State Schools Eclipse Eton in rankings for A-Level Science

The other idea (often peddled on here) that parents paying for education are happy to financially prop up their children after leaving university in perpetuity is ridiculous. I've never heard a parent say they are happy too do this. Parents stumping up £36+k pa in school fees are usually able to do it because they've been very successful in their own careers and thinking about it over the years I've met few engineers doctors etc who earn that kind of money, most are (needless to say) investment bankers or something financial and didn't study STEM subjects at university. So maybe they know how unimportant this actually is for significant financial success.
Secondly I struggle to see the difference between history of art and history or Eng Lit.

but it's more than a little reductive to suggest that all state school children need to do STEM otherwise they won't get a job or earn money.

But equally it's foolish to argue that STEM subjects won't make it easier to get a job or earn more money, which for the sort of people who can't rely on nepotism or whatever, has to be a consideration.

There was a post in the Staffroom forum asking about becoming a history teacher. The responses were that history wasn't a shortage subject, didn't attract large bursaries and there was a lot of competition for jobs. If it had been about becoming a maths or physics teacher, posters would have been saying that they could get bursaries of up to £30k just to train and their pick of jobs. As pointed out in the article, there is an economic premium attached to certain A-level subjects and for maths, it's huge.

I'm not saying that kids who are bad at STEM should do STEM if their talents lie elsewhere, but that a bright student with their pick of subjects should think very carefully before rejecting STEM subjects.

Some people can afford to do whatever they like, but you don't get many poor kids studying History of Art for a reason.

The ambition is usually for DC in state schools to aim for paths where there are jobs, and money to be earned, hence the focus on STEM.
Nothing wrong in DCs going for STEM careers if that is their natural inclination and ability. Too many though are constrained by that sort of view in their choice of subject and career.
I work in a STEM field with high earning potential. It is sad to observe those who have been shoehorned into STEM specialism and regret it in later years. It is also a shame to observe more young people nowadays in STEM careers with a very one dimensional perspective and who struggle to talk on interests outside their specialism.

Like scaevola, I cannot see how the table has been compiled.

I can see several ways in which it could have been compiled, each of which would give different outcomes, but without any indication of what the table is actually showing, how is it possible to draw any conclusion from it?

Math is the most popular subject at DS2's school 2nd physics. 40% of his house/year went off to do STEM subjects as did many of his friends.
Having said this I'd never heard of "STEM" till I'd seen it on MN. I think many parents at schools like DS2's, Eton and Harrow are certainly very interested in results but don't have the same obsession with measuring academic and ultimately career success by what subject is actually studied at university. It's a different ethos where STEM subjects and medicine dentistry and law are seen as the ones to take as they definitely lead onto a certain quantifiable and defined career path.
Secondly I suspect if my exceedingly math capable DS2 had gone to our local(ish) top grammar school he would now be studying a STEM subject but the breadth of the curriculum at his school really encouraged his interest in classics, art, music and languages etc, broadened his horizons and encouraged him to be not only interested in but love these subjects too. He goes off to university this September to study one of these. I'm delighted for me the most important thing is to study at university something you love not something that will lead onto a "good job." This is not because I've endless money to prop up my DS when he leaves university.
Interestingly I was talking to a history teacher (state school) he was moaning about many parents do not see the value of subjects like history and discourage their children from doing it for A level pushing them into STEM subjects. Originally from another the US he said this would not happen there.

I'm pleasantly surprised to see my sons school in the top 20.

But there are jobs and money to be earned in non-STEM sectors, too. As I've said before, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a focus on encouraging STEM subjects, but it's more than a little reductive to suggest that all state school children need to do STEM otherwise they won't get a job or earn money. I'm sure that is not what noblegiraffe meant, but it is one possible reading of the previous post. I know many children pursuing humanities subjects at both state and private schools.

I know 'things are different from when I was young' but most of the jobs that have enabled me and many of my friends to be economically productive, high earning members of society are still going to be there. The academic publishers are still going to be publishing academic books for all these STEM students to read and the communications companies are going to be developing ever more creative and varied ways of getting different messages across. We'll still need cleaning companies and specialist copywriters and NGOs and people producing the music, art, TV and comedy that we consumer voraciously.

I think encouraging STEM is great but I question the rather bludgeoning agenda behind the original post and the way the data is reported. Selective schools that focus exclusively on maths are going to have very good maths results.

The ambition is usually for DC in state schools to aim for paths where there are jobs, and money to be earned, hence the focus on STEM.

At Eton and the like, they know they can rely on family connections to get a nice job, or family wealth to see them through unemployment and actual subject choice won't matter so much, hence they can afford to take less vocationally-minded routes.

A much greater proportion of Etonians take maths and economics and relatively few chemistry, probably reflects a bias to high earning STEM careers rather than medicine and research scientist .

Having said that comparing Elton with KCL, Eton's results for physics (no chemistry or Biology at KCL school) are at least as good as KCL school, about 76% A / A at Eton, 57% at KCL school. Ditto for further maths ( which would be taken by the same sort of pupils that would be enter KCL school), 80% A / A at Eton, 58% at KCL.
So this table is very much biased towards proportion of subject uptake by pupils rather than results

STEM subjects are of course important but there is a rather monochromatic ambition from parents at super selective grammar school for their DCs to aim for professional STEM careers which of course skews the uptake of those subjects in those schools. Whether these pupils also develop the creativity required to producing the major advances in STEM subjects is up for debate. Certainly in that regard the USA system does n't seem to suffer from its emphasis on encouraging a broader education.

