[patanegra]

This is extremely unfair framing.

Oxford University has been discriminating people from independent schools for a while now. To get in, you need 4 A* from an independent schools, or just 3 As from state schools.

That's not "letting in poor people" as you framed it. It's letting in dumber people, worse students. Lots of that is mainly based on classism (against people from middle class), racism (against white people).

Oikophobia is a cancer, and Oxford getting worse ratings is the direct result of that.

[abxyz]

It is a very fair read of Paul's take.

I attended one of the worst secondary schools in the country. Less than 10% of my year earned the qualifications necessary to go on to university. I know that many of these people, who have gone on to be successful in life, would have excelled at an independent school and would have excelled at university. They were in poverty, not stupid.

You cannot compare the achievements of a student at an independent school to those of a student at a state school based on grades. State school and independent school are a fundamentally different educational experience.

If you think Cambridge and Oxford exist to accept the highest graded students in the country, rather than to accept the students that have the most academic potential, then sure, let's only admit students who have 3 A*s.

[fidotron]

> You cannot compare the achievements of a student at an independent school to those of a student at a state school based on grades. State school and independent school are a fundamentally different educational experience.

While I agree with this as a conclusion, I believe you cannot really go there without acknowledging that this has been a deteriorating situation ever since most of the UK abolished the grammar schools.

"Comprehensive" education has done nothing except result in the oppression of the very people it claims to be liberating.

[Latty]

As someone who went to a grammar school, they are a terrible idea and comprehensive schools are a better system.

Students are not equally capable across all subjects, and their ability changes over time. Grammar schools mean there is no room to give you what you need in subjects you fall behind on, and students who start to struggle or start achieving post-11-plus have to transfer schools to fix it, creating huge friction and basically ensuring they'll miss out on the education they should have.

Comprehensives that have a full range of sets to teach at the skill level of the student for each subject are infinitely better for actual education.

I was one of the fortunate ones who was pretty generalist and so I didn't suffer too much by it, but I consistently saw people just give up on subjects because they were too far behind and the school had no other options because there were no lower sets.

[energy123]

Paul is talking his book, he wants it to change to increase the probability that his kids get in. Of course what we get to hear are the "reasons", and this conflict of interest goes unmentioned.

[joosters]

Oxbridge have never had to 'let in dumber people'. They are always heavily over-subscribed, and give offers to a small fraction of the people who come for an interview, let alone apply.

The whole point of the interview process is to assess not just the applicant's past achievements, but what they might be able to achieve if they got their place at the uni. Part of that is looking at the applicant's background, and knowing that even if they aren't currently at some elite high-fee school, they might still have the ability and capability to do well.

I am all in favor of this style of selection. The dark old days of "this kid's dad went to our college, we should do them a favour and let them in" are long gone, thankfully.

Can you point to any kind of evidence that Oxbridge are dumbing down their teaching, or lowering their standards of teaching? I doubt it.

Full disclosure: cambridge alumni, from a state school!

[jgraham]

In addition, the colleges have a lot of data about the people they interview and how well they do during the degree programme.

My understanding (based on a discussion with one Natural Sciences admissions tutor at one Cambridge college nearly 20 years ago, so strictly speaking this may not be true in general, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't common) is that during the admissions process, including interviews, applicants are scored so they can be stack-ranked, and the top N given offers. Then, for the students that are accepted, and get the required exam results, the college also records their marks at each stage of their degree. To verify the admissions process is fair, these marks are compared with the original interview ranking, expecting that interview performance is (on average) correlated with later degree performance.

I don't know if they go further and build models to suggest the correct offer to give different students based on interview performance, educational background, and other factors, but it seems at least plausible that one could try that kind of thing, and have the data to prove that it was working.

Anyway my guess is that of the population of people who would do well if they got in, but don't, the majority are those whose background makes them believe it's "not for the likes of me", and so never apply, rather than people who went to private schools, applied, and didn't get a place.

(also a Cambridge alumni from a state school, FWIW),

[OJFord]

All these Cambridge alumni with this dodgy Latin, 'smh'! You're an alumnus, or identifying as an alumna! (Identifying as many alumni at a stretch, but then still not 'a Cambridge alumni'.)

(alumnus not of Cambridge, but from a state school, fwiw)

('people called Johns, they go the Cambridge?!')

[notreallyauser]

On student evaluations, I wouldn't be surprised of Oxbridge do badly as so many pf the dons were at or near the top of their year at the university, weren't employed for their teaching abilities, and seemed unable to comprehend they were not teaching cohorts entirely full of clones of themselves.

Dumbed down it was not, in my experience. Dumbing down would be a way to up the score on these rankings, though.

