Searching for GOD...

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Morning VG.

As I made clear in my post to NS (reply 46266) I hadn't actually noticed DU's comment, hence I was rather confused as to why you had name checked him in your reply to a post of mine.

What I did not, however in your reply to my post was a claim which appeared to be aimed at me that suggested that I was 'very dangerous' due to my views.

That was a copy and paste of DU - see his reply #46187, where he was defending you with a very strange ad hom aimed at me.

Now if you weren't aiming that at me then I apologise for thinking that to be the case, but I can hardly be blamed for coming to that conclusion as your reply was to my post.

I have no idea if DU was aiming at you as well as me - I thought his comment was a stupid ad hom that he made because he had nothing sensible to offer by way of an actual argument about the point we were discussing. His basis for his comment could easily apply to many posters on this forum as his comment seemed to be based on nothing more than that I was defending my opinions. This included my opinion that your posts on here should stand or fall on their own merits and should not be considered expert opinions since your posts on here do not form part of any peer-reviewed research and we have no way of verifying your credentials on an anonymous internet forum. 

I have also been clear in my reply to NS that I do not agree that we should be claiming that other posters are 'very dangerous' and that represents an ad hom attack. I also made it clear that I held that view regardless of whether the ad hom came from you or from DU (reply 46268). So I think I have covered off the points you've raised.

Agreed.

But just so we are actually clear as it did seem weird that you'd use these terms in a reply to me if you were actually having a go at DU. So can you confirm please that you do not consider me to be 'very dangerous'.

PD - of course I don't consider you to be 'very dangerous'. You are merely defending your opinion, as I am mine. Nothing dangerous about that. I referenced DU's post to be ironic i.e. to highlight how nonsensical DU was being to try to claim that a poster defending their opinion on a discussion forum could be regarded as dangerous.

[ProfessorDavey]

PD - of course I don't consider you to be 'very dangerous'. You are merely defending your opinion, as I am mine. Nothing dangerous about that. I referenced DU's post to be ironic i.e. to highlight how nonsensical DU was being to try to claim that a poster defending their opinion on a discussion forum could be regarded as dangerous.

All completely fair enough and I think there was some misunderstanding of your original post.

[ProfessorDavey]

... and we have no way of verifying your credentials on an anonymous internet forum. 

Yet upthread you are endlessly posting all sorts of details of your parents, grandparents etc, presumably on the basis that we will accept these to be the case without verification.

I work on the basis that the details you post are true - yet you don't.

And I consider that refusing to accept that I am who I say I am with snide comments such as 'so-called professor' represent ad hom attacks too.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Let me just stop you there.

You do understand that the barriers to higher level education aren't just about direct cost of study, but a whole raft of other barriers to opportunity, some of which are also financial. The most notable being that in order to be able to become a doctor you will need to stay in study for many years beyond the end of compulsory study and that means not earning a full time wage, even if study itself is free. So when compulsory education end (which would be way earlier than the current 18 in the UK, back in the 60s in India) them most parents couldn't afford a non wage earner - for most people, regardless of their inherent intellectual abilities, it was off to work for you. Absolutely no opportunity for further study which would have needed before you came close to medical school.

I understand that the barriers to higher level education could be because a person needed to be a wage-earner in order for their parents to be able to afford to eat or have a roof over their heads, and therefore a person could not take the time off to study to improve their future without their parents suffering hardship in not having an extra pair of hands to bring in a wage to the family.

On the other hand, I don't think you understand that funding for higher level education often included funding for living expenses for the student, so in those circumstances education abroad was possible for people who did not have family wealth. This was certainly the case for my father. He even managed to do a 4 year Civil Engineering degree course in 3 years, thanks to support given to him by the teaching staff at the university in Israel and his fellow international students he was sharing with, who took care of his personal admin and cooking responsibilities so he would have more time to do the extra study required to do a 4 year degree in 3 years.

