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?

So if we take this bit from the research the head line might say children from poor areas will not do better than private or posh comp children at unvesrsty and will indeed obtain a worse degree result even if they had identical A level results - almost the opposite of the thread headline!

"Students from disadvantaged areas tend to do less well in higher education than those with the same prior educational attainment from more advantaged areas

12.We classified the postcodes students live in immediately prior to entry using either the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI
),which measures in a local area the proportion of children under the age of 16 who live in low-income households or Participation of
Local Areas (POLAR), which measures in a local area the proportion of young people who go onto higher education. We found that
on either measure, those from the most disadvantaged
areas have consistently lower HE degree outcomes than those with the same prior educational attainment from other areas.

13. Applying IDACI, 77 per cent of those from the most advantaged areas with ABB at A-level go on to gain a first or upper -second degree. This figure drops to 67 per cent when ABB students from the most disadvantaged areas are considered."

We linked the paper on this thread too, Jane, further up.

It seems clear that at AAA there is no difference but below that there is an effect of between .5 and 1 grades.

Looking at the summary Aga posted upthread it looks like a larger difference mid-grades (like a normal distribution graph?) which suggests that the AAA will succeed anywhere, the EEE will not hit the heights anywhere but the smaller classes, etc may pull up those in the middle.

This confirms what I have always believed about private education - that it adds some value for kids who are average or just above average, but makes little, if any, difference to kids who are really bright, as they will tend to do well anywhere.

I think it's certainly true that we need to look more at the inequality within the state system - not all state schools are created equal! (Having said that, I'm not convinced that all independent schools have an equal offering either!) Kids with educated, supportive, aspirational parents will tend to do well regardless of school type. Kids without that parental support don't have an even playing field. The tools that universities currently use are pretty blunt - you can only tell so much from someone's postcode!

I think it's very clear that there is a huge difference between degrees from different institutions, and I would agree that most employers know this, but horse is quite right to say that this needs to be more transparent - the lack of transparency just perpetuates the inequality in the system. Kids with parents who know how the system works will inevitably guide their children about which subjects to take, which universities to apply to and so on.

I'm not sure it shows bright kids will do well anywhere. All it shows is that kids who achieve AAA do equally well at university in terms of degree classification, regardless of school they are from.
What it does not show, is what percentage of bright kids in each system achieve AAA. I suspect this is higher in private schools. it also does not show the percentages that go to the better universities or onto the most highly regarded degree courses. So actually, those good degrees earned by the bright pupils at state schools may well be from lower ranking universities or in lower ranking courses.....all of which has knock on effects into employment. Of course, it also does not show that private school pupils are goi g to the better universities and onto the better courses, but other research has shown that in terms of percentages from each type of s hool, they do.

So it is too simplistic to say that the bright will achieve well anywhere.

Someone said the only difference was 8% anyway which is not a massive different arising from going to a fee paying school (given a lot of them take children who aren't very bright - not all private schools are the academic kind).

The report shows how complex the system is. If a child from a bad postcode gets good grades at university they do worse compared to private and posh comp children. That might be because they are having to work in the holidays more and in term time. Whereas high grade pupls from the posher comps get better grades (but is that only at the worse ex polys? I haven't read all this thread and that might be why people have gone into the comparison between institutions issue).

The issue will be what should universities do in terms of social engineering and what can comps learn to help pupils from poor post codes live up to their A level result promise through to their degree result?

The press seems wrongly to have said it proves that if you get good grades in a state school you get better degree results than pupils get from privates when in fact it seems to have found that if the child is a high grade poor post coder the opposite occurs - they do worse in their degree result so I am left utterly confused.

I agree that interested, informed parents make a big difference and this can be in either sector.
If parents are lacking interest or information in the private sector, the school partly makes up for this, although never totally.

Interested, informed parents know when choosing secondary schools, to look at what options are available at GCSE (ie separate sciences, languages....how many are being directed to vocational courses instead). They also know to encourage their children into facilitating subjects at A level and have a sense of which universities and courses are most well regarded. Many parents are interested, but simply not informed and rely on the school for information. It is a travesty that schools do not always give the information needed, because most parents however interested will not know the full story, especially if they have not been in higher education themselves. Private schools often have more parents educated to degree level, so they know that system, even if it the most up to date things going on within it.

it remains the case there is little you can do better for your child as a mother than earn enough to pay school fees.

That's quite a statement, Jane!

Indeed. It's fun......Obviously assuming you also refrain from child abuse and love your child and all the usual stuff. High income and example of working mother in happy job earning a fortune does confer advantage on children. I am sure mothers who have chosen to stay at home would prefer to disagree and if they married a rich man they might argue as he pays the school fees the advantage conferred is just as good although I would as a feminist dispute that.

As another feminist I also think it's important to provide a strong example to my children of a woman who works hard at a job she enjoys and is able to support herself. Just not sure where school fees come into that?

(They are little off topic. If you earn a lot as a woman you can afford private school fees - that was the only point of relevance).