[corimaith]

And is this new generation doing paticularly well in solving our problems or advancing the nation over the previous one? I can't see much examples, I do remember going through some of the science projects shown in undergrad showcase but none of them were tackling key bottlenecks or doing something novel.

[foven]

The kids at private schools are specifically primed for every part of the application process, including the interview and interview questions in a way that state schools simply cannot. It does not matter how smart you are if your competition is able to practice in a way you cannot.

[madaxe_again]

Went to private school and gotta say I went into the whole thing entirely blind - zero priming or coaching, just a begrudging allowing me to escape the prison camp for a night to go for my interview.

[nickd2001]

To me, the whole Oxbridge education must be distorted by this fierce competition to improve one's "personal brand" by getting a prestigious school on your c.v /resume (or misperception that going to Oxbridge gets you in contact with the best people to learn the subject from, which is clearly untrue, as for starters many great academic staff stay away, unable to afford a family home in such areas). It just means your peers will be rather "type A" , pushing very hard. but does it mean they're actually brilliant minds with novel ideas? Some of them for sure but Oxbridge hardly has a monopoly on that. There must be people whose parents sent them to amazing private schools, and they got pushed towards Oxbridge and one day they wake up and say "I've no idea why I'm doing any of this, its not making me happy and I wish I could be around normal people" ;)

[nicce]

Why the process is not fixed from that part? Redesign in a way that private schools will not get any benefit from the process itself.

[rcxdude]

How exactly? the way it's managed at the moment is that the admissions tutors keep an eye on what different schools are doing in terms of prepping their students and keep that in mind when assessing them. Which is exactly what causes the 'bias'. I am significantly more impressed by someone who manages to get good grades with little help than someone who manages to get excellent grades with the most effective teaching of the test that money can buy (having gone to an independent school, I was one of those being 'discriminated' against, but I can well understand that many of my classmates, who primarily good at cramming for the exam and not understanding the material, got very good grades but would not do nearly as well at university. Heck, I got in and struggled way more than I had done before, and more so than many in my year who had worse grades in less good schools)

(I would, in general, be in favor of fixing GCSEs and A-levels. They have persistently moved in a direction that rewards memorisation of particular keywords, something which especially rewards teaching the test, as well as getting easier and especially less good at discriminating the top end of ability accurately. But it's still not going to be enough to remove this difference)

[asib]

It is, via the interview. This is why A-level results are a coarse filter, and why they have different standards for state vs private schools; state school kids with 3 A's presumably excel in the interview to the same extent as private school kids with 3 A*'s.

It cannot be understated how much of an advantage someone who went to a private school has over someone from a state school, with respect to the entire process (exams/admissions tests/interview prep).

[NewJazz]

What is your specific proposal? Anything you do, the private schools will do their best to adapt.

[pimterry]

Fundamentally Oxbridge entry has never been based on academic results directly as you're implying. You needed near-perfect grades to be considered, but the vast majority of people applying with those grades fail the interviews regardless.

The interview is absolutely the primary test here, with the grades just acting as a filter to provide a manageable number of applicants. Widening that filter to allow more disadvantaged students the chance to interview seems perfectly reasonable - given that the interview itself remains equally demanding (and I've seen no suggestion or evidence against this).

[ceejayoz]

> It's letting in dumber people, worse students.

Is it?

Maybe a kid managing to struggle through a shitty school has to work harder than, say, Prince Charles with his private school and dedicated personal tutors.

[yodsanklai]

But does Oxford want the best student or some that had to work harder but ultimately aren't as good?

In France, our elite scientific schools recruit students based on anonymous nationwide tests. It turns out most of the recruits come from privileged backgrounds, and I've heard this is more the case today than it was several decades ago.

I'd love to see more diversity in these schools, but I prefer to maintain our educational excellence rather than dilute it artificially with worse students. I'm all for paying tutors to poorer but promising student, but they should be admitted against the same criteria as anyone else.

[growse]

If you can pay to be better at the test, then the test just becomes a test of how wealthy you are.

[UK-AL]

When you have well off parents, you can literally be sent to prep schools which drill for these tests.

[yodsanklai]

These tests are pretty advanced maths and physics, not just multiple choice question you can just drill. Also almost all the prep schools are public.

Pretty much all French physics Nobel Prize and Field Medal laureate when to the same top school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_École_normale_supérieu...

[cauch]

It misses the point: if you split the universe in two identical parallel universe, but then take the same individual and in one universe train them 2h per week, and in the other universe, train them 8h per week, do you really think, whatever the test is, the second one will not perform better?

This is the point of training: the more training you have access to, the better you do. If it was not the case, then the notion of school itself as a way of training people to be able to think by themselves will not have any sense.

And that is just training. Even with the same amount of class hour, kids who don't have to worry about take care of their siblings, of the house chores, or of even having access to decent relaxing conditions will get higher score even if they are in fact less smart.

