State educaten makes pupils more likely to be successful at university

[Agggghast]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-26773830

Found this interesting - is it because they are more used to learning independently?

[Agggghast]

Although I would imagine they can all spell education!

[mimbleandlittlemy]

I think this has been well documented over a number of years - see this from the Guardian, July 2010:

www.theguardian.com/education/2010/jul/23/state-school-pupils-better-university

It does seem to be to do with being more used to learning independently and anecdotally from my friends and acquaintances the ones who have flunked uni have been the privately educated ones.

[soundevenfruity]

I read it in today news and it does say that that doesn't apply to children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Even if they get into university which supposedly shows a great degree of determination.

[soundevenfruity]

I would be quite interested how these groups do after getting their degrees. Differences in income, level of jobs etc.

[Collection]

That's not what I understand form the figures published today.

Privately educated students are still more likely to get a good degree than state educated ones. Students with the same A-Level results are more likely to get a better degree, if they have been state educated.

To me, that just means you have to be brighter to get good A-Levels at a state school

"The Independent Schools Council highlighted figures in the report showing that 67% of independent school pupils achieved a 2:1 or above, compared with 62.3% of state school and college pupils.

But when students with the same A-level grades were compared, the results were different."

[Myrtille]

The difference isn't very large though.
I wouldn't say it gives great support to the argument for giving much lower offers to state school pupils

[Impatientismymiddlename]

To me, that just means you have to be brighter to get good A-Levels at a state school

I think there is a lot of truth in that sentence. The child at the independent school will most probably have benefitted from smaller class sizes and more individual attention. They might have had additional tuition outside of school. They also might have benefitted from being around lots of students with high expectations and pressure from home to do well academically.
I absolutely believe that in some cases it is much more difficult to achieve the same grades at state school as it is at a good independent school.

[Collection]

The difference for students with the same A-Level grades are high Myrtille and absolutely support lower offers for state school students.

The interesting figure, which isn't there would be the average or lowest A-level grades from which 2:1 is achieved in each group of students

[Collection]

FWIW I got very poor A-Levels (CEE) at a state school and a 2:1 from a Russell Group Uni - not straight from school though, they wouldn't have had me and I wouldn't have dreamt of applying

[StabInTheDark]

For me this sums up exactly why universities need to strive forward with the 'contextual offers' they make to state school kids. As others have said, it is often more difficult for those at state schools to achieve strong A Level grades- I believe that ABB at an independent school and ABB at a school in a very deprived area are different things. For me, this data is revealing in that of those with the same grades, the state educated teenagers are performing better- I believe that this is all the more reason to work on getting them there in the first place through the contextual offers and wiping out the inequality that exists within secondary education.

[Collection]

TakeFlight - would you see a need to differentiate between different kinds of state schools, "sink" comps, the kind of school parents move house to get their DC into and Grammar schools for example.

No-one, not a single person, went to any Uni immediately on leaving my state comp. That's obviously not the case at many state schools with a different demographic to their students though.

[Beastofburden]

I think there were two sets of results.

PPl with BBB and below, trhere was a clear difference.
PPL with AAA and above, there was no difference.

I can believe that. If Tim Nice-but-dim goes to an expensive school, they might wang him up from CCC to BBB, but nobody is going to get him close to AAA.

Ppl with AAA and above are clever, wherever they went to school. So they're all clever. So there's no difference.

What I hoped this research would tell us, is whether there's a population of BBB state educated kids who are performing as well as AAA independently educated kids. The research seems to say no, there isn't. Which is probably the most important thing we all wanted to know.

[StabInTheDark]

Yes, I definitely think so Collection. I think there's a huge sliding scale, even when you exclude Grammar schools from the mix. Massive difference between top state schools in very affluent areas and the type of school my DDs went to/are attending in a very deprived town. League tables could be helpful as well as the 'postcode test' to look at levels of deprivation etc.

My eldest girl was the only one in her year to get to a RG uni and she had to fight tooth and nail to get her grades. Meanwhile, at the very different state school my niece attended, there were eight who got into Oxbridge and dozens who got into RG unis.

[AgaPanthers]

Privately educated children are actually more likely to be successful at uni, it's only when you compare two children with the same grades that the the state comes up top.

This is:

AAA-AAB: equivalent between private and state
ABB: -1 grade (so ABB private = BBB state)
BBB: -1.5 grades
BBC/BCC: -1.75 grades
CCC/CCD: -1.5 grades
CDD and below: -1 grade

So basically 3 As is 3 As, but a BBB at private school is not as good as a BBC at state school, but better than BCC at state school.

[Collection]

Aga, where is that data, to me that is really useful/interesting but not in the BBC report?

My own experience suggests that the difference is greater but as TakeFlight says there are massive differences between different state schools.

As most of the state educated university students come from grammar schools or "good" schools in affluent areas, my gut feeling is that the real difference is much bigger. My CEE should have meant I stood no chance of a 2:1.

[Beastofburden]

The report is here

[Collection]

What I mean is that that data really says

"3 As is 3 As, but a BBB at private school is not as good as a BBC at state school, but better than BCC at a good state school in an affluent area ."

Because very few children from the other kind of state school ever get to university and therefore, are not included in the data

[StabInTheDark]

I think statistics are quite difficult when they're all lumped in as one- grammar schools, top state schools in wealthy areas and 'sink' schools are all labelled under 'state schools'. And although I have no experience of this, I'd guess that there's still a sliding scale within the independent sector- somewhere like Eton is hardly comparable to other private schools.

[mercibucket]

did they compare at the same universities as well? a 2:1 at one is not the same as a 2:1 at another.

[AgaPanthers]

And the same results are found for GCSE.

An Average A* is as good in both sectors, but
AAAAAAAA private
is the same as
AAAAAABB state

So basically you can deduct 1.5 points from the average GCSE grade for private.

[Beastofburden]

The report goes to some trouble to separate out different types of state and independent schools and also different areas. The summary on the BBC website doesnt really do it justice.

But I still cant find where it answers the question "Is AAB at State as good as AAA at independent". The way they show the daya makes it hard to tell.

[Collection]

Thank you Beast

[AmberTheCat]

The overall stat that shows privately educated children do better than state educated is pretty irrelevant, isn't it, given that most private schools select and most state schools don't?

The stats that essentially compare progress from A levels are much more interesting. My heart says that means unis should take context into account, but my head is struggling to work out how that can really be done fairly and consistently. There are so many factors that affect how well someone does at school - parental background, parental support, peers, quality of teaching at school, etc etc - is it possible to design a system that fairly takes all of those into account?

[Beastofburden]

but no, merci, they take all 2:1s as being equal. And it doesn't cover medical school either.

[Beastofburden]

collection, aga's data refers to p16 of the actual report