State v Independent - for degree classification

[stubiff]

This came up as a side discussion in another thread.

The pic shows that State school pupils, on average (as always!), do better than Independent school pupils, with the same grades.

Do you feel your Independent DC were pushed to (possibly over) achieve at A-level.
Do you feel your State DC were not pushed hard enough, and possibly under achieved at A-level.

Probably excluding the high attainers as there is no/hardly any difference between that group.

May be it depends on the year? We were not that long in about 1981 out of the massively awful recession, inflation ato 60% over 3 years, 3 day week, country on its knees. Obviously abit later in the 90s there was an absolute boom so may be it was just the years in which I applied or perhaps I wasn't very good (although I was top of my year with prizes so probably not that).

My tutor thought it was because I was 19 - I was a year young at shcool and graduated at 20 and was applying during my law degree. Possibly it was that I wasn't very god in the interviews. I was talking to my twins about it recently ( they are 20 now) and saying I got so used to that train journey to London and constant trips hundreds of miles for the London interviews. I suppose by the end of it I probably got quite good at interviews. I was even rejected by Slaughter and May who then hired me in 1985 when I qualified!

These days the first sort I think is by HR and only once you are through all that do partners even get a look at people.

The year can matter - DH and I graduated 1982 and were glad we were staying on for PhDs. Things were picking up when we finished those in 1985.

So, some possible reasons, so far:

Independent:
better access to resources
smaller classes (within reason)
access to private tutors alongside
better access to extra curricular add-ons, e.g. foreign language trips, theatre trips, geog field trips
more revision classes
teaching beyond the syllabus

State:
possibly more self-directed learning
less hand-holding

Thanks all.