[yodsanklai]

Yes, more training will invariably give better outcome for a given individual. But some people are just incredibly more talented than others due to genetics alone.

If you want to build an elite sport team, I don't think you want to artificially put less athletic kids for the reason they had to work harder.

I think the question is why do we need elite higher education at all. Maybe we don't. In my view, we want to funnel the brightest people there and make sure they get access to the best resources.

[patanegra]

Clearly, it's because talented people grow to the top (not just economically, they might be cultural elites, like people working in news, academia). Then, they marry people who are on the top. And they pass their genes and habits.

It's nothing bad that their kids end up good students again.

I think that French system is superior. It gives fair chances to everyone.

[physicsguy]

It's clearly not purely genetic though is it? A lot of it is wealth and opportunity. That's why there's "dynasties" in so many areas of the developed world, particularly in cultural spheres where that opportunity matters more than in scientific worlds.

[frotaur]

This is not 'clear' at all. What is clear is the correlation. You imply that the cause is 'good genes and habit'.

An equally, if not more valid cause is that having money makes it much easier to get good condition/tutors etc for preparing for the exams.

[patanegra]

There are studies that show how heritable intelligence is. Very.

It is quite common people say, that something is only a correlation and not causation. But if you can point to a common denominator, that has been shown multiple times, to have a massive effect, it's not likely to be just a coincidence. Genes are this common denominator. Society and habits (for example, protestants vs catholics) are another.

Things that consistently impact the whole population are not just a random process that picks: "You will be clever, ugly.", "You will be pretty, sporty, but will be dumb." It's always genes, society and habits.

[nickd2001]

Some research on the subject here : https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20180905-how-genes-infl.... Personally I question how one can definitely prove to what extent genes are the factor as there are so many other factors in play, but those researchers know more than I.

[foven]

Which gene gives me a tutor to support me at the most critical point in my intellectual development?

[Ekaros]

Honestly I feel like anonymous mass test in general is least worst way. Yes, parents can invest in tutoring and such. But there still needs to be effort and learning to do well on the test.

[patanegra]

It's always the same argument.

If you are world-class talent (someone who gets to Oxford), you should be capable of similar results as kids from independent schools. Like Joe Seddon did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Seddon - growing up with a single parent mom, working as a therapist in NHS).

It isn't fair to ask ones to have 4A* and others to have just 3As.

Only 1 in 2600 gets 4 A.

And 1 in 83 gets 3 As.

Making it 31 easier for people from state school is discrimination so bad, it should be illegal.

[abxyz]

At my secondary school it wasn't possible to do more than 6 GCSEs vs. many of the most academically gifted independent school attendees who obtained at least double that number of GCSEs.

At A level my secondary school couldn't accommodate most A level subjects: students were sent off to many different schools for different subjects, and forced to choose which A levels they did based on complicated scheduling arrangements. The only reason some of them could afford to do A levels was because of the £30 benefits payments they received which covered their transport costs (I believe it was called EMA (something like "Education Maintenance Allowance") at the time, but it was a long time ago).

As far as I recall, the maximum possible qualifications from my secondary school was 6 A* GCSEs and 3 A levels.

[asib]

If it's so much easier to get into Oxbridge from a state school, why do you think people with the means send their kids to private school? They'd save so much money not doing so.

[concernedParty]

There is a growing number of parents who, because of this exact overt and known discrimination against applicants from private schools, will first send their kids to elite private primary schools and then they switch them to the best secondary state schools they can find, using the money to supplement their education with private one-to-one tutors.

This is an entirely expected outcome. Water will find a way to ground.

[patanegra]

Oh yes, I have kids in a prep school where half of the class goes to Eton, and the rest to Winchester, Harrow, Seven Oaks, Derby... Now, for the past few years, almost no parents want to send kids to Eton. They know how much are those kids discriminated against. It's better to send them to a school with lower profile.

[asib]

Doesn’t this prove the reason for the existence of the disparity? The wealthy kid’s parents want tutors to supplement the education they get from their state school.

I understand an argument saying people will game this setup, but arguing that state school kids are not disadvantaged is indefensible, in my opinion

[oh_fiddlesticks]

There is absolutely a disparity between private and state teaching quality.

I don't think thats an objectionable statement.

Also, while not wanting to paint with a broad brush, people I know who work in state run schools are aware of how many other challenges students must face when they're on school grounds. They're fighting more than the test criteria, they're fighting their peers, outside criminal influences, prostitution, drug dealing etc etc.

Meanwhile this stuff is rarer and more swiftly dealt with at private schools because the parents won't have it, and they pay the bills and have some leverage, the financial incentives are different in the model and it shows.

