State school kids do better at university

[clemetteattlee]

here

They aren't dull and most students these days do ask each other where they went to school as well as all about their lives. It's a great way to mix with lots of people. Also you can often tell by clothes and accent although not always.

That wouldn't be case at an Oxbridge university surely? (the umming state school children that is)

Plenty of children at state schools um and "like" and "you know" as do adults. I suppose my point was however you do in education if the fundamentals are right ( good genes, mental stability, been loved, good all round experiences, coherent, confidant and a good rounded schooling ) then children do better later.

In other words even those who drop out of good private schools can come good later because they have the confidence,. connections, accent, wide range of skills and experiences.

What we need is a study of 10 years on from university to correlate peoplem y age 40s who were private educated against income now earned. We could do a rough Mumsnet chart here - private schooling and then income 10 or 20 years later and non private but also distinguish perhaps the posh comps and posh grammars which are just as segregated on class lines oftenmore so than fee paying schools

yeah bring it on. am sick of any good news regarding state school children at university being disregarded on mumsnet.

"The state schoolers think being a teacher on £30k a year is a marvellous achievement"

Um, that's me, and I'm v proud of what I do. Just because I don't make a lot of money doesn't make me a failure.

Hope I raise chidren a lot less judgemental and up their arses than yours sound xenia.

Of course I meant sitting dumbly in the corner rather than a single 'um' or 'like'. They wouldn't last long at Oxford, I don't think.

Anyway I am sure there is a correlation between private and earning, but it can still be true that the very smart state educated do well at the very top universities. Whether they earn a lot after is a different matter.

Yes, you can certainly tell by the clothes and the accents who are the private school brigade.( Many ex state school pupils dress/speak in the same way too though, I hasten to add)

That hasn't got anything to do with them actually being more intelligent though!

Just marks them out as the sort of people to avoid be aware of in any 'debates' as their views may be rather, erm, entrenched and not particularly illuminating.

I suspect some of the 'ums' and 'ahs' from the state schoolers is possibly because they aren't going to waste their time and intelligence on 'debating' with them.

When did success in life become only measured by the level of your income Xenia?

Some jobs are worse paid but more "important" than those that earn mega bucks. Or are you going to argue that nurses and teachers are less important than corporate lawyers and investment bankers?

Bring on the survey.

PS One of my proudest moments as a teacher was when my "low expectations" state school 16 year olds beat the eighteen year olds from the local independent, and then the local public school in the English Speaking Union Debating competition.

Boris Johnson went to Eton and ums quite a lot, as does Nick Clegg, who went to Westminster.

Admittedly I was at Oxford about 20 years ago but I know to get in I had to be exceptional because I had so many hurdles to overcome. I also had to work twice as hard because I was so ill prepared for my course.

I studied theology and all I had was my A Level in RS and a lot of personal reading. There was only other state school educated person on my course. Everyone else was from the independent sector and mostly from very well established public schools. They had studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Philosophy and Classics. They could debate and they knew how to construct an essay. They also had a veneer of confidence and polish that terrified me. That meant that once again I had to be made of very tough stuff to survive, it was no wonder I did well.

There were of course lots of very very bright students from the independent sector but there were also students who were much more average and were never going to work as I did or achieve the result I did. I doubt that if they had come from my background they would have been offered a place.

I am another state educated, First from Oxford who is happy with my 30K a year teaching in a school.

As I said before, this survey is about state school pupils v private school pupils at university.

It's not about what they end up doing afterwards which is much more to do with who you know etc, rather than actual intelligence!!!!

in fact there is a hilarious article in
the Times today, Hugo Rifkind writing 'David Cameron's week'or whatever, with William Hague running rings round him on his foreign policy gaffes/basic knowledge of history (despite his 1st from Oxford). DC may talk the talk but it's obvious WH is much more intelligent!

I think there is a lot of inverse snobbery around. I don't think Cameron has ever claimed to be a great mind. People delight in finding the odd "thick" public schoolboy and thinking they can make inferences about all the others.

..that's what I said - low expectations. Why don't you Chair BP or sit in the cabinet? Why do state school pupils have much lower expectations and think being a teacher on £30k a year is a huge achievement? I'vem not saying we don't need good teachers and it's just as well some people will teach but private school children have higher expectations which they seem to manage to achieve. Of course many in both sectors are useless and not very clever either but on the whole paying school fees for good schools seems to give you one the biggest advantages in life of juat about anything in terms of career success and language skills and overall education and knowledge which is broader than just teaching to exams.

I don't like the way Camercon and Clegg say "ay dog" rather than "a dog" but it may be my way of saying it that is wrong not theirs. It makes me wince when people say that.

i completely believe the report.

i went to Durham, from state school
everyone seemed to have 3,4,5,6 As at A level as mostly private school

i remember my first tutorials as being very daunting, i imagine many state-schoolers felt the same. we were used to classes of 20+ for our A levels, not 6 like most of my uni peers at private school

however, when it came to the first set of exams at the end of the first term "collections" as Durham calls them, the results were surprising. Many of those confident articulate students didn't actually do very well. I came in the top 10. Astonishing considering that i didn't have straight As.
After 3 years, 2 of the 3 students who got a 1st were from state schools
all those that got a 3rd, failed or dropped out were from private schools.

