Do British selective schools underperform?

[justanotherdaduser]

Sorry about the clickbait title but that's exactly the question.

This was triggered after reading about Stuyvesant High School in New York in some other forum. It's a selective state high school in New York. Their list of notable alumni, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stuyvesant_High_School_people , is jaw dropping. Multiple nobel laureates, Field medal and Wolf prize winners, technology pioneers, and pretty much any other field of human endeavour I can think of.

While looking at notable alumni from the most selective British schools, there is nothing like that breadth. Eton for example, after removing the royals and politicians from their list, has a pretty short list of notable alumni given how long they have been around, with a heavy bias towards humanities - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eton_College

Similarly others, in the state sector, say, Queen Elizabeth Boys en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth%27s_School,_Barnet

Same in the girls' schools too, short list of notable alumni mainly in media and humanities. Though with the girls' school I understand that the historical bias against women having careers will naturally limit the numbers.

So the question is -

Given that the top selective British schools are apparently getting around top
5% of the students by abilities in a cohort, and top 5% in either UK and US will have comparable potential when they start their academic career, why do British selective schools produce so few high achievers in a field, espcially outside politics, media and arts?

Possibilities that come to my mind -

The Wikipedia pages of British school are incomplete (probably unlikely, as the schools and their alumni are quite motivated to edit these to fill missing information?)

The British selective schools are not in fact getting top 5% of the students in their cohort. They are just getting children whose parents have prepared them really well for eleven plus. These children "underperform" eventually. They are still high achievers, will go to good universities, have good jobs, but unlikely to make path breaking contributions in their fields compared to their US peers (or elsewhere?)

The school outcomes reflect the nature of British economy and society. There isn't enough incentive in the field of sciences, the economy does not demand much either or at least not as much as the US economy. So the schools do not produce pioneers.

Something else?

Patent applications are presumably based on the nationality of the company making the applications not the nationality of the R&D teams which will include numerous nationalities.

The UK is also primarily a services economy not manufacturing. You can argue whether this is or isn’t a good thing for ages.

Large number of patents now a days are granted in non-manufacturing areas, for innovations in software, and services around software. IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, Google etc get thousands of patents every year.

In AI especially there has been an explosion in the number of patents granted -
ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-artificial-intelligence-patent-filings?country=~OWID_WRL

@TizerorFizz Good points, well made. One of the problems about a discussion like this one is that we're flipping constantly between what things were like in the past, and how they are now!

But US companies then, with likely large numbers of multinational employees.

Historically top private schools such as Eton weren’t academic - they were where the upper class sent their boys to make connections. Those boys were destined to take over their family estates rather than compete for employment. The connections were useful for politics, especially when only landed men voted.

Eton isn't a top school? Surely we all know that? It's just where aristocratic's " were" sent. To understand the prime minster thing is to understand English class system. Education I don't think has been outstanding?? It's not a sign post to bright young things. I have never met an Etonian and been wowed by them- all nice manners and know how to be posh.. that's it really. Then had dull jobs, or gone into government.
The people I know now who want their kids to go there are massive tossers. I feel it's kind of gone down the same road as the Burberry brand 😂.
League tables are key, demographics, and record of head teacher- that indicates a top school.

Eton is a great school. Objecting to people who send their Dc there and insulting them doesn’t make the school poor. It’s academic and works for most who are there. Ditto Harrow. I don’t know why such schools occupy so much headspace. They are a tiny minority.

I was wondering why didn't Eton (running for 450 years longer than the NY school) produce similar number of mathematicians, chemists, physicists, and so on.

For some of those 450 years a lot of the boys at Eton would have grown up to be gentlemen or go into the church or law, and they wouldn’t necessarily have aspired to any of those professions you mentioned, unlike America where people were less likely to think this way.

Eton was not probably very selective till relatively quite recently.

By excluding arts and politicians (church?you have excluded a lot if what many excelled at.