I personally don't have a problem with loosening the grade criteria, even if it's gamed, the candidates are all interviewed anyway, it's not like a free pass, more an opportunity.

[petesergeant]

Most people sending their kids to the very best British schools are not expecting their kids to get into Oxbridge.

[misnome]

Maybe they aren’t doing it purely as a numerical exercise to get into a specific university 13 years in the future?

[noelwelsh]

> In total, almost half (49.4 per cent) of A-level entries at independent schools this year were awarded A or A*, compared with less than a quarter (22.3 per cent) at comprehensives.

https://www.schoolmanagementplus.com/exams-qualifications/a-...

Much more on the disparity if one cares to search.

[ceejayoz]

> Only 1 in 2600 gets 4 A.

> And 1 in 83 gets 3 As.

And what if that’s not always an indication of which person is smarter?

[rayiner]

But we know that it’s true. That’s why we have been using objective metrics like test scores for millennia, across societies are different as China, India, and Britain.

[Latty]

Your best argument is "we've done it for a long time, so it can't be wrong"?

Quite the contrary: there is a long history of "objective" tests being shown to be deeply flawed and biased towards certain factors (often cultural and class based), we explicitly know it isn't the case that test scores are purely about some innate intelligence characteristic: there is a reason the rich spend a lot of money to raise their children's scores.

My secondary school claimed to have the best results for Business Studies A-levels in the country. They achieved this by taking the pre-released case study, writing every possible question they could think of about the study, writing model answers, and telling the students to memorise them. The idea that these scores represent some innate intelligence of the student is obviously nonsense if you interact with the system at all.

[rayiner]

The notion that the British A levels have “cultural bias” is absurd, given that Asians outperform white British: https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education....

In the U.S., research shows the SAT is highly predictive of college performance: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-week-educatio... (summarizing research).

[paganel]

You could fairly say that China’s pre-Opium Wars obsession with testing and meritocracy based on said testing is what brought them into all that mess, I’m pretty sure that the Portuguese that had gotten all the way from their small country all the way to Southern China using some stingy boats were not clerks nor great (potential) test-takers, and yet it was those Portuguese seafarers that were to change the fate of most of Asia forever, not the test-taking Chinese.

[nobodyandproud]

Testing and meritocracy of what, though?

Don’t forget that China chose Confucianism to put a halt to the perpetual, European style wars.

Stagnation was by design, and caught up with them after 2000 years.

[ceejayoz]

We’ve done all sorts of dumb things for thousands of years.

It’s one metric of many. We know that paying for a tutor can change test scores. We know that a shitty home life can, too. They’re just harder to measure.

[rayiner]

If you’re suggesting that having “a shitty home life” can make people perform badly on tests, but not perform badly in real world tasks, we don’t “know” that. It’s something people want to be true, but there’s not much evidence for it. Meanwhile, there’s reams of evidence that standardized tests scores are highly predictive of performance.

[growse]

I got six A's at A level, over 20 years ago.

Am i objectively smarter than every single other peer who only got 4 As?

(I, for one, am confident I know the answer to this question).

[notahacker]

I'm confident you're a better judge of the worth of A-levels than the people who've never even taken them furiously insisting they're objective indicators of merit, and not high school syllabus-recollection/essay-writing tests which are easily taught to, actively fudged by some schools and greatly variable in actual difficulty from one subject and exam board to another.

Still, your grades (and mine) pale in comparison to all these youngsters with an opportunity to get A* grades...

[rayiner]

Close. If you take a group of 50 people like you, who got six A’s, and a group of 50 people who only got 4 A’s, then the former group will be smarter.

[skippyboxedhero]

How would you measure this?

Before you continue, there are governments in the UK that have created formulas to mathematically measure your level of "struggle"...these happen to, in a massive coincidence, benefit areas that vote for them.

The same logic is also being applied within universities to boost grades as managers at universities have quotas to hit from government. This leads to odd situations where a subject like Scottish Law at Edinburgh has no quota for students without appropriate social credit because it is a subject which, unlike other courses at that university, gets largely Scottish students applying so it has to be used to fill quotas. And these students have to be carried to the end of their course because they are there to fulfill a quota.

Sounds like a great idea but, as with everything like this, the assumption is that a university administrator or bureaucrat can accurately measure your struggle...they can't, I am sure the wisdom of this approach will dim when you are being operated on by someone who filled a quota at medical school.

[AlexandrB]

Maybe. Unfortunately it's very hard to measure that. Moreover, how hard you have to work doesn't necessarily correlate to how good you are. The reality is elite schools are supposed to filter for "the best and brightest" not "the hardest workers".

[afavour]

> The reality is elite schools are supposed to filter for "the best and brightest" not "the hardest workers".

I think the point the OP is making is that getting 4 A*s when you benefit from exemplary schooling and personal tutoring doesn't necessarily make you the best nor the brightest.