Add to that the competition for places - then as now private education was for the elite few and would presumably have provided much greater likelihood for those fortunate few who benefitted to gain the top grades. So for the vast majority the notion of medical school was a pipe dream - typically they would have been expected to leave school and start earning as soon as possible and even if they did remain in a state funded school they'd be competing for the tiny number of places at medical school with the elite few who were being educated privately with resources they can only dream at. That medical school, once you get there, might have been free is irrelevant. Medical school education in the UK was also free - that didn't mean that the places weren't overwhelmingly taken by those already from highly advantaged middle class professional backgrounds.

I genuinely think that your background really prevents you from seeing the wood for the trees.

Yes I agree that private school confers a major advantage for those who can afford it either through family wealth or a school bursary. But not sure where this applies to Sunak's grandmother's story of arriving in the UK alone and getting a bookkeeping job to pay for renting a room in a house and saving to bring her family over. Are you saying that renting a room in a house and working as a bookkeeper was beyond the ability of most British people in the 1960s?

I also don't think you understand that there are many people, who even if they had the funds and opportunity to go into higher education, would probably still not have the nature / nurture to become very successful. Not everyone can achieve the same level - there will always be a few whose natural ability and particular life experiences will spur them onto greater success than others who do not possess that particular combination of genetic make-up and life experiences. And once they are successful, people connected to them will also more than likely benefit from their success.

Just something as simple as parents regularly reading to or conversing with their children before they reach the age of 2 has been shown, on average, to have a positive impact on those children's educational outcomes, for obvious common sense reasons. Many immigrant families achieve this by grandparents living with grandchildren - an easy on tap educational and conversational resource for grandchildren, free help with daily childcare plus a good way of sharing the burden of living costs as there is no need to run 2 separate houses. For these type of reasons, there is no equality of opportunity in life. People who get on with their families and who live in an extended family system seem to have an opportunity for self-improvement that is not available for people who live in a different family set-up.

My family and I have not achieved anywhere near the successes of Rishi Sunak, and nor would any of us have been likely to, even though we had similar opportunities to him, and that is probably because of the differences in a combination of nature/nurture between us and the Sunaks that contributed to different ambitions and aptitudes. Even if you had put me or my brother in Winchester, I doubt very much the trajectory of our lives would have been similar to Sunak's, and this is despite my brother being accelerated a year at school and doing his O'Levels and A'Levels a year younger than most of the other pupils at his private school. My opinion has nothing to do with which party I might vote for in a General Election - as it happens I have always voted Labour in the past because my local Labour MP seemed to be doing a good job. However, given Labour's current position on ignoring the biological disadvantage and risk to women by prioritising trans rights on certain issues , Labour will not be getting my vote.

You seem to think that there is something to be gained by simplistically misrepresenting people's opinions on a particular issue as evidence that they are a "fan-boy" or "fan-girl" of a particular political party or politician. Maybe it makes you feel better to think that about a poster - but it just reveals your own inadequate ability to present a persuasive argument on the actual issue being discussed.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Yet upthread you are endlessly posting all sorts of details of your parents, grandparents etc, presumably on the basis that we will accept these to be the case without verification.

I work on the basis that the details you post are true - yet you don't.

And I consider that refusing to accept that I am who I say I am with snide comments such as 'so-called professor' represent ad hom attacks too.

I am not expecting anyone to accept my stories without verification. I am merely expressing an opinion and presenting information as I have heard it from family and that I cannot verify. I would urge people to do their own research by reading the stories of immigrants that are available on the internet. Whether people believe the stories on the internet or my stories is entirely up to them.

I am certainly not presenting my stories as expert opinion that should not be challenged by other posters. Nor do I take any challenges to my stories as unwarranted - caution is what I would expect and what would be sensible on an anonymous forum. Whether people believe me or not is up to them - but any lack of belief will not stop me from posting the information.

My comment about your qualification was in response to your IMO unreasonable and illogical stated expectation that your post on an anonymous forum should carry more weight than someone else's because you say you are a professor. If you don't have that expectation, then I have no reason to comment on your qualification.

