RBT is more of a public school thing.

I'd like to agree with your aside there, however iirc HRH TPoW got a B in history and a C in French, but still managed to 'win' a place at Cambridge. Possibly it was more to do with his mother than his father.

Before the era when all must have glittering prizes there was a more rudimentary form of natural selection at work via the scholarship and exhibition entrance papers. Unlike A-levels, these were challenging for the most able students and worked well in that sense.

However, they also favoured more independent school successes where parents could easily afford to keep their offspring at a fee paying school for a seventh term after their A-levels, purely to be prepared for the entrance exam. State school students were competing in their fourth term, and it was undoubtedly an uneven playing field.

These days the problem which nobody seems willing to tackle is inverse snobbery in teachers where pupils are discouraged from applying to Oxbridge because the elbow patchers think it's elitist and not for the likes of state school students, when it most definitely is, i.e. it is elitist which is a good thing and it is for state school students.

Rich, but thick?

No problem getting into Oxford (Cambridge may be more of an issue) if your father went there, his father before him, the family crest is on the refectory wall, and the Admissions Tutor is a family friend.

To suggest otherwise is disingenuous hypocrisy.



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But, if that truly was the case, how come Oxford is consistently rated one of the best universities in the world by academic achievement? How come it attracts research worth billions of pounds a year against murderous global competition? How come it has produced more Prime Ministers of the UK (of all parties) than all other universities put together?

That's quite an achievement when its stuffed full of wealthy half-wits.....

My less charitable side is inclined to attribute this more to the elbow patchers unwillingness to put the extra effort in to help those promising stundents deliver.

Social engineering?

As soon as you start paying for universities there is social engineering. If it is not free for all then it is social engineering.

If the selection process doesn't go for potential and only along exam results then it is social engineering.

As times have changed over the years and certain roles have become open to all, the hoi poloi have taken over positions habitually occupied by the offspring of the great and the good. This is most apparent in sport.

If we want what is best for this country then we must try to develop the potential of those who have less favoured upbringing. This is not social engineering, just good husbandry and good sense.

Spot on.

Though not just why the state education system fails them, but also where parenting and other social factors have failed them. Success needs a decent foundation, and I am a firm believer that this starts at home (NB note this has nothing to do with single parentism per se. Many single parents produce kids who go on to succeed. Many non-single parents don't. Statistics can only tell us so much).

QED, I'd say.

Oxford hands out Firsts like Smarties. I've seen what they churn out as I've been responsible for graduate recruitment.

I laughed when a friend said that all his daughter had to do to get her Bachelors degree elevated to a Masters, was to leave her deposit in bond with the college for a year. That's it. No exam, no viva, nothing.

The latter is a very good point, the opportunities are there for all.

Undoubtedly coming from a wealthy family can make a difference to the quality of education you receive. It’s an unfortunate fact that private individuals are better able to pay for a higher level of education (on average) than HM Gov. However that should never prevent a child from a working class/disadvantaged/council, whatever label you want to put on it, background from doing well and going to Oxbridge if that is their desire and the ability is there.

An enormous amount of a child’s success in education has to come from the parents. I am not talking about the genetic component, (although that undoubtedly plays a part) but rather the parents interest in education. If you have, to paraphrase other's examples, a single mum on a council estate who pushes her child to do well at school, go to a local college and apply to university, that child will do infinitely better than one with the same background, but a mother who hates school, thinks teachers are the enemy and wants her child to get out and earn some money / get on the dole asap.

Likewise the son of a Duke who has no interest in and has parents who have no interest in education will probably not do too well, despite having the opportunity for a world class education. Of course the Duke’s son will still have a very comfortable life and his lack of education will probably not have much impact on his ability to function day to day. The child of the single mum who spends their life on the dole will probably not be so lucky.

My Grandparents were both bright but had very little formal education. They instilled a great work ethic in my father who became the first child from his very low ranking school to go to university let alone Oxford. It happens more that most people belive.

There was a bit of Freakonomics where they are discussing real and perceived causes (or similar). The example they used was children growing up around books being more intelligent and doing better generally. The perceived cause being that being near books as a child makes you brighter/more studious. Of course the real reason is that if you grow up around books your parents (having collected those books)are more likely to be bright and “scholarly” if I can put it that way, so they are more likely to promote the value and benefit of education as well as contributing the genetic component to general intelligence.

So whilst you can look at being wealthy as the major contributing factor to getting better results in school, there is a suggestion that if your parents are wealthy, that is an indication, (no more than that), that they value education and / or are at least relatively intelligent. Both traits that they will pass on to their (probably privately educated) children. Thus allowing them to take better advantage of the level of education made available to them.

That last bit is going to be a bit controversial I think, so I should probably make clear that it is not intended as a dig at those not from a “privileged” background but more as a possible additional reason why children from “privileged” backgrounds tend do better.

Just my 2ps worth.

That is also a conversation about selective schools and selective classes within schools. Allowing teachers to help those who are keen and control those who arent.

Murdoch said something about comprehensives being scared of competion. Was with regards to the make up of the olympic team but could equally apply here.




Also, I wrote all that and all I get is -Yeah we have covered that...

I think the person you know has better ideas than the doogooders on the subject.

If kids are under the influence of ineffective parents it's highly unlikely they will be brought around. They spend more time under the negative influence than the positive. But you can't suggest taking kids away (let alone coercion/prevention of the kids being born in the first place).

I'd be an advocate of earlier leaving ages too. But only in circumstances where a job was available for the younger leaver. No point allowing them to leave only to disrupt others of their age or become a state burden in other ways.

Whether they should be in the same school environment as the other kids is probably the bigger question. But again, filtering such kids out doesn't seem to be possible either - regardless of whether the majority of kids in a class are being negatively impacted.

Fine. Why shouldn't university undergraduates do the same?

Any fix is still a fix, a shoe-in is still a shoe-in.

Plenty of pupils from poor families in average to carp schools achieve outstanding results. According to your post we might be forgiven for thinking that these students, struggling and gaining a place purely on results, will be like the get-ahead bunch you mention, while the socially engineered lot will be falling behind like the shoe-in brigade. I'd tend to agree.