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)?

@Nimbostratus100 - do you honestly know where people are educated at your workplace?

I went to a comprehensive but people I work with often assume I was privately educated because of my accent and background. I correct them if it comes up but lots of assumptions are incorrect.

Similarly, my boss has a broad Lancashire accent and presents himself as working class but was privately educated.

I am not talking about my workplace, I am talking about other places

Same applies though. Does it come up?

Of course it doesn't. Even dd at university has no idea which school her friends went to.

The vast majority in my work place are from top private schools. I went to a comprehensive school and on to an elite university. People always assume that I am privately educated despite never having 'reinvented' myself in any way. I don't have a regional accent and never did.

Agree @PerpetualOptimist

Children from households that prioritise education do better at all levels through to 18, whether state or privately educated on average (there's always exceptions or those who have amazing teachers who go the extra mile but as a generalisation). At university without parents (and often tutors) to push them some do struggle, we've got a dd each who did amazingly until 16 (underlying intelligence) dropped a little at a levels when less structured than floundered at university with no teachers or parents telling them what to do, in fact I organise my DD's assignments etc for university, help her with scheduling etc (she is nd) not everyone has that kind of support.

State school kids who make it to the top universities without tutoring or parental support are the most capable of their generation therefore do the best at university often (again there's exceptions but my ex is a professor and says the entitled ex boarding school kids flounder then come complaining they need extra help, he's had parents call or email offering money to tutor their offspring, which he refusing both because it's against university rules (in theory he could pass onto PhD students) but also against his principles of equality!)

He mocks struggling kids who ask for extra help? He sounds delightful. What a prick.

Quite happy to accept boarding school kids onto his course though and take their money!

I went to my DD sixth form talk at her local state school and interestingly the head did highlight that despite state school children doing better at Uni compared to private peers they didn't do so well post grad and private school children no matter what degree did better post grad. She didn't share the research but it was interesting. I wonder if blind recruitment will change that

I don't think it is helpful to polarise state and private. It is silly to just categorise people in simplistic terms. People are individuals and different DC will respond differently to new situations irrespective of the learning environment they have come from. Resilience is developed and tested in many ways. I know people who have had the most 'privileged' backgrounds and who have had to deal with some terrible things whilst quite young - serious illness, deaths of parents or siblings, family addictions, acrimonious divorce of parents etc. Their personal challenges were much greater than anything going to a state school threw at me. I had a happy, stable, loving family that supported me all the way and that was far more relevant to my future success ability to deal with adversity when it came than the type of school I went to .

Focussing just at the university stage is missing a key part of previous analysis which looked at the brightest children all the way through

State schools failed about half of the bright pupils whereas private gets most of them through to a levels
Then at university some of the private pupils fail - but not half

Meaning overall the private pupils had an advantage

Reading with intrigue

We had a sort of mini local experiment as about half the kids I knew from NCT days went state and half went private. Parents were almost all successful professionals or equivalent.

No one went to the challenged local state secondary. (It was 93% FSM and had a reduced offer for the most able, though actually a good, safe, school.) Instead the state pupils went out of borough tutoring for grammar or music specialist school, or renting for a year in catchment.

The privately educated kids have done uniformly well. There is a much bigger range with those who went to state schools. Certainly more Oxbridge. But also a number who have not achieved their potential.

Worth repeating.

It is a complicated topic not helped by the data being completely reversed by mistake leading to the headlines that state did better than private when it was vice versa for that study as data had been reversed - see Mia85 post above.

Other complications are some areas of the country have very academic selective and grammar schools whereas areas like Newcastle where I am from went all comprehensive since 1970. Also 7% of children go private but 20% at sixth form level (and I think half of UK children don't even get 5 decent GCSEs and plenty are out of school by 16 into some kind of apprenticeship etc etc)

The bottom line is for me I was happy to pay school fees for a vast number of reasons and plenty of parents where I live choose good London state schools instead and it can be a choice not just a money issue.

The differentiator tends to be as someone said above which children (of those bright enough for university ) are self starters (and which are lazy as sin and you get the lazy lot in both state and private schools).

It is very hard to study this area as there are a raft of factors from tutoring for those in the state sector, state grammars, rich state school parents v very poor private school sixth form pupils on full scholarships (not very many of the latter of course...)

Most employers in the higher paid graduate jobs try to ensure they are fair, most have some kind of contextual programme and some although having minimum A level requirements and a degree will put candidates before the interview panel or assessment day who will not know where those people are from - Oxbridge, Sunderland University, private school or not.

However we should try to track the data as it is quite interesting where people end up . My own profession, law, has compulsory annual requirements to give data about things like race and background and if you want to private school. Some bodies like I think accountancy firms will look at what kind of job did the main wage earner of your home do when you were 14 (in my case that answer is my father was a doctor, NHS consultant)

The actual data that @Mia85 so kindly shared with us showed that actual A-level achievement is a very strong predictor of university achievement. It did not show any significant bias towards or against school type (state/private). There is just enough noise in the data to allow the very opinionated on either side to try to seize on it.

