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)?

Oaktree1233, your poor daughter. She has done very well to get the internship. We had nothing like that but one of my sons got a B at his private school in his university subject, subject he was top and won a prize in in lower and upper sixth and predicts A star and got A in AS (top grade for AS exam). His B was the highest grade anyone in the school that year got in a real (before covid) exam. Obviously no one will ever contextualise that B but something must have gone wrong - not very bright year group or bad teaching or poor marking. It doe snot really matter now and he is a trainee solicitor who qualifies next year but it does illustrate that some people's rigid views that all private schools have an easy time with the best teaching compared to all state schools is just too rough and ready a statement.

Also I never got the spoonfeeding point people make on MN. My children in day private schools had to work very hard and plenty of the very academic private schools teach outside the syllabus to an extent so in a way the opposite of spoon feeding and are subject to all kind of things from pretty testing physical expeditions up hills (which of course many state pupils do too).

The legal profession is keen to find out why certain groups did better in the new entirely mulitple choice (to avoid bias) new law exam SQE1. So far it has been found that whoever you are and wherever you are from if you have a first in your degree from any university you are likely to get the highest marks, if 2/1 next highest, if 2/2 the next. So that is what you would probably expect and does not relate to school attended. "Good undergraduate grades are a strong indicator of success, with the SQE1 passed by 73% of candidates with a first-class undergraduate degree, 52% with a 2:1 degree, 23% with a 2:2, and 13% with a third-class undergraduate degree." https://www.legalcheek.com/2023/03/51-of-students-pass-latest-sqe/

Well, you don't have to be some sort of expert genius to realise I think the professor in question sounds unpleasant and unprofessional 🙄

yes, well I am talking about young people still at school or recently left, and for some ( private school in particular) it defines them

"Hello, my name is..... what school did you go to?"

being a perfectly normal introduction - I didn't understand it when I first came across it many years ago, but what it means is that the speaker is expecting to know you school, know other people who went there, and know where it ranks in private and public schools.

It doesn't tend to last much beyond 20 😂

@Nimbostratus100 - in your original post you referred to 'adults'. Hence my assumption you weren't talking about young people.

blind recruitment tends to heavily favour white privately educated males

I'm mostly talking about training and travel with 19-21 year olds

Makes sense to me. My 17 year old is at a very big, very chaotic comprehensive, studying A level Maths, Further Maths and Physics, hoping to do engineering at university. Like a lot of state schools his school has difficulties hanging on to maths and physics teachers. His physics teacher is in his 70's and has struggled with his memory since being hospitalised with COVID. If his teachers are off (and they do seem to be off a lot) they don't arrange proper cover. Everything feels very rushed and patchy. He hasn't got reliable access to a the labs - his school took on so many additional children to plug funding gaps that the labs are very much over-booked. This prickles at me when I drive past the palatial private school next door to his comprehensive, which has a separate state of the art lab block, with a whole floor for each science subject.

Luckily my son is very resourceful - he's got the bit between his teeth and just ploughs on on his own regardless. There's so much good learning material online to plug gaps caused by staff absence. I think if he was at a top notch private school he'd likely have more teaching hours, there'd be less staff absence and staff turnover, and have more access to a properly equipped lab, and I think it likely would give him a better chance of the A*AA grades he needs for the university he wants. But if he gets them it'll be because he's been resourceful and able to plug gaps in his learning left by the school.

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.

Is there any research out there about the impact of tutoring on achieved GCSE and A Level grades? It's a massive elephant in the room when looking at academic outcomes from state and private schools. Conveniently one that the schools themselves largely choose to overlook!

DD and I were only discussing this the other day. She rather cynically surmised that the sixth state sixth form she attends has a lot more affluent young people than other schools locally. So their great A Level results are in part likely to be boosted by parents being able to afford tuition.

So you can understand why some universities rightly give contextual offers to those from poorer, less privileged backgrounds. Bs achieved under one's own steam - 'against the odds' - are probably every bit as good an indicator of intelligence as those gettings As with tutoring.

"She rather cynically surmised that the sixth state sixth form she attends has a lot more affluent young people than other schools locally. So their great A Level results are in part likely to be boosted by parents being able to afford tuition."

I've not done a comprehensive search of the evidence, and this isn't a new study, but according to the Sutton Trust, children who attend private schools are more likely to receive additional tutoring than children in state schools. https://theconversation.com/private-school-pupils-doubly-advantaged-by-private-tutoring-31664.

Might be a moot point though given the lack of evidence on the effectiveness of private tutoring on exam grade.

UCL's study suggests the attending a fee paying school does have a significant impact on A level grades - even when family background and income is taken into account: "The findings revealed that going to a private school was associated with an 8 percentage point rise up the overall A level rankings – equivalent to a pupil gaining A level grades AAA compared to AAB." Which would account for state school pupils doing better once they're at university and perhaps competing on a more even playing field than privately educated students. https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/rich-resources-of-private-schools-give-pupils-advantage-at-a-level-new-research-shows/#:~:text=The%20findings%20revealed%20that%20going,grades%20AAA%20compared%20to%20AAB.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4790641-what-is-really-going-on-in-our-schools-well-laura Worth a read. Many teachers state schools on their knees right now.