So, imo private schools get you the As you need. They also give you the inner belief and confidence that you can achieve anything. Some state schools also manage this, or parents manage to instil this in their children, but the school helps.

To put it simply, i believe to get the grades you need for the top unis at state school you have to be very intelligent and self-motivated.

to get those top grades from private school you don't need to be "quite" as intelligent. the teachers have more time and more resources to ensure you get the information you need.

Xenia - to be an excellent teacher is a huge achievement. You continually fail to miss the point that to define 'achievement' totally in monetary terms is not what most people do. Sure, money is important to the extent that it brings choices, but there is plenty of research to show that once people have enough money to fulfil their basic needs, and some more left over to fulfil their wants, then increasing that amount many times over does not equate to greater happiness or well being. To put it simply, you are unlikely to be happier having a household income of 200k than if it's 100k.

If the job, or career which motivates you happens to bring mega bucks too - fine. But if the career which motivates you brings a modest income, then that's fine too.

I used to earn more than I do now when I worked in my previous legal career. However, I found some aspects of the work tedious and not intellectually stimulating, and some of the people I worked with were pretty dull. I find it far more intellectually stimulating teaching bright A level students (in a state school!!) and I find the level of conversation in the staffroom more interesting, clever and funny than in previous workplaces.

You are also completely missing the point that the ability to form positive, stimulating, equal partnerships in adult life is probably the single most important factor in defining how fulfilled a person will feel with their life.

I actually earn quite a bit more than 30K but for many years I was a standard teacher on that wage. I may one day sit on cabinet as I am very interested in politics. I don't think people have one career anymore.

But for now I teach because that is what I wanted to do, would my chosen career be a more worthy one if I earned more?

Xenia you do seem to have a rosy view of the independent sector. My DH went to a good independent school, got good A levels, a poor degree and is now happy as a middle level marketing manager. I have a friend who went to a public school who is a social worker and tells me that 30% of his year have simply never worked.

I personally cannot imagine anything worse, more tedious, and less important that being the CO of a massive corporation. I was incredibly aspirational at school, although my aspirations were to do with intellectual challenge rather than corporate life. I worked my way up to the top of one profession and have since given it up to start working for much less money in a job I see as viral, fulfilling and stimulating. Are you seriously suggesting that always knowming that job satisfaction is more important than money is a sign of low expectations drummed into me by state school. Conversely, are you happy if the independent sector is teaching students that the most important thing in a career is the pay packet? (Which I don't believe because almost all my friends work in the public sector whether they were state or independently educated)

I think the point has been missed. If your parents come from a higher socio-economic group and have a strong ambitious streak and work ethic you are more likely to get a good degree result than if you come from a background where these things are not cherished. That's hardly a surprise. If you come from a poor but enthusiastic academic family you will probably do well even in a sink school and then at university (if you can afford to go).

However if your parents have 'made good' and got some money together to send you to an independent school, they probably expect that to be enough to ensure success and as their child you may assume the same and coast along doing the minimum and get a generic result.

My mum burnt my school books and my family think education is wasted on a woman. I have done well academically in spite of my family not because of them, but that's a whole other thread!

I am state-educated and have got a City-type job I suspect Xenia would deem acceptable.

I am not surprised to hear state school kids do better in a pulled-ourselves-up-by-our-bootstraps way but really once everyone is at university everyone should come out with the same quality of experience. If a student was umming and ahhing in tutorials, whether in an RP way or in a provincial accent, I think the tutors should address this but in my experience the tutors were much more focussed on research rather than teaching.

In my opinion, universities need to massively improve their teaching in order to justify people getting into massive debt to get the degrees.

It's OK to expect students to be academic self-starters at postgraduate level but 19 year olds should be taught.

I also think a bit of modesty can be a good thing when graduates start work, I have done lots of recruiting in a big name firm and when you observe team exercises where candidates are talking (possibly braying) loudly and come across as thinking a lot of themselves (or worse, have to put up with sharing office space with a summer student doing this for 6 whole weeks) you tend not to tick the boxes on the HR forms that say "shows evidence of teamwork" or "willingness to learn". I don't think some private schools do their pupils a favour by telling them every day in assembly "you are the future leaders of this country" - my DH's prep school honestly did do this.

Xenia, you should be glad that intelligent motivated people want to be teachers - schools like Habs wouldn't be much cop without them, would they? Or do you think that the kind of schools you send your kids to have some sort of magic potion that seeps out of the walls and makes kids brilliant? My ex is a teacher, and he went to a much better school (by your standards) than any of the ones you mentioned sending your children to, and has a first from Cambridge. He does it because he loves it and salaries aren't that important to him as he doesn't feel the need to grub after money (he is from a very wealthy family though )

I do think that private schools can give kids a better shot at life, with all the extra-curricular activities they provide, the general atmosphere and of course the inevitable old boys' network. It does also tend to give a certain confidence to kids.

I think the main thing is the attitude of the parents tbh.

(privately educated here)