But most people who achieved great things that needed education only really got the chance through schools like grammar schools as well as other independent schools. What about doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists eg Darwin?

TizerorFizz · Today 00:03
Eton is a great school

I once heard the painter Howard Hodgson, who had been there, describe it as having been like a “university for children”.

Somehow when you look at the people who were great thinkers so much must have come from just themselves and their families as much as from schools.

Isaac Newton lived with an apothecary and became interested in chemistry, then attended a free Grammar school.

Hawking had a family where meals were silent because they were all reading. He attended two private (i.e. fee-paying) schools, first Radlett School[41] and from September 1952, St Albans School, Hertfordshire,[26][42] after passing the eleven-plus a year early.[43]

Charles Darwin followed their gardener around a lot then went to Shrewsbury School.

I don't know what the data says, but anecdotally I'd agree that there is an element of tutoring / preparing well for the 11+

My DD attends a selective British school, she performed well on the entrance test but not as well as many of her peers who joined at the same time as she. DD has never been tutored nor did she have any kind of preparation for the test. I learnt that most if not all of her peers were tutored or otherwise prepared (some for years).

In her first year DD was in the bottom 3rd of her year for results. Now in her 3rd, she is in the top 10-15% in almost every subject. Many, not all, of the 'high fliers' who performed very highly at entrance are now bottom of the bunch struggling to keep up.

The school also did a different assessment - something called Miydas ( I think) which allegedly measures potential vs raw knowledge. DD was again top 10% - all of which leads me to conclude these entrance tests that award places aren't really much indication of anything and in all honestly any child given the right coaching / tutoring can gain a place at such a school. Whether they can then keep up is a very different matter. Some of the pupils are miserable beyond belief as they struggle in class etc.

I've no real data to support this view but if accurate, this may explain the lack of notable alumni. Perhaps a different means of assessment is used in the US school cited?

@cunningartificer I looked again at the list of Nobel winners I posted upthread, ranked by their secondary schools and a few impressions I had:

• It appears that Nobel prizes are not really replicable, even in schools that have multiple prize winners they are widely spaced in time so it's not always due to one inspirational teacher or a particular culture of the school - more likely due to the family
• the US and French schools are enormous compared to the UK ones - Bronx Science is 2,985 (ages 15-18), Lycee Henri IV is 2,600. By comparison the top UK school on the list, Westminster, is 750 from ages 13-18
• the universities that prizewinners went on to are not always Oxbridge/Ivies - a lot seemed to have gone to their local uni eg. quite a few who have gone to City College of New York, Birmingham ones went to Univ of Birmingham etc
• Eton actually has had 2 nobel prizes including one in 2012 for medicine which considering their intake was not academically selective until the 90s is not too bad
• the UK is heavily overrepresented considering population size
• the UK, France and the USA are heavily overrepresented overall on this table, which may indicate that they have the most "concentrated" academic stratification in a small number of schools - with France even more concentrated than the UK

That isn’t true. Boys have had to take common entrance for decades and it became much harder to get in since 1970s when inflation drove up fees so Eton and other public schools had to become more academic to justify these fees.
As a matter of interest where did you get your information from?

The op wanted to have a private school bashing thread but gave it a different title to the usual ‘everyone who goes to private school is thick and posh’.

Have we had ‘Boris went to Eton so it must be a rubbish school’ yet?

Historically it was traditional in the upper classes for the first son to inherit the estate, the second to be bought a commission in the army, and the third to be given a ‘living’ in the church. None of these was based on academic merit (or faith) so that was not the emphasis of the schools serving those groups. Politics was rather about contacts - which is what these schools provided. That is not to say those with high academic ability did not exist in these groups, and they probably had more capacity to develop this if they had it. Schools had to focus more on academic merit when they started to need to attract the upper middle classes following the decline of the landed nobility in the first half of last century.

