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Friday, July 02, 2021 5:45:34 AM
How Britain’s private schools lost their grip on Oxbridge
As state-school admissions rise at elite universities, some parents who shelled out for private education regret it
Brooke Masters 6 HOURS AGO
https://www.ft.com/content/bbb7fe58-0908-4f8e-bb1a-081a42a045b7
“Five years ago, my son would have got a place at Oxford. But now the bar has shifted and he didn’t,” says my friend, a City of London executive who has put several children through elite private schools in Britain. “I think he got short-changed.”
I’ve been hearing this more and more from fellow parents with kids at top day and boarding schools in recent years. Some of it sounds like whining: most of us like to think the best of our progeny. But my friend has a point. After years of hand-wringing about unequal access to elite higher education, admissions standards are finally shifting.
A decade ago, parents who handed over tens of thousands of pounds a year for the likes of Eton College, St Paul’s School or King’s College School in Wimbledon could comfortably assume their kids had a very good chance of attending Oxford or Cambridge, two of the best universities in the world. A 2018 Sutton Trust study showed that just eight institutions, six of them private, accounted for more Oxbridge places than 2,900 other UK secondary schools combined. When the headmaster of Westminster School boasted at an open evening that half the sixth form went on to Oxbridge, approving murmurs filled the wood-panelled hall. (I was there.)
But growing anger about inequality, rising applications from an improved state sector and a flood of international students have prompted Oxford and Cambridge to rethink. They give more credit to students who have overcome barriers on their way to top grades. This means that fewer middling private school students who have been groomed to excel at interviews are getting in.
“We want to select the academically most able — the really strong candidates versus those that are average but have been well-prepared,” says Samina Khan, Oxford’s director of undergraduate admissions.
This is surely fair. But it also means that hothouse independent schools are losing their edge. At St Paul’s, I heard one grouchy father press the high master to explain how he would protect the boys there from “social engineering”.
What should parents do when a policy that is good for society seems bad for their kids? I feel genuine sympathy for anyone concerned for their child’s future, but complaining about a loss of privilege comes across as tone deaf.
At Eton, attended by 20 UK prime ministers including the current one, the number of Oxbridge offers dropped from 99 in 2014 to 48 this year. At King’s College, Wimbledon, offers have fallen by nearly half in two years to 27, The Sunday Times reported in February. Both schools still sit near the top of the national league tables for total offers. But their students are finding it harder to get in, rankling parents who shell out up to £28,000 a year for day school or £44,000 for boarding.
The anger of wealthy, mostly white parents about losing the advantages they expected to be able to buy their children is part of a broader pattern of status anxiety among some sections of the British and American upper classes. It is out of step with reality: children from such backgrounds will typically enjoy greater opportunities and financial security throughout their lives.
Nevertheless, the potency of this anxiety was on display in the US during 2019’s “Varsity Blues” admissions scandal when actors and private equity giants were jailed for trying to buy their kids into Yale and Stanford, among others, with faked entrance test results and counterfeit athletic skills.
“When you have something that is very valuable to people, the system gets distorted,” says Daniel Markovits, a Yale law professor and author of The Meritocracy Trap. “Attending these universities makes a difference in people’s income and status?.?.?.?The parents see how much it costs them to live in the neighbourhoods they live in and send children to private schools, and they realise that their children will be in the same bind.”
...
MUCH MORE
https://www.ft.com/content/bbb7fe58-0908-4f8e-bb1a-081a42a045b7
As state-school admissions rise at elite universities, some parents who shelled out for private education regret it
Brooke Masters 6 HOURS AGO
https://www.ft.com/content/bbb7fe58-0908-4f8e-bb1a-081a42a045b7
“Five years ago, my son would have got a place at Oxford. But now the bar has shifted and he didn’t,” says my friend, a City of London executive who has put several children through elite private schools in Britain. “I think he got short-changed.”
I’ve been hearing this more and more from fellow parents with kids at top day and boarding schools in recent years. Some of it sounds like whining: most of us like to think the best of our progeny. But my friend has a point. After years of hand-wringing about unequal access to elite higher education, admissions standards are finally shifting.
A decade ago, parents who handed over tens of thousands of pounds a year for the likes of Eton College, St Paul’s School or King’s College School in Wimbledon could comfortably assume their kids had a very good chance of attending Oxford or Cambridge, two of the best universities in the world. A 2018 Sutton Trust study showed that just eight institutions, six of them private, accounted for more Oxbridge places than 2,900 other UK secondary schools combined. When the headmaster of Westminster School boasted at an open evening that half the sixth form went on to Oxbridge, approving murmurs filled the wood-panelled hall. (I was there.)
But growing anger about inequality, rising applications from an improved state sector and a flood of international students have prompted Oxford and Cambridge to rethink. They give more credit to students who have overcome barriers on their way to top grades. This means that fewer middling private school students who have been groomed to excel at interviews are getting in.
“We want to select the academically most able — the really strong candidates versus those that are average but have been well-prepared,” says Samina Khan, Oxford’s director of undergraduate admissions.
This is surely fair. But it also means that hothouse independent schools are losing their edge. At St Paul’s, I heard one grouchy father press the high master to explain how he would protect the boys there from “social engineering”.
What should parents do when a policy that is good for society seems bad for their kids? I feel genuine sympathy for anyone concerned for their child’s future, but complaining about a loss of privilege comes across as tone deaf.
At Eton, attended by 20 UK prime ministers including the current one, the number of Oxbridge offers dropped from 99 in 2014 to 48 this year. At King’s College, Wimbledon, offers have fallen by nearly half in two years to 27, The Sunday Times reported in February. Both schools still sit near the top of the national league tables for total offers. But their students are finding it harder to get in, rankling parents who shell out up to £28,000 a year for day school or £44,000 for boarding.
The anger of wealthy, mostly white parents about losing the advantages they expected to be able to buy their children is part of a broader pattern of status anxiety among some sections of the British and American upper classes. It is out of step with reality: children from such backgrounds will typically enjoy greater opportunities and financial security throughout their lives.
Nevertheless, the potency of this anxiety was on display in the US during 2019’s “Varsity Blues” admissions scandal when actors and private equity giants were jailed for trying to buy their kids into Yale and Stanford, among others, with faked entrance test results and counterfeit athletic skills.
“When you have something that is very valuable to people, the system gets distorted,” says Daniel Markovits, a Yale law professor and author of The Meritocracy Trap. “Attending these universities makes a difference in people’s income and status?.?.?.?The parents see how much it costs them to live in the neighbourhoods they live in and send children to private schools, and they realise that their children will be in the same bind.”
...
MUCH MORE
https://www.ft.com/content/bbb7fe58-0908-4f8e-bb1a-081a42a045b7
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