[hilios]

>The reality is elite schools are supposed to filter for "the best and brightest" not "the hardest workers".

Maybe they are supposed to do this, but let's not act like the filter doesn't quite apply the same way if your parents are rich and or well connected. They're however very effective in filtering out bright kids whose parents can't afford the tuition and aren't lucky enough to get a scholarship.

[dukeyukey]

We're not talking about individual cases, we're talking about statistical averages.

[trial3]

Maybe the statistically average kid managing to struggle through a shitty school has to work harder than, say, the statistically average Prince Charles with his private school and dedicated personal tutors.

[eastbound]

This is quite the insult.

We could fill the world with Maybes, but the one thing I’ve noticed about people who succeed, is that it’s generally their work that performs, while anticlass-based triage has only made hateful people reach high positions.

[patanegra]

Maybe statistically gifted child is more often than not born to parents who were gifted too. Then, they read more to the child, speak more with him. And maybe either have higher disposable income, or liberty to recommend books, and learn with the child.

In the future, it's going to be a nil argument anyway, as world-class AI tutors are going to be available for every child 24/7 for a penny.

[nicoburns]

Statistical averages would tell you that you wouldn't have some schools getting 150 pupils into Oxbridge while others only get 2. But has long been the reality.

[dukeyukey]

No, they absolutely might, because schools group a load of students together with similar attributes relevant to academic success (quality of teachers, school funding, wealth of the surrounding area).

[happytoexplain]

The context is explicitly statistical, so yes, of course - but your point is valuable to keep in mind to avoid subconsciously painting individuals with the same brush as the big picture.

[gcau]

>Maybe a kid managing to struggle through a shitty school has to work harder

It sounds like you think admissions should be based on how hard people think they worked relative to others.

[growse]

Maybe they should be based on a range of factors that influence how successful the university thinks the candidate will be as an undergraduate? Not just exam results?

[ceejayoz]

It means I think admissions officers sometimes know there’s more to a human than their raw test scores. They likely also know that a decent result at some schools requires more work than a great result at others.

I’ve met smart people who do poorly on exams. I’ve met dumb people who do well on them.

[lwhi]

What an appalling point of view.

Growing up without privilege is (obviously) markedly more difficult than being provided with the best education money can buy throughout childhood.

The students aren't necessarily worse; but they will be unaccustomed to the codified approach that other students from independent schools understand.

The system has been built to serve the privileged.

While you might feel blame can fairly be placed on differing entry requirements; the truth is more complex.

A 'sticking plaster' solution has been lazily applied to address disparity, when in reality, the whole system needs to be reworked.

'Dumber' and 'worse', are not labels that should be used here.

[patanegra]

It might come over as appalling, given the whole culture has shifted towards: "Nobody is dumber! Every child deserves a medal."

Which isn't true, and never was. I get why we do that with kids in Reception and Year 1. With young adults, like University students, the fact of inequality of potentials of individuals, is just a fact anyone has to live with.

I am clever, but I am a fat, average looking guy. So that's what I have to live with. David Beckham is not so smart, but he is sporty and looks great. He uses his innate talents, and I use mines. Nobody is discriminated by being different.

The system has been built by those with means. And those with means more often than not are clever, hard-working people. That's how you get successful in the first place. And when you are born with great talents, you will go up too. That was the point of aristocrats being replaced by bourgeois, and now people in tech growing no matter where they are from.

[lwhi]

I understand what you're trying to say, but I think you're making a false equivalence between socio-economic disparity and innate talent.

Imagine the same person, cloned. Clone A is born into an economically challenged household; while clone B is born into an upper-middle class household.

Now consider whether both clones would achieve the same results at A level.

One could expect the child born into the poorer household to experience more challenges, and perhaps achieve worse results as a consequence.

In this instance, how would it be appropriate to call clone A thick or less intelligent than clone B?

[patanegra]

When you are a talented child born into a bad family, your success is to go from £1 to £10M.

If you are a talented child born to a millionaire, your success is to go from £10M to £1bn.

If you are a dumb child born to a millionaire, you go from £10M to £1.

You probably assume that people with the same skills should have the same absolute outcomes. I don't. There shouldn't be glass ceilings for talented ones, so a son of a carpenter has a right to become a billionaire, or earn a Nobel Prize in science, or apply his talents in any field. But I don't think there exists any socioeconomic system that would deliver more equitable results and had more pros than cons, especially compared to the current system.

[lwhi]

You've lost me on your reasoning, but I would like to state that I wholly disagree with your politics.

Describing a family that doesn't have money as 'bad' is outrageous.

[patanegra]

By bad, I mean being in a bad situation.

I don't say people are evil for not having much money.

