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How can you find out if your school is disadvantaged?

So, I will be applying for Law in October, and would like to apply to top unis including one of Oxbridge. My GCSEs are sliiiightly sub par for Oxford but I would still much rather go there. They consider your GCSE grades in the context of your school , as do many other universities, and give you an adjusted score for them.

I went to a kindaaaa bad school for GCSE. Most of the catchment was quite poor, 3 different council estates (one of which was my own). It requires improvement on the latest Ofsted report. But, I don't think it was actually that bad in terms of results. The data I've found on the gov website is that 44% of students got above a grade 5 in maths and English. Is this significantly above/below average, or is it just average?

Furthermore I can't find any information on proportions of As and A*s within my year group, which I think is more significant.

Is there any way to really figure out how disadvantaged your school actually is?
Original post by Anonymous
So, I will be applying for Law in October, and would like to apply to top unis including one of Oxbridge. My GCSEs are sliiiightly sub par for Oxford but I would still much rather go there. They consider your GCSE grades in the context of your school , as do many other universities, and give you an adjusted score for them.

I went to a kindaaaa bad school for GCSE. Most of the catchment was quite poor, 3 different council estates (one of which was my own). It requires improvement on the latest Ofsted report. But, I don't think it was actually that bad in terms of results. The data I've found on the gov website is that 44% of students got above a grade 5 in maths and English. Is this significantly above/below average, or is it just average?

Furthermore I can't find any information on proportions of As and A*s within my year group, which I think is more significant.

Is there any way to really figure out how disadvantaged your school actually is?

Does going to a disadvantaged school affect you likelihood of being accepted? My school was in special measure for a few years, so I'd expect my one could be considered disadvantaged. I'm not sure how much it has improved though, since it hasn't had an Ofsted examination for a while now, and the school has changed a lot.
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This is the data for percentage of pupils across England achieving grade 5 or above in maths and English. I would take 19/20 with a grain of salt because as you can see it’s very much an anomalous result. If we are looking at other years it’s consistently around 40% which would mean your school is just above average.

However places like Oxford also look at data such as the number of pupils on free school meals at your school and yes they do look at the fraction of students in your school getting 5 or more grades above a 7 but then you will also be compared to students who attended similar schools to you. Eg if another pupil who also went to a school with fairly average grades in a rough area got better gcse grades they would more likely be invited to interview but you won’t be compared to a child that attended Eton in the same way.
I don’t think there’s a solid measure to say ‘your school is x amount of disadvantaged’ because certain data we just simply don’t have access to and with the widening participation Oxford is becoming more competitive amongst students who traditionally wouldn’t have stood a chance due to being from disadvantaged schools.
Another good measure is your polar4 score for your area- this you can look up online and unis often take that into account aswell!
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Original post by Doomotron
Does going to a disadvantaged school affect you likelihood of being accepted? My school was in special measure for a few years, so I'd expect my one could be considered disadvantaged. I'm not sure how much it has improved though, since it hasn't had an Ofsted examination for a while now, and the school has changed a lot.

Depends on the uni, for example I know with Bristol, they have a list of a few hundred(?) schools, if your school is on there they will give you a contextual offer, usually two grades lower than the standard offer. I don't think you're more likely to be accepted, but if you are accepted you get the reduced offer.

Whereas Oxford, they score each part of your application including your GCSEs. So straight 9/8s gets the highest score, a mix of 9/8s and 7s gets a lower score. But if the straight 9/8s student went to a top private school, their score will be lowered a certain amount, if the mixed grades student went to a very underperforming school, they will make their score a little higher.

So in a sense it does affect your likelihood to get an offer. Or more likely to get an interview, then your interview will determine your offer.
Hi there!

While I can't fully comment on what Oxford do, I can tell you what we look at.

In terms of school level data, you can see here exactly the data we look at. It includes school, geodemographic and individual level data. Much of the school level data is available at the hyperlink within this page.

We don't make systematically lower offers for students who come from schools or personal circumstances of disadvantage. The way we use this data is to ensure we're fully considering students who may have slightly lower grades that can be explained by their educational circumstances, or whose grades are very good, but look even better in the light of their experiences.

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