[ProfessorDavey]

On the other hand, I don't think you understand that funding for higher level education often included funding for living expenses for the student, so in those circumstances education abroad was possible for people who did not have family wealth.

VG - you do understand that when higher education was funded by the state (often including living expenses) that was traded against the number of places available. That was certainly the case in the UK back in the 60s when the number of places available at university was only sufficient for about 5% of pupils to go. And for those from non traditional backgrounds that was always an uphill struggle as they would be competing on an uneven playing field. They'd be up against people whose backgrounds afforded them schooling with resources way beyond themselves, with networks that allowed them to easily navigate the university system, able to ask mum, dad, dad's colleague from work, mum's off school chums the best things to put into a personal statement or to bring up at interview, easy access to relevant 'work experience' to support their academic abilities. And of course if you are looking back to the 60s, there was an incredibly hierarchical system in which kids from certain schools would be fast tracked for interviews, or even low offers, while those from the wrong side of the tracks would have to do far, far more just to get looked at - a kind of reverse contextualised offer.

I really don't think you understand the barriers that existed then, and actually still exist (albeit to a lesser extent) for kids from non traditional backgrounds to navigate  successfully routes into high education and the professions.

[ProfessorDavey]

I also don't think you understand that there are many people, who even if they had the funds and opportunity to go into higher education, would probably still not have the nature / nurture to become very successful.

Oh dear, oh dear - the old poor people from non traditional backgrounds are just too thick argument. Derisory.

You do understand that it is beyond any doubt that state school pupils (you know that disproportionately will include kids from non-traditional backgrounds) do better at university when matched entry grade for entry grade compared to their private school counterparts.

[ProfessorDavey]

VG - you've mentioned Sri Lanka in terms of family background.

Well let's actually look at the educational opportunities in Sri Lanka in the 60s:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08c6e40f0b652dd001318/3880-GQL-3.pdf

So the population of Sri Lanka was about 25 million in the 1960s, with about 2.5 million kids in education. But scratch below the surface and you will see an incredible narrowing towards the top.

So only about 2% attended private schools.

In the early years of education there were about 300k to 400k kids, but only about 60% of students continued in education beyond grade 9 and when you got to A-level only about 44k were studying across both years, so about 95% of kids were no longer studying.

But the numbers are most astonishing - so in 1965 there were less than 2000 places in higher education on offer - so that would be sufficient for only about 0.6% of that age group. So no opportunity for 99.4% of kids to go to university, which of course would be a pre-requisite to be a doctor or qualified engineer. And the numbers for those professions are lower still - under 200 places for medicine and less than 100 for engineering.

So I can't see why it would make any difference to a student from a non-traditional advantaged background whether their fees or living expenses would be paid for to study medicine, then vanishing small number of places on offer would mean that the chances to being successful compared to those from an advantaged and traditional background would be close to zero.

[ProfessorDavey]

Yes I agree that private school confers a major advantage for those who can afford it either through family wealth or a school bursary. But not sure where this applies to Sunak's grandmother's story of arriving in the UK alone and getting a bookkeeping job to pay for renting a room in a house and saving to bring her family over. Are you saying that renting a room in a house and working as a bookkeeper was beyond the ability of most British people in the 1960s?

Actually I don't think we know where Sunak's mother attended school.

We know that she arrived at the age of 15, so just ready for her O-levels and then on to A-levels and university. I don't think I've seen anything that confirms whether she was enrolled in a state school when she arrived or whether she went to a private school for her O and A levels. Certainly for her to carry on education beyond 16 would have put her in a minority - leaving age for compulsory schooling was 15. And of course just 4% went to university.

