State school outperforming Independent school students at Uni

[LippyPongStocking]

So this is old news- research from Cambridge in 2015:

https://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/news/state-school-pupils-do-better-at-university-cambridge-assessment-research-confirms/

Has this trend continued? And now are recruiters finding that state school students make better employees, as the workplace is more reflective of of a state school environment (as the independent school child is used to far more support and handholding)?

The central issue here is really 'self-starters' v the rest, not state v independent. Self-starters - those with drive whether or not support is in place - are highly praised by many employers.

The independent sector will produce its fair share of self-starters and greater resource and support may well turbo-boost their performance but that core drive still needs to be there.

You could argue that contextual uni offers are, in part, designed to recognise the self-starter in a more challenging educational context who is 'only' achieving or predicted to achieve an A rather than an Astar but, in that context, it is understood the A is hard won and, to a larger extent, reliant on their own initiative.

One of the (many) reasons that larger employers have their own multi-stage tests is that academic degree performance is, of itself, not necessarily a good predictor of whether a potential employee will have the initiative or communication skills to thrive.

I think an elephant in the room is informal, behind the scenes tutoring that is more likely to be prevalent in some parts of the state system, whether for 11+, GCSE or even A-level. This blurs any attempt at a neat state v independent analysis or line of argument.

Beautifully put perpetual

Agreed perpetual.
However, I was surprised to learn from my Dc that some students parents still pay for private online tutoring for their Dc even while they are at uni. I have also seen parents asking for help to find a tutor for their student struggling with uni on other forums

I was curious so I clicked through. I wondered how large the advantage was. The article just makes the assertion, but none of the hyperlinks lead to the headline topic. There is no data provided to show us how profound the effect is.

Totally agree @PerpetualOptimist. My ex bf at Cambridge had been an academic star at St Pauls. He utterly floundered at university because he didn’t have his mum running around after him day and night and he left with a third.

My cohort of 8 in my college included people from CLSG, SPGS and Westminster. All were excellent but of those 3 only 1 got a first. The other 3 who got firsts (inc me) were all state educated. Obviously anecdotal but probably fairly reflective of the research posted upthread.

No idea on the private tutoring front other than I was never tutored myself and the idea that an Oxbridge applicant would need it seems ludicrous to me.

I think an elephant in the room is informal, behind the scenes tutoring that is more likely to be prevalent in some parts of the state system, whether for 11+, GCSE or even A-level. This blurs any attempt at a neat state v independent analysis or line of argument.

@PerpetualOptimist tutoring is absolutely not restricted to the state sector. Aside from private sector DC getting top-up tutoring for public exams, it is rampant for 11+, particularly in London and the home counties where competition for places in the best schools is fierce. I know a number of privately educated DC who have been tutored right through senior school. In this scenario, the privately educated DC is in effect getting a double whammy of advantage. However, it is all academic as it is impossible to take tutoring into account when contextualising exam results.

@ParentsTrapped do you really believe that there is no tutoring going on for Oxbridge aspirants? Quite aside from general tutoring to maximise grades, there is a whole industry around Oxbridge application coaching.

Gosh. I wonder if these were private or state school students? Or both?

All I can find is that it’s stated at around a third better:

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/cambridge-study-details-state-school-students-advantage-over-private-school-peers

Sorry, of course I believe it happens. But if someone is tutored up to their eyeballs to get in then I’d really query whether they had what it takes to do well once there. Of course I imagine many parents do it as a kind of insurance policy.

Are you saying there’s more handholding in independent education than there is in state schools?

Thanks. One third is very significant.

The article you link to heavily hints that the statistics may not be being interpreted accurately.

I’d love to see the data instead of just having the conclusions.