Having achieved high marks at A-level seems to be what matters, not how you got there.

I’d guess that spurious factors such as IQ, family stability, etc. drive both A-level and university achievement, and that a good level of achievement at a-level means students are well prepared for the next step.

The biased can still argue for and against private schools by making up stories about “well educated private school students inculcated with discipline” or “plucky underdogs from state schools who’ve gained resilience.” Both are compelling narratives, if you are so inclined, but ultimately they are just made up stories.

I think that there are so many variables about why people do well and others don’t.

My daughter was private school educated as my son had complex SEN including fitting when she was junior school age and I needed her to have a school that supported her.

My dad died the week before her mock A Level exams. He was dying at home for 6 months with melanoma cancer. My daughter had to act as carer both for my son - walking him home and giving him supper etc - he has ASD, SLI, Motor - but also helped out with her granddad. She would wipe his mouth and empty his commode.She actually tried to revise Chemistry sat on his commode by his bedside She was treated quite shoddily by the school for the A Level teacher assessed grades and had to take the exams in October. Her results given were crazy when she had 7 A * and 4 A for GCSES and 94 % for her EPQ. All well and good take the exams, except that she had a 5mm kidney stone in the beginning of September and spent revision time pissing blood and clutching her stomach looking pale. Private school did not arrange extra time for her despite her only passing the kidney stone a week or so before exams. She was still exhausted though ! She was gutted as she ended up with an A A B. She missed her required grades. To prove the stupidity of it all she taught herself another A level in Law in 6 months and took the exam in October whilst one month into university on a difficult science course. She got an A. This year she has become a sub editor of science and nominated as the best subeditor for her work on editing 250 science articles. Her student newspaper won best student science section. She got a first in her first year despite that year having to overcome the resulting PTSD from the trauma of watching her granddad die - it was not sanitised it was blood pouring out of his eyes and mouth onto the carpet for months beforehand. Also our neighbour also took his life and my daughter was one of the few last people to talk to him. Also she had the kidney stone.

So she is private school but she would have given anything to be state educated and not have half of that. She would also like a non SEN brother who did not wake her at 3 am screaming before her exams as he did on a few occasions.

Do not generalise.

@Oaktree1233

My understanding was it was a grade-based thing, a student with three A stars from a state school might go on to outperform one with the same grades from private - which makes sense.

As everyone has pointed out state vs private is way too rough a way to categorise pupils - people in both categories can and do do brilliantly. It's such a tired old narrative

I forgot to mention that before my daughter GCSES - 2 days before - her other grandfather was found dead in bed with an initial thought that it could be suicide as it was in the anniversary of his wife’s death. He was a Phd chemist - so please tell my daughter how lucky she is. Her brother then howled all night before her Russian speaking exam and she lost her proposed scholarship in Geography as she took that exam 3 days after and went down to an A.

But of course she is so so so pampered and lacks resilience - bullocks!

You are correct it was a 'grades based thing' but those grades were low -Ccc if I remember correctly. Students who get A stars are likely to do well at university whichever school they've come from.

She has an internship in the top 4 - she got offered more than 1. They asked her to explain a time when she had to show resilience. She explained that she had quite a choice of occasions for instance from aged 4 when she knew how to put her brother onto his side when he began a prolonged fit and learnt how to clean him up when he was suffering from his bowel disorder problem. We had a system - she would hold him whist I fetched cloths and towels to mop it up.

So all of you who think that all private school students have it easy I would love you to look my daughter in the face and tell her that she lacks resilience and how easy she has had it.

Tell her that when she recalls how she could not get out the day on her birthday when aged 6. 7 or 8 as her brother screamed the house down when told he had to go out. She would beg him - ‘please it’s my birthday please can we go out.’ Tell her that when I could not make it to a Drama performance ( she was a Drama scholar) and had to ask people to film it for me. Tell her that when pupils at school bullied and laughed at her because her stressed mother pulled out all her hair with the anxiety of dealing with a son with complex needs.

What bit of resilience is she lacking?

Your daughter sounds great but you must appreciate that her experience is unusual. When comparing state school pupils and private school of course there is a massive amount of generalisation going on.

Saying that private school pupils on the whole are more privileged than state school pupils is correct but doesn’t literally mean that every private school pupil is more pampered and less resilient than every state school pupil.

There are plenty of private school kids who learn resilience without having to have desperately difficult home lives. That's not always how resilience is taught. It's perfectly possible to learn personal resilience by not doing well in exams/not getting picked for teams/not getting invited to a party/being paired with someone you don't like/having a teacher who you don't get on with and still cracking on and working around it and dealing with it yourself. Dealing with a sad and difficult home life isn't what we should be aspiring to to teach resilience.

VincentVaguer's attitude speaks volumes.