Areas where state schools are better than private?

[Narrie]

Does anyone live in an area where the state schools are really better than the private ones? I picked this up elsewhere but am afraid to comment there.

I have lived and worked in the Midlands where there are few private schools to choose but the state schools are not very good. I have lived in Nottingham, where again I felt the state schools were poor.

Even in London there were some awful schools and private was best.

I currently live in Cornwall having got here working in Exeter, Plymouth and Barnstaple. None of the state schools were good there.

Just wondered where the good state provision is. Is it just odd schools within a mass of poor provision or are there really whole areas where state schools are better?

Thanks.

(PS I have my own DC in a boarding school partly because of the state schooling and partly because we move around so much)

If there are most middling useless prviate schools why do the 8% of children at private schools get 50% of the best university places and make up 70%+ of judges etc etc.> It's because many of the private schools are pretty good. Also even those which take very thickets of children seem to add value with small classes and bringing out talents in practical areas or sports to ensure the value added for that child is good.

However yes some private schools are not good and some state are good too. Obviously each parent makes their own choices and those women who didn't pick careers which enable them to pay fees and have no good state school are stuck with a local sink comp often as not.

I think private school parents aer very aware of which are the best schools. We will all have a local pecking order which might have Westminster, St Pauls's etc on it and then go down to the schools which take all comers and those who have not managed to get into any of the harder schools for which they tried. That doesn't mean those bottom results schools are bad for hte less clever child either as they add value well for many. There are also small private schools which are failing and haven't been around long or won't no one would touch with a barge pole but there are not really that many of them.

I still don't really understand why just about every school in all sectors which does well is in the SE though. IQ is not spread like that.

I'm sure many private school parents and pupils are happy with their choices, even when they do result in less favourable academic and career outcomes than those of state school pupils. However I do worry what those people are teaching their children about the value of money. There is clearly already a disconnect with reality being displayed by some people who attended private school themselves. It's rather sad.

Obviously - since my kids go to great schools where they will do well, and since I did better than 99% of the population myself having gone to a state school - I'm not angry or worried about 'privilege'. The one thing I do think that private schools have going for them is the ability to plough their own furrow and tell Gove exactly what to do with his meddling. Sadly many of them seem to be not doing this though.

Xenia,

What I would be interested in is what percentage of the children getting into the best universities [judges are irrelevant, as their education was a generation ago - we need to look at what schools are like NOW] from private schools actually come from an elite group within that sector?

My suspicion is that many, many of them come from a relatively few private schools, and that - as with the state sector - there is a long tail of schools which do not confer significant advantage in getting to top universities (in fact, that the number going from those 'tail' schools is less than would be expected given the backgrounds of those students).

I am glad, though, that you have recognised the existence of a LOCAL pecking order. Your local pecking order has private schools at the top. As it happens, my local pecking order [for a boy] goes state grammar, state grammar, state comprehensive, private, state grammar, comprehensive, comprehensive, private, comprehensive, private. For a girl, it goes state grammar, private, state grammar, state comprehensive, private etc.

Teacher I think you make a fair point about parents not knowing the whole story when they fist sign up.

TBH I chose our local prep for my DC based on recommendations and the fact that it was around the corner from where I live. I had no idea it was superlative as, frankly, I didn't have a fullly formed idea of what a superlative education might consist of. I was lucky.

I was a lot more clued up at secondary level. But even then, my ideas were subjective and didn't coincide with my DD's ideas ...

I now have a very firm idea of what I think constitutes a good school for my DC. And it wasn't the local grammar as if happens. But this is highly subjective.

I didn't consider state schools in my local pecking order - the one nera my house gets 34% A - C in GCSE if you include maths and English. There are no selective schools in the county where I live.

Most areas of the country have no grammar schools at all so they are an irrelevance. They were abolished where I was born in 1970.

Private schools obviously didn't focus on geography in the 70s. :(

Xenia, I know that you don't - but by acknowledging that a local pecking order exists, you will of course understand that in different areas, the pecking order will be different, and might [however hard this may be for you to believe] mean that well-informed parents with the money for private school actively choose to send their children to state schools BECAUSE LOCALLY THEY ARE BETTER.

I do not live in North London, you do not live where I do - we make judgements based on our local circumstances. Parents doing the best for their children locally actively select state schools against private. That does not affect the national picture, but it IS true locally.

In fact let us go up there to the NE and leave the special climate of London SE behind. I can't do it. I was trying to find the FT tables and their map or list of schools in that region.

It is never a true comparison anyway. Any school which is selective in state or private sector even if selective by house price as many comps are is going to do better than non selectives ones and in areas where house prices are very low and parents earn little.

I had better earn a crust now though...

remember that those lovely FT tables are only for 6th form
so a county like Hampshire looks a bit odd as the vast bulk of schools do not have a 6th form....
the Dfe data is more reliable and has less of a political spin

and as one of the state schools in Xenia's borough gets 40% Ebacc and the Catholic school 59% Ebacc and several of them get over 70% % good GCSEs (not equivalents) maybe a bit of looking out at the real world rather than navel gazing would be in order

I know some amazing people who went to private schools. Academic, creative, talented, hardworking, wildly successful......I know lots of similarly amazing people who went to state school. The amazing people who went to private school would very likely still be amazing if they had gone to state school.