I grew up in a family with very low income (my dad was earning about £12000 per year, when he retired a few years ago, my mum about £6000, I am from Central Europe, so things are a bit cheaper there, but not much). He worked shifts, and my mum worked 1.5 jobs.

Yet, I was able to achieve everything I wanted.

Maybe you should re-read what I write to understand it better.

[physicsguy]

I have to laugh anytime anyone talks about the students being brighter.

I went to a relatively poor state school. I did very well regardless but on average the results were not that good. I remember sitting in my history GCSE class and a teacher chasing a student around various classrooms on multiple occasions. I remember not having a permanent teacher for Year 10 English. I remember my GCSE Spanish teacher bribing everyone with chocolate when OFSTED came around because this was the third time doing the same lesson and he wanted us to look stronger than we were.

[notreallyauser]

Contextual offers are just that -- contextual. Cite your sources if you're claiming all independent schools get one tariff and all state schools get another, because AFAIK that's not how these contextual offers work.

Oxford admissions have a heavy interview component: if they think you're really smart, have great potential, and then you'll be of the caliber to get 4 A* no question if you had rich parents and went to a top Public School (but don't, so may not), then -- yeah -- they can make you a lower offer. Their place, their rules.

It isn't dumbing down or taking worse students, it's easing out the rich types who will drink/play lacrosse or rugby/bore to at least Blues standard, are pretty bright but have been spoon-fed to get there so will turn out to be dumber and worse students that people whose potential hadn't been fully revealed by 17/18, even if the spoon-fed cohort get better A Level results.

[patanegra]

> if they think you're really smart, have great potential, and then you'll be of the caliber to get 4 A* no question if you had rich parents

Assumed, they really are 4 A* material.

If not, what might happen is, that Oxford might get worse in ratings. Is Oxford getting worse in ratings?

> It isn't dumbing down or taking worse students, it's easing out the rich types

But those rich types already have 4 A*, or they are close to it. Their kids have spent 10 years boarding, learning 10 hours a day, including Saturdays. And then, they are discriminated, because of hate towards the rich.

I guess, what will happen, is that some other universities will pick them up. Kids, who are used to work extremely hard. Kids, who know how to learn. Kids, whose parents and grandparents knew how to apply themselves and who instilled all this in them too.

And Oxford will be dethroned. Cream always rises to the top.

[growse]

> It's letting in dumber people, worse students

It's a very bold assertion that A level grades are the ultimate arbiter of "dumbness".

[patanegra]

When you compare 1:83 vs 1:2600, it is so big difference, it deserves bold statements.

In the UK, there's 1.5 million kids playing footbal. 1:83 ~18000 kids play in any professional club. 1:2600 ~580 kids get to play in Premier League, EFL Championship in a season

What is Oxford doing is letting kids who play in absolutely any club, if they go to state school, or only those who got to Premier League, if they go to independent school.

Again, it's discrimination so bad it should be illegal.

[growse]

Why do you think the school & A level system is perfectly meritocratic when the evidence squarely suggests it's far from it?

[rcxdude]

And yet students at independent schools are twice as likely to get all As than those at state schools. Do you think it's likely that all the smart students happen to have the means to go to the independent schools? Keep in mind the grades are not the main filter for oxbridge: probably the largest is whether the students apply in the first place, and then the latter is the interview, which matters a lot for determining which people with good enough grades are actually good enough to get in.

[patanegra]

Well, isn't it because kids in independent school are in the school from 8am till 6pm, including Saturdays, since the age of 9, and by the age 11 they board, and all their lives revolve around learning?

In my sons' prep school, I have seen kids playing musical instruments so good, they could do concerts for a general public. I have seen boys taking GCSEs in Year 6.

And 100% of parents are university educated, often high achievers. Don't let me start speaking about Chinese, where kids come from school 6pm, and they often get two more lessons at home (Chinese + music instrument most often).

Parents in state schools don't put in even half of the effort on average.

[rcxdude]

>Well, isn't it because kids in independent school are in the school from 8am till 6pm, including Saturdays, since the age of 9, and by the age 11 they board, and all their lives revolve around learning?

No, it's nowhere near that intense on average. And also, this sounds like it very much is about the quality of the schooling, no? But, if you're also going with 'all kids aren't equally smart', then that would suggest that the results from that stage of schooling are not necessarily indicative of how well they would do at a given university, where there's a lot less support in general.

[patanegra]

I am not sure, if it isn't so intensive in other schools. It is so intensive in our prep school.

All kids aren't equally smart. Not all kids can also handle such a regime. It isn't for everyone. Those, who succeed in such schools, deserve not to be discriminated against, because their dad has a Range Rover and tweed suit.

If a good independent school prepares a child better than a state school, the child should have a preference. Otherwise, all those years of preparation and all that talent is wasted.