This research is of course on students who graduated nearly a decade ago so it's not clear how far it would apply now. In fact the research the article in the OP reported on wasn't really about state and independent schools, it was about the introduction of the (then) new A* grade at A-level https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03054985.2015.1090967 and there was only a very brief mention of the state private issue.
The other piece of research from around the same time was the HEFCE one mentioned in the THE article linked above. It made headlines becaues it said that state school students were significantly more likely to obtain a 1st/2:1, only to then have to isssue a correction because it had accidently transposed the data and actually it was the other way round https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/state-schools-versus-private-schools-hefce-sets-record-straight The original HECE paper is here https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/24317/1/HEFCE2015_21.pdf Although this is the one with the transposed results. The differences in outcome are in the table at the end of this paper https://www.buckingham.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/HEFCE-blunder.pdf and you can see that in essence for the students with the top grades the likelihood of a good degree is the same regardless of school type. For students with lower A-level achievement a student from a state school is more likely to get a good degree than a student from an independent school. I don't think the same data is published by the Office for Students. Their similar papers are more focused on disadvantage and protected characteristics https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/data-and-analysis/differences-in-student-outcomes/

Sorry that did have paragraphs when I wrote it!

Very interesting Mia thanks for sharing. The thrust of this seems to be that for high achievers there is no real difference between state and independent schools. But for students with lower A level results, State students have the edge.

It makes intuitive sense that there could be more untapped potential in the state sector.

Yes or that an independent school can help a mediocre student to get good a level results but the effect does not persist at University

There are a lot of threads like this, so I asked my son what he felt were the lasting benefits of having been to a very academic private school. He is currently a year away from completing a PhD at a well regarded US University. There are about 25 in his year from all over the world.

His answer was curious. He apparently had the advantage of never having been top of his year at either school or University. Most of the others on his course had been star pupils at school and outstanding at University and so found the adjustment to being average within a group quite painful. At school he never made the top, or even the second, maths set even in sixth form, and the course he took at University attracted strong students from across the world.

The two other Brits…in different years as it is a six year programme, both went to selective state schools. Other characteristics including intelligence, a capacity for hard work, an ability to self start and see things through, and enjoying learning are way more important.

My experience is from a few years ago but I remember being quite surprised by it at the time:

I went to a state school and then a top 5 uni. I was very surprised to find that I felt way ahead intellectually of so many others on the course who really didn't seem that bright to me at all and struggled with many of the concepts we discussed. How had they won their places at this competitive institution?

Eventually I came to understand, they had great A Levels after a very expensive education, but much less life experience or academic insight that the ones who'd come from ordinary schools and had to work against the odds to win their places.

@Needmoresleep if a DC is middle sets in a very academic private school, they are likely to be in a similar position in a very academic state school. I can see that they would most likely be in the top set in a comprehensive but still not necessarily the only star pupil. Intelligence spans both sectors.

Does this factor in the number of students who move from private to state for sixth form?

Who knows. It was just his observation. Funded PhDs are hard to come by and most, whether from China, Russia, Latin America or Europe, seem to have been top all the way through.

Perhaps he was more able than he realised, and perhaps some of it was masked by others who were pressured or tutored. Amongst DCs friends several have found at University they were more academic than they had though when they were at school.

Exactly
Although I do seem to remember that the original research showed that state school students with lower grades - CCC? - did better than independent students with CCC. Which isn't that surprising tbh. But it's become a trope that comprehensive students do better than independent students across the board.

Oh get over yourself. The vast majority of state school students aren't 'battling against the odds'. They are getting a decent education and getting the grades to get into Uni.

anecdotally, I have always found adults from state schools far outperform adults from private schools in many situations.

They, in my experience, tend to be far better at improvising, sharing, managing with fewer resources, getting the most our of resources available, budgeting, assessing their own performance, judgement, predicting outcomes, and have lower expectations of support/resources/ funding and higher expectations of themselves and others

Here we go.

I know plenty of kids from state schools who live very comfortable lives at decent schools, where they are well educated and taught to the test. Dd tutors lots of them! This ridiculous idea that all state kids are resilient underdogs is laughable.

o, good word!

yes, resilience sums it up exactly