I know plenty of private school products who look sort of ok on paper but who fell at the final hurdle - didn't get into Oxford or Cambridge, for example (or didn't try), didn't do anything spectacular with their lives, bumble along, might make a bit of money through contacts but nothing amazing. Nothing that makes you look at them and think 'this person is special'. Would they have done even less well in life had they not had the bunk up from private school? Perhaps. But I don't think that's anything the private school fanclub should be proud of to be honest. I have no problem with the existence of private schools. I have no problem with private school products being disproportionately represented in positions of influence if they are good (not all of them are). I have a significant problem with people pretending that it is impossible for a bright kid to get a good education in a state school qua state. Particularly people who have evidently had a less good education at private school than some of us had at state (no selective) schools. It is sadly true that not all kids have access to appropriate state schools but that's a problem of provision and distribution, not a problem with the concept of state schooling.

"It is never a true comparison anyway. Any school which is selective in state or private sector even if selective by house price as many comps are is going to do better than non selectives ones and in areas where house prices are very low and parents earn little."

So remind me, Xenia - on what basis are you saying that private schools are 'better' then, if you are saying that no comparison is true?

Morion I cant speak for the "private school fanclub" but I agree suggested there are "awful lot of middling private schools which confer little advantage other than snob value" and has already been suggested that the writing is on the wall for many of these.
Secondly your comment "Especially outside London" Ive just quickly cast my eyes over the FT top 100 schools and was surprised to find that over 50% were not in London and the suburbs.

I've just read all the other posting I didn't realise that the FT top 100 schools is not always acceptable!

One reason selective schools work is that everyone is a similarl evel and the standard of the lazy is pulled up. If most in your class or year group are not up to much many children follow the herd. So if you get into a selective school you tend to do better than if you weren 't in one and expectations are higher.

Don't agree over SE> Most good schools in that table are in the SE, Kent, Herts, London. It's amazing considering lots of chidlren live in Hull etc

rankings.ft.com/secondary-schools/secondary-schools-2012

I also see Shrewsbury, Cheltenham, Cambridge, Birmingham, Devon, Manchester, Chester, Nottingham, Newcastle, Warwick in that top 100 list (some of those places eg Birmingham have more than one entry). Of course there is a concentration in the south east that's where the money is, that's where people often flow to, from the hideous frozen wastes of the North, following the money. The really bright ones obviously find ways to earn London money while not living in London but obviously everyone can't do that.

I really have no problem with proclaiming the supremacy of London against all comers (especially my wonderful little bit of it) but it's clearly false to claim its only possible to get a good education in the South East.

Its hardly surprising that so many are in the southeast as London is considerably larger than any other city in the UK as already pointed out the south east is where then majority of the money is.

Thanks for the link, Xenia - what amazes me is the extent of the FT 'fudge factor', as I cannot get the same ordering of our local schools however I sort the 'official' figures. It happens to disadvantage the local state school and advantage the private school - I wonder why you choose to use that particular source of rankings rather than the DfE figures????

I have always trusted the FT most as they were the first to start league tables and they give positions over 5 years or more which are much truer than just one fluke year and they weeded out soft useless A levels some schools were using to ramp up their positions and they go b y A levels, our gold standard. I think they give a pretty good idea. They set out how they work out their data too.

talkin do you have a link for the DfE? And does it include a level results?

Sorry not talkin teacher I have got my glasses on!!!

@teacher the FT tables are renowned for their makey-uppyness. Which obviously stems from private school bias. But even then, they cannot deny that there is a state school which only two private schools can surpass on fudged results. I'd say that is rather telling.

happygardening
Here you go
www.education.gov.uk/researchandstatistics/datasets/a00198407/dfe-gceapplied-gce-aas-and-equivalent-examination-results-in-england-201011-provisional
I have downloaded the main table, hidden all the columns that are micrograding and then sorted ....

VERY interesting

the GCSE data is here
www.education.gov.uk/researchandstatistics/statistics/statistics-by-topic/a00214981/gcse-national-curriculum-teacher-assessment-ks3-england
massive data set - but once lots of the columns are hidden VERY clear

and they put both your boy's schools on exactly the same footing!
:-)

xenia
the dfe data goes back a lot further than that ....

I think the FT tables are the best but what is clear on the thread is most of us think very highly of the schooling we have picked. That is lovely. So let us all go forth in great happiness content we have picked the best schooling for our off spring.

Xenia
Why do you think the FT tables are best?
They are potentially not accurate, surely you cannot approve of that?

For me that is the one overiding factor of private schools that sells them...choice.

I had quite a large choice on offer for my DC. That felt very empowering. If I were not extremely happy with my DC's school I would send them elswhere in a heartbeat.

Choice in the state sector is rather illusory.