I’m so sorry to read this. I Hope things are a little easier for you now. However, many successful state school pupils have similar life experiences in addition to a lack of financial support, or classes of 36, or non-specialist teachers. I’m not minimising your daughter’s achievements or resilience, but poverty and lack of parental support (rarely suffered by the privately educated) really add to the burden.

It stands to reason that a state school student who gets an A in an A level class of 30 is likely to be more independent, more resourceful, more resilient, more organised and probably more intelligent than a private school pupil who achieves the same grade in a class of 15.

according to the Sutton Trust, children who attend private schools are more likely to receive additional tutoring than children in state schools

This always blows my mind - understandable that state school parents who can afford it rely on tutors when things get chaotic. We did it for DS when his A level physics teacher went awol and wasn't replaced. But why are parents paying thousands for a school when for all the small classes, calm atmosphere, excellent resources, aspirational peers etc the DC still requires a tutor?

Of course it doesn't! What a daft thing to say. Universities clearly don't agree with you either as they are still making offers to those from private schools who get As!

but they have done the same thing with half the support

I don't think universities are making specific assumptions about a DC's resilience, resourcefulness etc. but by contextualising grades within the academic environment in which they were achieved, they are saying that an A in an underperforming comprehensive is a more significant achievement than the same grade in a good independent school with a learning environment more conducive to getting good exam results.

How rude.

I think you need to inform yourself @VincentVaguer.

Contextual offers are one thing - and not all state schools qualify. Obviously they say nothing about the intelligence and resourcefulness of the student.

I don't think I do actually.

But that isn't what @Nimbostratus100 said. She said an A standard A level state school student in a class of 30 is likely to be more resourceful and intelligent than an A standard A level private school student in a class of 15. That is a sweeping biased generalisation and clearly impossible to quantify. Yes, underperforming schools get lower offers which is a good thing to improve access (athough there is research showing students who obtain one or more A star at A level are more likely to get top grades in their degree). Obviously not all state schools are underperforming.

@VincentVaguer what I said is that universities are taking the view that the A student in an underperforming school has acheived significantly more within context than an A student in a performing private school. They do not need to try to second guess the underlying reasons for this, purely make the judgement that the latter is more deserving of the place. I fully agree with that judgement. I did not say that all state schools are underperforming.

An A within the context of an underachieving school could signify more potential than an A star achieved in a selective school where that is the norm. Again context matters when judging potential.

I wasn't commenting on your post, but on @Nimbostratus100 s

"Yes, underperforming schools get lower offers which is a good thing to improve access (athough there is research showing students who obtain one or more A star at A level are more likely to get top grades in their degree). Obviously not all state schools are underperforming."

I was a bit depressed about the fact that only one of my son's university choices made a contextual offer, and that wasn't to do with his school, it was to do with the fact that we live in a postcode where low numbers attend university.

'Not all state schools are underperforming' - but all state schools have vastly fewer resources to invest in supporting the learning of the pupils who attend them. My son's comprehensive gets £6,703 per year to educate each child. The private school (literally next door) charges £24,693 a year in fees for day pupils. It also has millions and millions of £££ in its coffers. It would be ridiculous to argue that children attending schools like this aren't being hugely advantaged over others when it comes to their learning experience.

The state v private division that seems to be a hot topic on here is a misnomer.

Look at the actual state schools a high percentage at Cambridge come from. They are nowhere near your average comp, for the most part. Brampton Manor (where they are selected and fast-tracked from Year 10, inc 6am starts). About 80 come from there. Hills Rd 6th Form College in Cambridge (where the DC of the Cambridge academics / researchers go). Similar number again. Peter Symonds. A whole list of super-selective grammars in London, Bucks, Essex and Kent. You can count on your fingers the state schools that over half of the 'state school ' students come from.

Rather than comparing 'state v private' it's only really meaningful to look at 'super-selective' v 'selective' v 'non-selective.' There are schools in both sectors in all these categories. Somewhere like St Paul's will have more in common with a super-selective grammar like Tiffin or Latymer, than a non-selective independent school in the countryside that anyone can get into as long as you pay up. Independents vary massively - some are utterly crap. The demographic who use boarding schools are different again. You can't compare Eton to a London Day School, nor can you compare your average parochial private school with 'meh' results, but a focus on other things like sports or pastoral care or religion. Totally different demographics in all cases.

FWIW DC is at Cambridge and says that the ones who need most 'hand holding' in the first year are the ones from comps and / or non-selective private schools where they have generally not encountered much competition and have been hailed as 'exceptional' most of their lives. The switch to becoming a small fish in a big pond comes as a shock to them as they are not used to feeling average. They also seem shocked that deadlines actually mean deadlines, as everyone was so impressed with them in the schools they came from, they've been able to get away with quite a lot. Eg. One girl went was in the local paper and in the radio for getting two A stars and an A. If you are told you are exceptional, it's hard when you realise you're not and no fuss is made. She has really struggled in her first year with all sorts of dramas. The ones from selective schools are used to nobody noticing them because top grades and competition have just been facts of life where they came from so they just hit the ground running. They are used to the pace and get on with it.

By the third year, it makes no difference what school they went to. They've all been in the same uni for two years by then and they are adults!

blind recruitment tends to heavily favour white privately educated males

Thats interesting, Nimbostratus. Why is that?