How pressured / full on is QE boys?

[poobaloo]

Hi all,
My sister is looking at her options for her DS and is considering QE. She lives in Walthamstow so not close but there is a coach apparently.
Her DS is really bright, but she's not sure if a longish commute to a full on school would be a good idea. Her DS is in yr4 so she's thinking ahead re tutoring etc already.
Any feedback would be helpful, thanks.

My son went to primary school with some very bright boys and they did as well as him , if not better at the local comp. So yes, you are right.

I was happy to send him to QE because I thought he would learn he is not the smartest boy in the school and that he needs to work. I knew the other boys would catch him up and then overtake him with their superior work ethic. It didn’t work - he is still really rather lazy! There was never much work out of school.

To me the advantages are 1) the teachers are very inspiring & there’s none of this constant supply teacher nonsense 2) the facilities are excellent 3) no drink and drugs party culture like at the local comp 4) it’s got a touch of the Hogwarts (which I think is very appealing to South Asian contingent) 5) no slacking culture (eg no early stop on a Friday, no snow days, every opportunity to learn is taken)

Amazing school indeed. I think its so wrong to say that the kids are highly tutored. I remeber my son doing a project using C programming language for his robotics project when he was in year 7/8. He learnt and did whole project himself without any external help (didn't even ask for my help as I work in same domain professionally). The discipline and work ethics it develops is amazing while providing a very safe, sporty and a well rounded life beyond books.

Any new feed back from Parents of QE boys - Experiences.
How has year 7 been. ? Are the kids enjoing their Stay at QE? Was home work taking 2-3 hours every day or just 1 hour

When I went to the open day, one of the boys stated they do GSCE syllabus a year in advance. Was a bit surprised. This was in Science / Biology I think.
I know this is a QE thread. Have parents been in the difficult path of chooseing between WIlson and QE and landed up choosinf QE and are happy with their choice. We are renting and can move anywhere.

Wilson GCSE result this year overtook QE for the first time. Given its intake is not as difficult as QE it comes with a bit surprised.

Thanks PreplexJ , Do you have an DS at wilson or QE to share your experiences

No

Wow, I completely agree with this "But those high results are because of the selection of students who were tutored and had a high propensity to continue tutoring. These schools’ results are not necessarily because of any value added by these schools. " It's so straightforward, right? I just don't understand why some parents insist on pushing their kids through this when they could achieve the same results in any school.

I just don't understand why some parents insist on pushing their kids through this when they could achieve the same results in any school.

Because that's not necessarily true.

While the theory that an academically able child does not have to go to a highly selective school to do well, it is also true that not all schools are equal in terms of educational outcome.

If the alternative to a highly selective school with stellar result is another with low value add and relatively poor results, many parents wouldn't like to take a chance with the 2nd school.

In addition, good peer group matters. All else equal, result in a school with highly motivated children and parents and low class disruptions will be better. Some parents try to select that type of peer group.

Also, fear of missing out probably plays a part. If everyone is doing it, it takes a lot of confidence in yourself and your DC to ignore all that and not join the race.

Would a high pressure peer group (parents and children) have a potential negative effect on some children too?

Possibly for some. But many more will be driven to work harder. On average, result in a school where most are highly motivated and hardworking will be better, all else equal. If it's primarily good results one is after, choosing a peer group with similar ambition makes sense.

"On average, result in a school where most are highly motivated and hardworking will be better, all else equal"

I read some dedicated research literature on highly selective schools concludes that such peer effect does not exist.
**
https://blueprintlabs.mit.edu/research/do-elite-exam-schools-add-value/

Because the individuals are already motivated and hardworking.

That maybe so, or may not (I haven't read the full paper, thank for the share!)

But a ten year old paper published in Econometrica using fuzzy regression discontinuity investigating school outcomes in Boston and New York city is unlikely to sway opinion of parents who send (or try to send) their DC to schools like QE boys.

Most parents base their decisions on perceptions, personal experience, 'gut feeling' and what other parents are doing. Going by that, for many, having their DC in a motivated peer group with low class disruption is desirable. Most people don't live by econometrics article.

That said, the article itself is less clear cut in its conclusion (like most good papers of this type are). Copying from the paper (emphasis mine)

Of course, test scores and peer effects are only part of the exam school
story. It may be that preparation for exam school entrance is itself worth-
while. The RD design captures the impact of peer composition and possibly
other changes at admissions cutoffs, while ignoring effects common to appli-
cants on both sides. Likewise, unique features of an exam school education
may boost achievement in specific subject areas. Students who attend Boston
Latin School almost certainly learn more Latin than they would have other-
wise. The many clubs and activities found at some exam schools may expose
students to ideas and concepts not easily captured by achievement tests or our
post-secondary outcomes. It is also possible that exam school graduates earn
higher wages, a question we plan to explore in future work. Still, the estimates
reported here suggest that any labor market gains are likely to come through
channels other than peer composition and increased cognitive achievement.
Can these results be reconciled with those of other studies reporting a strong
association between group averages and individual outcomes? Every context is
different, and the absence of peer effects in one setting does not prove that
such effects are unimportant elsewhere.

