Do you think parents resent students from state schools who go to top Uni's?

Grammar schools mainly served the middle classes, despite all the hype about them being a conduit for the odd bright working class child.

2. If sent for educational reasons the parent will expect their child to achieve their personal best. If a private school child and a state school child both go to the same university it's possible (by no means certain) that the state school child is brighter, and the private school child would have done worse if sent to a state school.

Investing in education is a risk. Parents do it to give their child the best opportunity, not necessarily the best outcome - for some parents even a small advantage is worth that cost, because they value their child's education above all else.

That is the crucial point which some in this thread are missing. To say 'well state school students go to Oxbridge too, hence private education is pointless' is a poor argument.

Assuming the same level of underlying ability, a student at a private school has an increased chance of attending a top university over one at an average state school. Here I don't mean 'underlying ability' as 'achieves the same grades'; I mean that both the teaching and crucially the motivation that a private school imparts shifts the distribution of grades, and hence unis, upwards.

Interestingly, this seems to break down at the very top of the distribution. The BBC the other day had an article showing that private schoolers with ABB were less likely to get 2.1s than state schoolers with the same grades. However, Cambridge's internal data show that amongst their entrants (around A*AA-A*A*A on average) the subsequent degree performance is not affected by the school the student went to. This suggests that private school parents really get their value for money if their kid is around a top 30 university level, but not necessarily a top 5-10.

Parents don't care.

The only people who do are class warriors.

The OP is trying to invent a conflict that doesn't exist in order to soothe his/her insecurities and envy.

That is the crucial point which some in this thread are missing. To say 'well state school students go to Oxbridge too, hence private education is pointless' is a poor argument.

Assuming the same level of underlying ability, a student at a private school has an increased chance of attending a top university over one at an average state school. Here I don't mean 'underlying ability' as 'achieves the same grades'; I mean that both the teaching and crucially the motivation that a private school imparts shifts the distribution of grades, and hence unis, upwards.

Interestingly, this seems to break down at the very top of the distribution. The BBC the other day had an article showing that private schoolers with ABB were less likely to get 2.1s than state schoolers with the same grades. However, Cambridge's internal data show that amongst their entrants (around A*AA-A*A*A on average) the subsequent degree performance is not affected by the school the student went to. This suggests that private school parents really get their value for money if their kid is around a top 30 university level, but not necessarily a top 5-10.