wider reading & understanding of the world/ cultural understanding/ classical & philosophical knowledge all came from me/ his own further reading- crucially not school. Now he's older he can see that it was all teaching to the exam, teaching to the middle & not having the time to stretch the kids who can/ want to learn about different things. He's not blaming the teachers, but the system.

I had a baptism of fire 1st year of uni as I had no clue about the classical references by lecturers/ allusion in literature (English) & had to learn it all by myself at once. I was blindsided that the private schoolers beside me all knew it.

@poetryandwine - I think it would be linked to a number, for sure.
But what I do not know is what happens with all these kids who switch from independent to state. Are the GCSEs or IGCSEs they submit to their state sixth form on entry then entered at that point and what exactly are they being compared to.

There are all these rumours that the unis look at GCSE context but how can they without fully official figures that are regulated.

I don’t think contextualisation is all that scientific, @Araminta1003 . It is a blunt instrument.

I hope someone can help us.

Yes sure @poetryandwine

It is just that on MN if you claim you know loads of kids who got all 9s you get told no that cannot possibly be the case. When for those of us who live in London with friends and colleagues kids at private schools, we know they got all 9s.
And then you hear all these rumours of people putting their kids into the state system for Sixth Form because of VAT and uni admissions, and you get told on MN “oh no, that does not possibly work, because unis fully contextualise GCSEs” - I sort of want to get to the bottom of that one, once and for all.
Because the OP is asking about a DC who sat GCSEs in a private school (she did not say whether it includes iGCSEs) - so for all we actually know they won’t be able to properly contextualise those GCSEs anyway.

They will know where the GCSEs were sat and what the grade profile of that school is. That is what they compare against. If you do your GCSEs in a massively selective and expensive private school and your A Levels in the local sixth form, they will still compare the GCSE results against the massively selective private school's grade attainment. IGCSEs are marked, moderated and regulated just as GCSEs are.

Unless you are suggesting that private schools are untruthful about the results of external assessments, which I imagine would be pretty obvious and swiftly cracked down on, this just doesn't seem that complicated.

Well the UCAS application requires you to list the test centre for your GCSEs, which is almost always your school. You also list all secondary schools attended since age 11, with dates.

Changing schools can only help with contextualisation around national criteria, possibly resulting in a lower A level (or equivalent) offer. It would be very foolish to suppress education history if eg you moved to a grammar school or comp for sixth form, because the referee routinely states the dates of your attendance.

DC should be in the environment that is their best fit insofar as their families can provide it (and this could well be a state school). Trying to game the system generally doesn’t work and when it does it sends a terrible, confidence-destroying message to DC. It doesn’t help them succeed, to say the least.

I don’t think anyone disbelieved the claims about grades here once we cleared them up, although we don’t really know how many pupils sat 11 GCSEs or IGCSEs. What feels like ‘a lot’ locally might not be significant at scale.

“They will know where the GCSEs were sat and what the grade profile of that school is.”

@Alouest - but what exactly is the definition of “grade profile” - eg is it average point score of top 9 or 8 GCSEs taken or percentage of attainment grades 7-9 or some sort of English calculation? I just wanted to understand what it means precisely and how it is then compared to all schools in percentage terms on a bell curve.

My DD2 seems to think Oxford take your top 9 GCSE results and treat your 8s and 9s as the same and then compare you to your actual school context. But whether they compare how many kids at that school got all 8s and 9s across 9 subjects and how they get that data exactly I do not know. Or whether they just say your GCSE school is in the top 5% or 1% nationally so we give you a 0 score for GCSE because even though you have all 8s and 9s you cannot score higher because 95% of kids at your school got that. And if you have a couple of 7s they give you a minus 2 in your GCSE score.

From what I can gather, they get the data from the DfE. But how they weight it is a bit of a mystery and I don't think they disclose this. We have also been told that they don't distinguish greatly between 8s and 9s but that they look at the top 8. As far as I can tell from people I actually know getting a couple of 8s or 7s in a high-performing school won't matter greatly, especially if they are unrelated subjects to what you want to study. But if you, say, dropped a GCSE so only have 9 when most people have 10 from your school they don't like that at all.

OK let’s imagine two identical twins with exactly the same ability. One goes to the local school with lower than average attainment, because he really wants to and the other goes to a really academic independent or grammar school with very high attainment, because he wants to.

They get exactly the same GCSE grades which are right at the top end, and they apply for the same subject at two different colleges at Oxford. They apply for a very competitive subject where only 1:10 get in. They are the same ability from the same family with the same postcode. They achieve very similar scores in the entrance tests and the interviews and they both get 3 A stars predicted.

Twin 1 who went to the local comp with lower than average attainment will be given a positive GCSE score which for a competitive course means he is scored quite significantly above Twin 2. Twin 1 gets in, Twin 2 may get pooled or might not get in.
That is my understanding of the whole process.

@Araminta1003 A very quick dive into AI gives the following process for Oxford GCSE contextualisation. It sounds reasonable but I would always look for further confirmation of information sourced from AI.

In a nutshell, your description is correct.

I am informed that Oxford ranks all high schools according to the percentage of pupils earning grades 9-7 on at least five GCSEs.
There is an implication that this enables one to compute the expected number of Grade 8 and Grade 9 outcomes. It is also sort of implied that these are regarded equivalently, but not so stated.

Then each applicant from your school gets a +. - or 0 score according to how they deviate from this expected number. So yes, if every other pupil gets all 8s and 9s and you get two 7s in amongst your otherwise top grades, then it appears that your raw score is roughly -2.

It isn’t clear from what I read how different numbers of exams affect this score.

This score seems to be called the Contextual GCSE or cGCSE, if anyone wants to learn more.

Again, I would not rely too heavily on the details from AI but this is roughly consistent with what I remember learning about the cGCSE when I was an admissions tutor.

I think that is right. But Twin 1 may in fact have achieved more than Twin 2 by getting those grades. He may have had more disruption in his classes. He may have had quite a few non-specialist teachers, especially for shortage subjects which might be relevant if they are both applying for maths or science. He's likely to have had less teacher support (not because they don't want to help, because they haven't the time to sit a single child down and explain the thing they are not getting). He will not have experienced much, if any, teaching that goes beyond the exams he will take. And there is a lot of cultural capital that he may have missed out on which might be relevant if they are both applying for something like English - even with a family who is educated and supportive. And during covid, Twin 2 will likely have had a full online timetable, homework, and feedback on all work completed - whereas I know a number of bright children in Twin 1's situation who had some worksheets sent home (which were never marked). In this situation, Twin 1 would benefit from being able to see what Twin 2 was being given but in the case of most children in Twin 1's position, that won't have been the case.

While Twin 1 and Twin 2 began secondary school with the same potential, Twin 1 will almost certainly have had to work a bit harder to fulfil it.

And twin 2 may have had a medicore teacher and twin 1 may have had extra tutoring paid for at home.

True!

@Araminta1003 c-One thing to keep in mind is that this scanario is very specific.

The interview and any admissions tests are very important. I imagine you are assuming thise outcomes are also identical. If, after all of that, the twin from the stronger school is rejected and the twin from the weaker school is admitted, Oxford’s view will be that neither twin was amongst the strongest of their candidates (or the GCSEs would not have determined the outcome). One twin was lucky.

Admissions are taken seriously, but you have to draw the line somewhere. If a university is transparent about using cGCSEs this way and the line falls between two twins, so what? Everyone knew the rules of the game when they decided to play.