"Can these results be reconciled with those of other studies reporting a strong
association between group averages and individual outcomes?"

How many other peer reviewed research you have seen on selective school context that suggest otherwise? With or without similar citation factors?

As you said, it is a perception or illusion rather than hard fact that back by scientific evidence.

The paper you shared refers to one such that I am reading at the moment.

https://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/spischke/peers_final.pdf
It concludes -
Peer effects are potentially a major input into the process of educational
production but are difficult to estimate empirically. We estimate peer effects across classes within primary schools and argue that classes within schools are formed randomly with respect to family background. We find that a one standard deviation change in our student background measure of peer composition leads to a 0.17 standard deviation change in reading test scores of fourth graders across our sample of six European countries. This is slightly larger than most previous estimates in the literature.

This is not really my area, so I cannot cite a body of literature backing my point. But as the original paper you linked clearly mention in its conclusion, "other studies reporting a strong association between group averages and individual outcomes"

The authors of the paper you linked are well known economists. If they say other studies exist that found the opposite to what they found, I am happy to believe that such studies exist.

I don't really have the time or interest to invest tens of hours reading up all the papers in this area, but fairly certain there will be papers claiming different things.

It's not difficult to comprehend that a particular ethnic group plays a significant role in driving this competitive environment. When individuals come from densely populated ethnic backgrounds, they often contribute to the perpetuation of this competitiveness. It's not a complex matter, but regrettably, they also influence others to participate in it.

Is that a problem though?

If a "particular ethnic group" values admission to certain types of schools more highly (than presumably some other group), willing to put in more effort, and succeed disproportionately more in entrance exams, why is that "regrettable"?

Would you rather have quotas by ethnicity instead?

What I can say is that the main contribution of the Nobel Prize Winner Economist on this paper nearly 10 years ago, is to provide a reliable framework that can measure the peer effects in the education context. It is the LSE paper you cited in year 2009 found it noisy and difficult to measure. After that, there are little literature provide counter argument on the little peer effect on similar context (not yet)

Well, if I'm living in a country, I'd prefer not to make a little separate nation within it, but rather just blend in with the rest of the country. Just sayin!

I haven't read the full paper yet, but my understanding is that they are much less sweeping in their claim than you are here. Anyway, it doesn't really matter one way or other. No one in London is reading Angrist's 10 year old paper in on Boston/NY schools before applying for QE boys.

Angrist is beating the drum all the time.

Yes I believe most of the wanted QE parents won't care, but it doesn't mean no discussion or conversation to question the rational? Like you have ur reason with preception and I counter with citations?

"EF: You’ve looked at the question of how much peers matter. Many parents obviously seek schools where they believe their children will have higher-quality peers, whatever they may mean by that term. You and your co-authors have looked at Boston and New York City selective public schools, and you concluded that peer effects don’t seem to matter much. Why is that?
Angrist: I’m always beating that drum. I think people are easily fooled by peer effects. Parag, Atila Abdulkadiroglu, and I call it “the elite illusion.” We made that the title of a paper. I think it’s a pervasive phenomenon. You look at the Boston Latin School, or if you live in Northern Virginia, there’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. And in New York, you have Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science and Stuyvesant.
And so people say, “Look at those awesome children, look how well they did.” Well, they wouldn’t get into the selective school if they weren’t awesome, but that’s distinct from the question of whether there’s a causal effect. When you actually drill down and do a credible comparison of students who are just above and just below the cutoff, you find out that elite performance is indeed illusory, an artifact of selection. The kids who go to those schools do well because they were already doing well when they got in, but there’s no peer effect from being exposed to higher-achieving peers.
We also have papers where we show that the elite illusion is not just a phenomenon relevant for marginal kids. This is in response to an objection that goes, “If you’re the last kid admitted to Stuyvesant, it’s not good for you because you’re not strong enough.” We can refute that with some of our research designs."

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/05/interview-with-josh-angrist.html

@funnyworldaintit
Well, if I'm living in a country, I'd prefer not to make a little separate nation within it, but rather just blend in with the rest of the country. Just sayin!

I don't think any ethnic group has created a separate nation by gaining disproportionately more admissions in QE Boys. Would you like them to work less hard? How much less? Which ethnic group should set the benchmark of how much hard work is permitted?

This is sounding a bit like Harvard's Jewish quota :-(

@funnyworldaintit
Lol, it's quite something to have the guts to argue with the locals!

Sorry, not sure what you meant. Did you mean to say you are one of the 'locals' and I am gutsy to be arguing with you?

Or something else maybe?