In terms of Harry going to Eton - I doubt they had to sit the same entrance exams as other boys. Eton would still recognise that position still counts when it comes to royalty and even as a straight commercial undertaking, the benefit to them in being associated with senior royalty would outweigh any cost of additional tutoring for them or reduction in that year’s exam pass grade.

@Ilovewhippets , no private school bashing. Also included QE boys link in the original post. My DD goes to a London selective indie.

At some point the thread focused lot more towards Eton, probably because they are more famous, but the observation is as much true for QE boys and Henrietta Barnett, as for Eton, perhaps more so for the first two.

But there are good number of posts here explaining why -

much larger US school, most children in uk don't go to selective schools, many old grammars closed and don't have websites, societal preference for non-STEM subjects and so on.

@Xiaoxiong , I just remembered George Orwell had written about mind numbing tutoring for Eton entrance exam in his prep school (Such, Such were the joys). That must had been early twentieth century. So Eton was selective for much longer than 1990s. Though maybe only for the scholarship boys? I don't really know if the rest had to take tests.

The limited experience I've got is that many of the kids there are not interested in being there and are more interested in talking about their latest holiday or acquisition. It seems the wealthier their parents are the worst their grades are. They also seem to see their parents far less and have had problems with drinking and vaping. They don't seem to appreciate the benefits they've been given and don't put in the effort at school.

That's my limited experience and it isn't "all" rich kids, just most of the ones I know.

Unexpecteddrivinginstructor · Yesterday 12:25
Prince Harry went to Eton, gives you a good indication of the sort of seletion involved. Yes they do offer scolarships to clever, poorer boys but that is not their primary focus.

I doubt I’ll read anything more ill-informed for the whole of the rest of this year…

This. Unexpecteddrivinginstructor you really are not in a position to call anyone else stupid. (Also it’s ‘selection’ and ‘scholarships’).
In normal circumstances Prince Harry probably would not have passed the entrance exams for Eton. However his brother was there and his mother had died the previous year all played out with full publicity across the world.
Now I get it you enjoy any opportunity to put the boot into the Royal Family and Eton but surely you can see why Eton might have made an exception in this case?

Why are you making schools responsible for high achievement? What does high achievement even mean?

What is the difference in UK vs US culture that might lead to less “achievement” if viewed in the US sense? Think of holidays, bank holidays, self made dream etc, fame, the importance of money all of that in culture in the US idealised in popular culture vs the more British/European approach of quality of life, kindness etc vs money.

Why look at schools and not universities in the UK which are more open to the whole population? (Although Oxbridge is still elitist but not as bad as Eton)

Firstly, why do you assume they get the top 5%? There are of course many extremely bright children who do not go to a private school or a grammar. In my experience of selective private schools in London, you have to be bright enough, but what really helps is a good prep school and/or parents who can afford to tutor you to get in!

Secondly, progress is not linear. For some children, the "ability" they demonstrate at aged 11 will not translate into what you consider to be high achievement.

@Ilovewhippets Personal experience in the early 90s with the birth list/housemasters and family friends. Yes CE had to be passed (and you were prepped for it by your prep school) but they didn't care what your marks were and apparently if you failed completely you just put a call in to the housemaster to sort it, and if they wanted you (right family etc) they made it work - I am on a charity board with an ex Eton housemaster from the late 70s and 80s and the stories he has are very interesting.

Then they scrapped the birth list, now you need to be registered by the end of Year 5 and everyone takes ISEB and the Eton List Test - we're waiting to hear if DS1 got his place at the moment! (Interestingly, while Eton scrapped theirs completely, Radley has kept a birth list for boys registered before the age of 3.)

This only applies to Oppidans and not KS which was always academically competitive - BoJo was a Kings Scholar.

Agree, that was a bad assumption. Number of other posts also mentioned the same, plus also that majority of old grammars schools closed, most UK regions don't have grammars etc.

Not a picture of the school or its pupils that anyone with the faintest actual Knowledge of the school would recognise