Nice to see that once again you've airbrushed Sunak's grandfather out of things. You know the guy who kept his middle class civil service job in Tanzania while his wife was acting as the 'advance party' for their planned relocation to the UK. And who transferred to work in the UK civil service when he and the kids arrived in the UK, and just a few years later was considered senior enough to be awarded an MBE for his civil service role.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

VG - you do understand that when higher education was funded by the state (often including living expenses) that was traded against the number of places available. That was certainly the case in the UK back in the 60s when the number of places available at university was only sufficient for about 5% of pupils to go. And for those from non traditional backgrounds that was always an uphill struggle as they would be competing on an uneven playing field. They'd be up against people whose backgrounds afforded them schooling with resources way beyond themselves, with networks that allowed them to easily navigate the university system, able to ask mum, dad, dad's colleague from work, mum's off school chums the best things to put into a personal statement or to bring up at interview, easy access to relevant 'work experience' to support their academic abilities. And of course if you are looking back to the 60s, there was an incredibly hierarchical system in which kids from certain schools would be fast tracked for interviews, or even low offers, while those from the wrong side of the tracks would have to do far, far more just to get looked at - a kind of reverse contextualised offer.

I really don't think you understand the barriers that existed then, and actually still exist (albeit to a lesser extent) for kids from non traditional backgrounds to navigate  successfully routes into high education and the professions.

What has this got to do with immigrants studying abroad and becoming successful, such as my dad in Israel? The students who moved to Israel (like my dad) or the immigrants who came to the UK  were also up against a hierarchical system and competing with "people whose backgrounds afforded them schooling with resources way beyond themselves, with networks that allowed them to easily navigate the university system, able to ask mum, dad, dad's colleague from work, mum's off school chums the best things to put into a personal statement or to bring up at interview, easy access to relevant 'work experience' to support their academic abilities."

I really don't think you understand the amount that nature/ nurture influences educational outcomes and career paths.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Oh dear, oh dear - the old poor people from non traditional backgrounds are just too thick argument. Derisory.

You do understand that it is beyond any doubt that state school pupils (you know that disproportionately will include kids from non-traditional backgrounds) do better at university when matched entry grade for entry grade compared to their private school counterparts.

Oh dear - the old PD with a chip on his shoulder creating strawmen. Who are you referring to when you say "poor people from non-traditional backgrounds are too thick"? Do you mean immigrants?

Just answer the question in the post you just quoted rather than dodging it - are you saying that renting a room in a house and working as a bookkeeper (as Sunak's grandmother did in the 1960s) was beyond the ability of most British people in the 1960s?

You do understand that immigrants to the UK usually go to state schools right? My brother and I went to state school until we passed an entrance exam for a private secondary school. And we certainly didn't make it to head boy or head girl let alone achieve that position in a school like Winchester, like Sunak. So according to you, does that make us the poor people who are too thick that you are referring to?

[ProfessorDavey]

Oh dear - the old PD with a chip on his shoulder creating strawmen. Who are you referring to when you say "poor people from non-traditional backgrounds are too thick"?

I am interpreting your comment that "many people, who even if they had the funds and opportunity to go into higher education, would probably still not have the nature / nurture to become very successful."

Do you mean immigrants?

No VG, I do not. But then as you don't work in higher education you might not understand what this means, as it is a routinely used term to describe students who come from a background where traditionally people have not gone to university. It has absolutely nothing to do with immigration and the groups most commonly considered within this group are white working class from low socio-economic backgrounds.

And there is another regularly used and linked measure - 'first in their family to attend university'. 

[ProfessorDavey]

Just answer the question in the post you just quoted rather than dodging it - are you saying that renting a room in a house and working as a bookkeeper (as Sunak's grandmother did in the 1960s) was beyond the ability of most British people in the 1960s?

Probably not - but being a senior civil servant or being married to a senior civil servant would have been. As would having a grandmother able to give a wedding present worth more than the average annual gross income of the country where you lived.

But hey ho, carry on and cherry pick your own 'facts'.

[ProfessorDavey]

What has this got to do with immigrants studying abroad and becoming successful, such as my dad in Israel?

It has everything to do with it.

Taking the Sri Lanka example (and I can't imagine India would be much different, and the UK wasn't that far off) - if only 0.6% of kids could aspire to a university education even in their own country because opportunities were so limited, then that aspiration was largely reserved for the already advantaged elite. To go even further and be determining where else across the globe you might pick for your university education is a level even further above.

