UK's private school students are being "persecuted akin to the Jewish people"

steddyeddy wrote: »

No offence AB but it's a very dim simplification to assume the question of education boils down to who meets matriculation. It's about sending the right people to university. People who are the most academically gifted, not those who are simply pushed to passing GCSEs. The research states that private school students with the same grades as state school students won't be as academically confident when they get into university. So in other words from a scenario where we have two A scoring pupils, one state and one private, it would be better to pick the state school pupil.

Research? Sure, there are numerous studies with the same conclusion. Here's one of my favourite, a study from Cambridge uni which actually leads back to your original erroneous assumption about matriculation:



And here:





So I'm questioning the most academically able students are getting into university and you think I'm proving this lunatic's point about jews and the protocols of Zion?



Are you joking? Nearly half of Oxford's undergrads were from private schools. The same goes for a lot of the Russell group universities. Matriculation should be picking from the brighter students. It's not at the moment. The two-tier education system is masking true ability.



Or we could try a crazy idea and actually let the students in who are best able for the course. You might think they're owed a place because they paid money to school but most people don't.



As explained I dislike the two-tier system because it's not giving us an accurate representation of who the best students are.

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Are you coming on to me?

I find that so hard to believe based on my experiences in an Irish university. The private school students were bursting with confidence, notably moreso than state schoolers. And did well too.

Being blunt, steddyeddy, you kinda have a chip on your shoulder about this topic and I’m not sure you approach the research objectively.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Confidence doesn't equal ability. The best student in our group lacks confidence but she's the most capable. Confidence can be built. No offense either but "belief" doesn't really cut it.

Being equally blunt I think the ad hominem you often see in this debate highlights the weakness of the argument. Just like the headmaster who compared people who had a problem with it to the Nazis party. It's all to common in this debate and again, to be blunt I don't think you've added anything to it other than belief.

I might have missreprented my role in this debate earlier but I didn't conduct the research myself. To bow to elites for a minute it was Cambridge and Manchester university that did. You can read their work on the subject. You don't have to actually rely on my conclusions, your beliefs or an ad hominem in this regard.

Like I said, they also did well in addition to being confident. I found the private school college friends I had to be very accomplished. I read the report and it was interesting but did bring up many questions in my mind. Is the report taking in all the universities in the UK? Universities vary greatly in quality in the UK. There are a lot of them. The different between state school students who achieve all As at GCSE level getting good grades and private schooled students getting all As at GCSE level getting good degrees was quite close: something like 73% to 69%, wasn’t it? And again, which universities? I’d think more of a 1:1 or 2:1 from Oxford or, say, Bristol University than one from Thames Valley University. As well as that, what proportion of state school students are getting all As at GCSE and what proportion of private school students are?

You do have a long history of posting about this topic on boards and your view does see a little entrenched. In Ireland, where the college application process is anonymous and based solely on grades, private schools top the league tables for the percentages they send to college. There can be no accusations of direct bias there. I acknowledge that private schools here confer advantages on their students that help them prepare better for exams. And going to college is much more an expectation in private schools. The question isn’t “Are you going to college?”, it’s ”Which college are you going to?”. But the report you reference that shows that state school students do better at university does throw up questions, as I mentioned above. I’d like to see an analysis of each university in the UK because the quality of institutions varies so much.

And I say all this as somebody from a low income background who went to state school and who also a good college degree. I’m just interested in the data being interpreted properly and thoroughly.