I do love seeing Betty's posts. It is like Oymandias meets Samantha Brick.
There is an interesting article here which cross references to many of the largest pieces of research on the subject of educational setting WRT success for the moderately gifted child.
If (big IF, I am not omniscient like some) we were to assume that the top end universities seek out the more gifted students, and IF we were to assume that the bell curve of IQ of children entering private school were the same as that of state school children* and IF we were to extrapolate our research piece above, it would be fair to conclude that the level of bias toward private schools at the top universities is almost entirely due to the relatively poorer environment surrounding state school children, where lower aspirations can potentially suffocate bright children, leaving a smaller pool, dominated by private pupils, from which the uni's can select pupils.
Betty's comments about bright people not ending up at the top unis therefore appears to be sadly true in that the bright people in state schools are being failed by the educational environment, whereas the bright people in private schools are not. Gross generalisation of course - there are always exceptions. What I struggle to find evidence for is the assertion that seems implicit in Betty's posts that those private school pupils who do get into the top uni's are inherently thicker than the state school pupils that don't. Although of course if this were the case it would certainly explain Betty's masterly slaying of (no doubt privately educated) Barristers left, right and centre.
*It is an interesting discussion point as to whether private and state pupils start out with the same intellect. Nobility aside, the higher paying professions which can afford to swallow school fees tend to be filled with IQ's higher than average proof. Given that research has shown a statistically sizeable genetic factor is at play with regards to IQ proof, then you might be forgiven for suggesting that the bell curves are not the same on entering school anyway. Of course the correllation falls as children grow and nature is replaced by nurture (again one can extrapolate the research to argue this would affect state school children more negatively than private school children).
** There are, of course, exceptions to this gross generalisation that private school pupils might be more clever simply due to genetics. I offer you, for example, 'Mark Thatcher'
All of this aside, the issue the needs to be addressed is what can be done to raise the aspirations and opportunities of those not lucky enough to hold a golden ticket by dint of birth. The bright children on the private side don't get lost, so how do we stop the bright children on the state side from failing to reach their potential? We all know that - ceritis paribus - the state child with 4As is probably head and shoulders ahead intellectually of the privately educated child with 4As but it shouldn't be like this. That state educated child shouldn't have to get over numerous hurdles to shine. In a true meritocracy the only difference between the two strands of schooling should be the extra-curricular facilitiies and social mix, but it isn't. Private schools dominate in the tougher A levels, they dominate in the universities and then they dominate in the professions. How on Earth do you get the two sides of schooling to line up better against each other? It's not for want of trying and it's not for the skills of the teachers (just check out their IQ's right up there on the attached research). If we all agree that it's down to aspirations and attitudes, then the government is spending our money in the wrong places at the moment.
By the way, I have no meta-analysis to back up my first statement. My research regarding Ozymandias is purely qualitative.