The students who moved to Israel (like my dad) or the immigrants who came to the UK  were also up against a hierarchical system and competing with "people whose backgrounds afforded them schooling with resources way beyond themselves, with networks that allowed them to easily navigate the university system, able to ask mum, dad, dad's colleague from work, mum's off school chums the best things to put into a personal statement or to bring up at interview, easy access to relevant 'work experience' to support their academic abilities."

Which rather proves my point doesn't it. If the system was stacked against you without pre-existing advantage in your own country, then how much more difficult must it be if you are from a completely different part of the world. So you really think that the average person in India or Sri Lanka, whose education probably wouldn't have been permitted beyond 14 and certainly not to A-level could aspire to higher education in Israel or the UK or the US. They couldn't even aspire to higher education in their own country.

[ProfessorDavey]

You do understand that immigrants to the UK usually go to state schools right?

Really VG - and there was me thinking that the facts that the student population at my university have far and away the highest proportion of home students from migrant backgrounds compared to similar universities, but also has the highest proportion of state school educated students, were somehow unrelated. And also the highest proportion of students from households with less than £10k. Thanks VG for making me realise that they are entirely related - I would never have realised otherwise .

But there is another related element - that our student population has the highest proportion of students who are the first from their families to have attended university (regardless of whether that is in the UK or elsewhere). These are not students from multi-generational middle class, professional, university-attending backgrounds. These students are like many, many others from migrant backgrounds. They are, however, nothing like Sunak or indeed you VG.

But then my institution is pretty good at understanding aspiration, providing opportunity and supporting social mobility.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

VG - you've mentioned Sri Lanka in terms of family background.

Well let's actually look at the educational opportunities in Sri Lanka in the 60s:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08c6e40f0b652dd001318/3880-GQL-3.pdf

So the population of Sri Lanka was about 25 million in the 1960s, with about 2.5 million kids in education. But scratch below the surface and you will see an incredible narrowing towards the top.

So only about 2% attended private schools.


In the early years of education there were about 300k to 400k kids, but only about 60% of students continued in education beyond grade 9 and when you got to A-level only about 44k were studying across both years, so about 95% of kids were no longer studying.

But the numbers are most astonishing - so in 1965 there were less than 2000 places in higher education on offer - so that would be sufficient for only about 0.6% of that age group. So no opportunity for 99.4% of kids to go to university, which of course would be a pre-requisite to be a doctor or qualified engineer. And the numbers for those professions are lower still - under 200 places for medicine and less than 100 for engineering.

So I can't see why it would make any difference to a student from a non-traditional advantaged background whether their fees or living expenses would be paid for to study medicine, then vanishing small number of places on offer would mean that the chances to being successful compared to those from an advantaged and traditional background would be close to zero.

Again, why would you compare the situation for local people when your original point was a comparison of immigrants with British people in the 1960s? You seemed to be claiming that Sunak's grandmother had some kind of privilege in comparison to most of the people in Britain. 

The lack of opportunity for people who don't emigrate from Sri Lanka is a separate point to the issue of my parents as immigrants to the UK or Sunak's grandmother arriving from Tanzania. I don't think you are grasping the situation for a member of the Tamil minority community in Sri Lanka in the 1960s. The government had adopted a policy to favour the Sinhalese majority - so if you couldn't read, write and speak Sinhala you were screwed in terms of a public sector role, plus if you were Tamil you had to get much higher marks than Sinhalese people in A'Levels to get into a local university, which is why Tamil people had little choice but to go abroad for university.

It's very difficult to get into a Sri Lankan university even if you are Sinhalese. You have to sit local Sri Lankan A'Levels, which set you up to fail, so are far harder to pass than London or Cambridge board A'Levels and the limited number of university places means very few people can get into government universities, so people who can afford it opt to sit London A'Levels and either go to a private university in Sri Lanka or go abroad for university, where they live a very basic lifestyle as that is all they can afford. I am just struggling to see what privilege immigrants had in comparison to the people they were at university with in Israel or the UK or in comparison to the local population.