Sorry Buddles my experience of Etonalbeit through daughter's boyfriend, neighbours boys and friends and direct experience of other public schools is that vocational jobs are considered lower status than areas like banking and politics. Certainly he was only one going into engineering from his year at Eton and was seen as lower achieving- Eton is highly academic but Arts/classics are seen as more prestigious than STEM subjects.
My two doctor children came through different systems. The eldest was a comprehensive pupil who was seen as high achieving with medicine considered as the realm of the creme de la creme. My other doctor child finished off education at major public school and was seen as not really aiming high enough and settling for a lower status career; the view was that whilst being worthy it wouldn't make them rich.
Let me assure you the comprehensive educated child had to work much, much harder in much more challenging circumstances to get similar outcomes.

Bizarrely, that link doesn't seem to give you any means of finding out what the methodology used to construct that ranking is - which makes me very suspicious of it. From this quote:

As expected there is a positive correlation between delivery of A*-B A levels in all subjects and delivery of high grades in STEM A levels, but the percentage of A level entries in STEM varies greatly per school and therefore so does overall STEM ranking.

I suppose it's combining how popular STEM subjects are at the school with how well students who take them do - which is OK if that's what floats your boat...

Eton's A level results can be inspected here. For example, in summer 2016, it seems 46 boys took A2 Chemistry, of whom 22 got A-star, and 43 got A-star to B inclusive. That seems, at any rate, good enough to be confident one's budding chemist will have the opportunity to do well if he puts in the work.

Maybe someone who has the statistics of one or more other schools on the list at their fingertips might like to reverse engineer what the algorithm must have been? (I might, but not tonight, and not honestly sure I care enough to do it at all!)

Crumbs1. That is totally ridiculous. My DD is friends with lots of ex Harrow pupils. Generally Eton is considered more academic but of these young men, some are engineers, doctors, others work in insurance, banking and law. Another one is a sustainable food expert. One thing they have in common: they all work very hard indeed!

I would have been more than happy for my DDs to be good at STEM like their Dad, but they are not. They could not compete and why should they have a life hating what they do? The child doing media studies is highly unlikely to be a keen stem student! However where students could do well in stem, it is up to teachers to enthuse them and show them the world of possibilities.

This table is bullocks sorry. Nearly all the state schools are selective grammars and a large number of them are fiercely fought for to gain a place even more so than private school. Some schools like Kendrick have 10:1 ratio of applications and these are super selective free grammars.

What am I supposed to deduce from this article?

*Today 18:28 ILikeyourHairyHands

A lot of independents don't do A levels either, not sure about Eton.*

Most of them do.

Eton is a very academic school and it is utterly ridiculous to say the parents aren't interested in results.

According to that ranking, my children's (partially selective state) school performs much better than the (fully selective independent) school I went to.

How is the table actually compiled?

Do they look at the total number of A levels, the proportion that are in STEM subjects, and factor that in?

Also, which subjects count as STEM for this survey? And how are non A-level results included (if at all)?

Love that it is imagined that STEM subjects would matter to majority of ex public school pupils. My daughter's boyfriend is old Etonian and studying engineering. He'll go into racing car design because he knows someone in the field but he was thought to be a bit of a duffer. My youngest was thinking of studying medicine but when she went to public school her view changed because medicine was seen not as a top career to aspire to but something a bit worthy and a social faux pas. The top degrees from their two years were PPE, classics, economics and the arts.

It might not be as much use to the country, but it might be more use to the individual. Of course the country needs STEM graduates, but it also needs teachers of other subjects and lawyers and people who work in service industries and writers and designers and TV producers and chefs and musicans. It may need more STEM graduates than it needs all the others, but forcing people who are brilliant at or passionate about other things to pursue a STEM career is not what parents or teachers would do.

That doesn't mean the national strategy is wrong. Clearly it's a good idea to persuade as many people as possible, ie anyone who might be interested in it, to pursue STEM subjects, but I think there should be some latitude in listening to what people think they might want to do.

What it doest include on that first table is which schools are academically selective.

Its okay saying xxx school is at the top or whatever, but it is meaningless without context.

I assume the majority of the top 25, whether state or independent, are selective schools and not really truly comprehensive state schools.

Thing is, kids pursuing the studies they want to isn't any use to the country if it turns out they all want to study Media or Ancient Greek. The country needs STEM graduates and so the government needs to funnel as many kids down that route as it can, regardless of what they think they want to study.

I suppose people at Eton (and other big name private schools) are rich enough not to be worried about raw employability. I don't mean that quite as facetiously as it might appear. I think if you come from a very affluent background, you might not worry quite so much about taking subjects that don't immediately lead to, say, engineering or medicine or an obvious career path.

My son could do STEM subjects at A-level - he will probably get good enough grades for most sixth form programmes, if not Kings College Maths School (though you never know). But he would be miserable and do much less well at them than he will at his humanities subjects. I firmly believe, within reason, you should pursue the studies you want to and you will probably find that it leads you to the life you want, even if you don't know what that is yet.

Looking at the list, it is all the usual schools you would expect to be there.

And yet the article says that Eton comes 9th in the rankings for all A-level subjects so it seems a bit odd to protest that it's not academic.

I guess it prioritises a classical education over a STEM one.