Does a mother who works hard at her job/s and enjoys it/them, but doesn't earn a lot of money, count? Genuine question, by the way, I'm just curious.

I know a lot of those. I suspect the positive attitude towards work counts far more than the salary, but not sure if research has ever been done?

Interestingly, my Oxford graduate niece always said she felt better equipped to study and learn independently (state school) than many of her privately educated fellow students, who floundered somewhat. Though that may be more to do with individuals than schooling, of course.

I would say that there are many ways for parents to demonstrate a positive attitude to work. I doubt it is effectively linked to salary per se: Jane was just stirring it up a little bit to say that "a good mother in one who will pay school fees".

As for who is best prepared for Uni study: a school where you have to work hard and take responsiblity for your learning prepares you well. There are examples of those in both state and private. Students from top-of-the-academic-range fee paying schools are well prepared just by the sheer amount of work they have learned to organise.

Makes sense

I suspect the students who floundered did so because they couldn't organize their lives other than work-wise, to be honest. For whatever reason.

I think research shows that the best indicator of a child's educational outcomes is the mother's educational attainment.

After that, the second biggest influence is cold hard cash!

That said, this is old research and I have colleagues currently involved in a new study as to what things are the most influential. How we live as a nation and how education is now assessed have changed of course!

To be honest, there's not that much floundering at Oxbridge. Or certainly no worse than at other highly selective universities. The drop out rate is very low.

The resal issue is at the least selective end of things where the drop out rate can be quite alarming.

This is where you'll find hardly any privately school students...but that's not the issue of course. The issue is people entering tertiary education who really do not have the ability, propensity, personality or interest in it!

word I am sure that the link between mother and child is valid in societies where the child grows up pretty much in the same society where the mother grew up.

A lot of our investment as a society in early years is aimed at helping kids whose mothers may have grown up in quite impoverished circumstances overseas. Those kids are growing up in the UK, with so much that is different in terms of nutrition, healthcare and education, that I think we ought to expect to see very different outcomes for them.

I think the drop-out at the high end is a scandal. Every one of those students is someone who has put their precious time and money into something that has ended badly for them. There are far too many of them, IMHO. Up to 45% of the students who started at Bolton Uni don't complete their course. 45%. That's too many. And it's 21% across the sector. (Oxbridge is 1.4%)

I would except the Open University from that, though. If you have a policy of letting everyone have a go, of course you have a high drop out rate.

isnt that boltons policy too
well, sort of joking, but also sort of not. it has, i think, v low entry requirements but takes a lot of non-traditional students, so mature students, btec, a high number of local students, so often from deprived backgrounds
45percent is very sad

But here is where parents can be at a disadvantage. The seeming equality of institutions, courses and degree results means that parents without quite a bit of knowledge are unable to discriminate because they don't have the information.

The fact that state schooled children seem to do better is only true if you aggregate all degrees from all institutions and say they are all comparable when they are not. This information has been available for some years but is very rarely publicised and can be really hard to find. It suits certain political agenda to keep it hidden and to make use of the headline data but not the secondary information.

The volume of work at Oxbridge is considerable but young people who have attended very academically successful schools have said to me that the people who struggle with that are those who haven't experienced an intense workload before, not those from top private or maintained schools, whom tend to have had to learn to balance a workload earlier.

There will be plenty of those from less academic schools who have learned balance in all sorts of ways - perhaps having to have part time work, etc, but their experience will have been different and I think the adjustment a bit harder.

well yes, and not wanting to get at Bolton, as I am sure they have the worst rate for a reason, as you say.

But 21% across the board is too high, I think.

well, the "state school do better" argument is not relevant to Oxbridge anyway. The report that started this disucssion said that there is no difference by school type with kids with AAA or better.

Back when this data comes from (2007 I think) the only two Unis who required AAA as standard were... Oxford and Cambridge. They are the only two Unis where the data shows no difference at all anyway.

No, agreed, Beast but I was responding to a different point made earlier when I referred to Oxbridge. Anyway, although Oxbridge headline requirements might have been the only ones at AAA in 2007 (were they really? Were there no other universities asking for AAA in 2007?), there were plenty of students at other universities achieving those grades, whether required or not. It is all far more complex than the headlines suggest, anyway.

I know, slip, sorry, wasnt disagreeing, just musing.

Yes, back in 2007 it was only Oxbridge who asked for AAA. Places like Edinburgh you could get in withy BBB, easy. But the numbers of ppl getting AAA went up massively and so other Unis moved as well. Oxbridge has only moved up to AAA (sometimes just AAA) even now; there is an argument that given grade inflation they ought to ask for AAA but of course that's just too risky, if you want any state school intake at all. Quite a few courses do ask for AAA though.

A A A (MN loses and makes bold)

Well, some good changes too by the sound of it. My father was teaching at Oxford when I was a kid, and I remember not so much drop outs as quite a high number of students attempting suicide/depressed. That was in the 60s/70s.

Perhaps it was the psychedelic era. Or maybe that was his personal effect on students