Are you saying that someone who goes to university is automatically better than someone who doesn't?

Or that going to university will make you a better MP so the British public won't vote for an MP who hasn't been to university, even if they think that MP will be more representative of the average British person?

I also don't get the relevance of your point about private education in Sri Lanka. Many people (including my father) went to a non-fee paying school for their secondary education so not sure why you are focusing on the 2% who went to private school. One of the best boys' secondary schools in Sri Lanka is Royal College, which is a government school. The issue for Sri Lankans to progress in a global economy is that they need to be fairly fluent in English, which is not easy if you live in a rural area. But again I am not seeing how those immigrants to the UK who are fluent in English are privileged compared to the local British population. My mother, who studied English in India, was better at spelling than I was with my British private school education. Was that because she had some kind of privileged education in India that was better than my education in a British private school? Or because she came from a more privileged background than I did?

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Actually I don't think we know where Sunak's mother attended school.

We know that she arrived at the age of 15, so just ready for her O-levels and then on to A-levels and university. I don't think I've seen anything that confirms whether she was enrolled in a state school when she arrived or whether she went to a private school for her O and A levels. Certainly for her to carry on education beyond 16 would have put her in a minority - leaving age for compulsory schooling was 15. And of course just 4% went to university.

Nice to see that once again you've airbrushed Sunak's grandfather out of things. You know the guy who kept his middle class civil service job in Tanzania while his wife was acting as the 'advance party' for their planned relocation to the UK. And who transferred to work in the UK civil service when he and the kids arrived in the UK, and just a few years later was considered senior enough to be awarded an MBE for his civil service role.

So you don't actually know how senior Sunak's grandfather was or how much he was earning when he first arrived - you're just speculating again based on your unevidenced assumption that only senior civil servants get an MBE?

And you have no idea whether Sunak's mother went to state school - so again just you speculating about Sunak's grandmother's privilege.

And is the basis for your claim that Sunak's grandmother had a privileged background in comparison to local British people, that she had jewellery she sold to afford a plane ticket to the UK and that when she eventually saved and sent for the rest of her family, her daughter, Sunak's mother, eventually went to university?

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

I am interpreting your comment that "many people, who even if they had the funds and opportunity to go into higher education, would probably still not have the nature / nurture to become very successful."

What is controversial about that statement? Lots of people who go to university aren't successful e.g. me, my brother, my parents - we're not poor but we're not rich either. Only a small percentage of people are successful (that includes people who go to university and those who don't) while everyone else is ok with mediocrity. Why would it be surprising that many people would still be mediocre even if they had got the opportunity to go to university. 

No VG, I do not. But then as you don't work in higher education you might not understand what this means, as it is a routinely used term to describe students who come from a background where traditionally people have not gone to university. It has absolutely nothing to do with immigration and the groups most commonly considered within this group are white working class from low socio-economic backgrounds.

And there is another regularly used and linked measure - 'first in their family to attend university'.

And I am still not clear on the point you are trying to make. Is your point that anyone whose parents have been to university or has been to university themselves is too privileged and out of touch with the average British person so they would make a bad MP, unless they are the first in their family to go to university?

[ProfessorDavey]

What is controversial about that statement?

The controversial element isn't that some people flunk at university, of course they do. Not the controversial element was linking flunking at university with not having the money to pay for it - hence "many people, who even if they had the funds and opportunity to go into higher education, would probably still not have the nature / nurture to become very successful." - my emphasis.

Why is the ability of people to have been able to pay a factor in whether someone might be academically successful at university. Your comment reads to me that you think that people who could pay will be successful, while those who cannot afford it are likely to not be successful, due to nurture or nature. A nasty little comment in my eyes - if all you meant was that some people don't succeed at university why would you need to caveat it with a comment about ability to pay?

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

The controversial element isn't that some people flunk at university, of course they do. Not the controversial element was linking flunking at university with not having the money to pay for it - hence "many people, who even if they had the funds and opportunity to go into higher education, would probably still not have the nature / nurture to become very successful." - my emphasis.