[growse]

> Parents in state schools don't put in even half of the effort on average.

I wondered how long it'd be before we'd see "parents who can't afford private education just aren't putting the effort in".

[wulfstan]

The truth is that if you have an intelligent child, independent school is a complete waste of money. In the UK you will be spending in the vicinity of £200k over a child’s education to finish a levels, and although they will get better a levels on average, their results at university do not reflect their a level achievements. This is why independent schools find themselves downgraded in university offers.

This isn’t a surprise, because independent schools hothouse children to ensure they peak at a levels, whereas what universities want is students who will continue to improve at university.

I have two children (3xA*, 1A for one and 3As for the other) who were not interested in Oxford or Cambridge. My experience of Cambridge students (I live in Cambridge) is that I have seen many burn out. You also end up with a very narrow program of study which for children with broader interests forces them into a box very early. It’s also a 3 year undergrad program with 24 contact weeks a year, which is insanely short.

My children have gone to Scotland (Edinburgh and St Andrews) which allows significantly more flexibility than English universities offer in choosing subjects outside your chosen degree pattern. St Andrews even lets you change degree completely if you find something else you like.

If you really really want to be a mathematician at 18 then I can see why Cambridge or Oxford might appeal; for kids with more breadth, I think it’s a poor choice.

[patanegra]

As if it isn't true.

And I say it as someone who went to a state school, just like my parents, grandparents...

[rcxdude]

Keep in mind that the rating here is mostly about the student's opinion of the university, especially in terms of the teaching. And a dirty little secret of oxbridge I feel is that the teaching isn't particularly great. It's not bad, to be clear, and supervisions are something that you don't really get elsewhere, but it's very much a 'chuck people into the very deep end and let them sink-or-swim' approach with the sheer amount of material that they expect you to get through in a pretty short amount of time. The reputation they have is because a) they can afford to be (and are fairly good at) being highly selective in admitting those who can cope with this, b) if you do manage to swim, you've shown a higher level of aptitude for the subject than other universities, and c) because of said selectivity, you'll tend to be around other students who are able to support you. The actual level of support and teaching from the university itself is not as top-class.

[matthewmacleod]

That's not "letting in poor people" as you framed it. It's letting in dumber people, worse students. Lots of that is mainly based on classism (against people from middle class), racism (against white people).

This obviously doesn’t follow, and you should feel a decent amount of embarrassment for ignoring the fact that exam grades don’t correlate with “dumbness” or lack thereof.

It should be trivially obvious that a student who is perhaps from a less well-off background, attending state school and achieving decent grades, can be equally as talented and deserving of a top-tier education as a better-off, privately-educated student.

Access programs go some way towards trying to tackle snowballing generational inequality - which essentially results in a bias away from merit, and towards those able to afford private education.

If you want to argue against that, then fine - but at least don’t start with such faulty assumptions.

[physicsguy]

> It's letting in dumber people, worse students.

Is it? That assumes that the grade is a fair differentiator between two students. But we know that that's not true because the gulf between private education and state education is enormous.

[eynsham]

> To get in, you need 4 A* from an independent schools

This is not, generally, true. Cambridge tends to have higher offers, and I had a friend offered 5A*+S1 (STEP), but that’s mostly because he buggered up his interview (and he was taking 5 A-levels). The standard offer at Oxford for mathematics is A*A*A, which is exactly what those applying from any public school will be asked to achieve.

> or just 3 As from state schools

Not for maths. For easy courses like PPE, someone who misses a standard offer of A*AA might be let off by a few grades. People at public schools who miss their offers are much likelier to be a bit thick.

[cvwright]

And it’s being reported that the new president of the Oxford Union only had A B B.

[KaiserPro]

> To get in, you need 4 A* from an independent schools, or just 3 As from state schools.

where does it say that here?

https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/admiss...

Although I do note that foundation PPE only requires BBB, which given the current crop of people in westminister, it makes sense.

[lokar]

I think it’s a mistake to think admissions can ever be some neutral objective process.

You are designing a contest, and students compete. You have to try to represent your goals in terms of the contest, this is very lossy. It’s just never going to be very accurate, and in highly selective institutions much of the selection will be random no matter how you structure the contest.

[mytailorisrich]

There is also the issue of "contextual offers" at most Unis. Offers can be made at a significantly lower level just based on the postcode of the applicant. So someone might get an offer at AAB or ABB purely based on their address while the standard offer is AAA or higher.

[JetSetWilly]

And yet those kids from state schools then come out with more firsts than those from independent schools, showing they were not “dumber” at all - they were smarter.

Really, oxford and cambridge as well as other top universities can have a simple algorithm. They should bias against those from private schools in terms of admissions criteria until the point at which outcomes (as measured by graduating degree scores) are equal. This wouldn’t happen though because then private schools would drop to 5% of enrolments and there’d be no advantage gained from paying for a private school education. Unthinkable!

[energy123]

It's interesting to see that conservatives have quietly moved on from the idea that affirmative action should be done on the basis of household wealth instead of ethnicity. At least now we are being honest.

[programjames]

Alternatively, the gap between the classes for access to educational resources has significantly declined in the past twenty years (due to stuff being posted online).

[TMWNN]

>To get in, you need 4 A* from an independent schools, or just 3 As from state schools.

Or ABB for the incoming president of the Oxford Union, the one who cheered Charlie Kirk's murder a few months after debating him in person. <https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/education/2025/09/oxfo...>

[afavour]

It would be wonderful if we could, just once, have a conversation about something happening outside the US without bringing in US culture war talking points.

[mensetmanusman]

The current president of a verbal debate club representing Oxford cheering political violence against someone he just debated is actually quite relevant.

The society leaders decided it’s okay for him to do that because of racism based on their most recent response.

[znpy]

As somebody that's not from the UK and not from the US, knowing this guy cheered the murder of Charlie Kirk gives me a strong hint about the kind of person it's being talked about.

So yes, in that sense it's an useful piece of information.

[afavour]

> gives me a strong hint about the kind of person it's being talked about.

There was no person being talked about, though. This is a discussion about Oxford's university ranking. The GP brought up a person entirely irrelevant to that discussion and informed us of his views on a topic that's also irrelevant to the discussion.

[cvwright]

How are the grades of a student in a prestigious position at Oxford not relevant to the academic reputation of Oxford?

[afavour]

My objection was not the student in question being mentioned. It was why he was mentioned: his views on Charlie Kirk, a US culture war topic that has nothing to do with the discussion and nothing to do with the student’s admission grades.

[croes]

Given the violence Kirk paved the way and how he shrugged off gun related deaths as necessary evil for the 2nd amendment, I see no great difference in unsympathetic behavior of both.

[TMWNN]

Publicly cheering Kirk's murder is what made Abaraonye notable. I provided a citation for the ABB grades, which is relevant to the comment I replied to.

[afavour]

> I provided a citation for the ABB grades, which is relevant to the comment I replied to.

An extremely tenuous connection. Abaraonye (and even less his words on Kirk) had absolutely no relevance to the criteria by which the Times assesses universities, thus had no impact on Oxfords placement, thus has no relevance to the conversation.

[TMWNN]

Patanegra wrote:

> To get in, you need 4 A* from an independent schools, or just 3 As from state schools.

In reply, I provided a recently prominent example of someone recently admitted to Oxford with lower than 3 A grades on the A-Levels. I only mentioned Kirk's murder as context because, as I keep repeating, the person a) only became prominent because b) he publicly cheered said murder c) after debating Kirk in person. I don't know what else you can ask for here.

[afavour]

> I don't know what else you can ask for here.

Perhaps a demonstration of any kind of connection between his grades and his views on Kirk? The implication in what you're saying is that an ABB student is saying bad things than a 4 A* student would never say. I'd love to see anything backing that up. There are plenty of ABB students who said nothing of that nature and I'd wager you could find 4 A* students (albeit with a lower profile) who did.

Absent that connection it just looks very much like you're using the person's grades as a tenuous excuse to bring them up.

[ralusek]

> incoming president of Oxford Union

> debated Kirk [at Oxford]

> cheered assassination of Kirk, which happened within months of debate

Is this really dragging American culture war into things? This is clearly relevant to Oxford

[mensetmanusman]

Anyone logical knows it’s relevant, but people putting their head in the sand about the most significant political assassination in over 50 years isn’t a surprise.

[croes]

Where is his reaction different to Kirk‘s statement that some gun deaths are a necessary evil for the „god given right“ of the 2nd amendment? Both seem to have lost basic human empathy.

Shall we ask the parents of the victims of the school shootings?

BTW why is a god given right not mentioned in the bible?

[programjames]

Clearly you need to reread The Bible:

> To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations—that one 'will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery'—just as I have received authority from my Father. (Revelation 2:26–27)

Any good Sanctuarian[^1] would know this refers to the AR-15, and Americans' right to bear arms.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_of_Iron_Ministries

[dan-robertson]

Sometimes colleges make deliberately easy offers for students they like, or they later accept students who did not meet the criteria that were set (if you set offers such that fewer students pass than you have places for, it is much easier to control class sizes – look at the chaos with Covid grade inflation). So I think it’s wrong to assume that the offer made to someone being high is a particularly strong signal for how clever they are.

Clearly this PPE student has some talent for politics to be elected president of one of the more prestigious societies, so it seems right for him to have been given a place.