Why is the ability of people to have been able to pay a factor in whether someone might be academically successful at university. Your comment reads to me that you think that people who could pay will be successful, while those who cannot afford it are likely to not be successful, due to nurture or nature. A nasty little comment in my eyes - if all you meant was that some people don't succeed at university why would you need to caveat it with a comment about ability to pay?

You and I seem to have real trouble understanding each other.  I am not talking about flunking. I meant you can graduate from university and still not be very successful.

My comment about money was in relation to your comment that people could not afford to go to university because their parents could not afford to financially support their living expenses or because they had to bring in a wage as soon as they left school or because they did not have the advantage of going to a private school (for which you need money to pay the fees). My point was that having the money to afford university does not mean you will be very successful, because only a tiny minority of people have the nature/ nurture to be very successful. Most people are mediocre.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Really VG - and there was me thinking that the facts that the student population at my university have far and away the highest proportion of home students from migrant backgrounds compared to similar universities, but also has the highest proportion of state school educated students, were somehow unrelated. And also the highest proportion of students from households with less than £10k. Thanks VG for making me realise that they are entirely related - I would never have realised otherwise .

But there is another related element - that our student population has the highest proportion of students who are the first from their families to have attended university (regardless of whether that is in the UK or elsewhere). These are not students from multi-generational middle class, professional, university-attending backgrounds. These students are like many, many others from migrant backgrounds. They are, however, nothing like Sunak or indeed you VG.

But then my institution is pretty good at understanding aspiration, providing opportunity and supporting social mobility.

I don't know about Sunak's grandparents but my grandparents did not go to university. My parents were the first in the family to go to university.

Are you therefore suggesting that the children of the students from migrant backgrounds at your university will be considered to have had a privileged background because their parents went to university?

[ProfessorDavey]

So you don't actually know how senior Sunak's grandfather was or how much he was earning when he first arrived - you're just speculating again based on your unevidenced assumption that only senior civil servants get an MBE?

No speculation - at the time when he got a gong, honours in the civil service were granted depending on the seniority of rank achieved. Of course most civil servants never got close to the seniority required for an honour, so to achieve an MBE demonstrates that Sunak's grandfather was pretty senior in the civil service, albeit there would be a few more senior grades above him. This from a review of the honours system makes it clear that no other criteria were applied for the award of a gong other than attaining a senior rank. This was proposing changes, but the review was from well after Sunak's grandfather received his gong:

"In the home civil service, the diplomatic service and the armed forces, there is a clear correlation between the level of honour and the grade or rank of the recipient. Hence K/Ds go to those who reach the top grade or rank of their service – DSl, four-star and Grade 1/lA – and only rarely to those who do not.

A recent review by Sir Michael Quinlan found this to be frequently “criticised in the media and elsewhere as “automaticity”, with an implication that awards are insufficiently related to merit.” His answer to this criticism was that “promotion to rank is itself made on merit assessed by careful regular procedures over considerable spans of time”.

[ProfessorDavey]

You and I seem to have real trouble understanding each other.  I am not talking about flunking. I meant you can graduate from university and still not be very successful.

It doesn't matter whether you are talking about people who flunked university or people who weren't successful after university - my issue was you linking this failure to the (in)ability of individuals to afford to pay for study.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

It doesn't matter whether you are talking about people who flunked university or people who weren't successful after university - my issue was you linking this failure to the (in)ability of individuals to afford to pay for study.

I didn't. You just seem to have trouble comprehending what I did say.

[ProfessorDavey]

I didn't. You just seem to have trouble comprehending what I did say.

You did exactly that - in a single sentence.

Perhaps that wasn't your intention, in which case a retraction is in order, but the sentence:

"I also don't think you understand that there are many people, who even if they had the funds and opportunity to go into higher education, would probably still not have the nature / nurture to become very successful."

clearly links the success (whether that is actually at university or thereafter) with the (in)ability to afford to pay for study.

You do seem to have trouble understanding what you have actually written.