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?

A child going to Eton might easily “underachieve” because they are just going to inherit and be comfortable anyway so the hunger/drive is not there because of family circumstances. So it is difficult to extrapolate what the school does or add in that sense.

A lot of the highest achievers in society - the ones who go down in history books -actually have personality disorders and mental health problems and an exceptional drive that is not “normal” or kind in the normal sense.

I think it would be more important to look at a conventional sense of achievement as in happy family life, higher rate tax payer, 2-3 well turned out kids rather than tech geniuses.

There is also a distinct culture in the UK university system to just do a BA and then work. Whereas Master/PHD if you are very bright are much more common in the US. I think we need to look at those kind of factors as they are far more important.
I would go as far as saying there is a fear of the intellectual and the PHD and wasting your time in that regard in the UK which needs to change.

Teachers at places like Eton, Westminster and all top private schools tend to constantly tell the pupils how privileged they are and how the fees are the same or similar to their salaries etc. So the kids do hear this. I know this from all my friends kids who attend these kinds of schools these days. Even in grammars teachers tend to tell kids this regularly.

At some point the thread focused lot more towards Eton

The only selective independent school you mentioned in the OP was Eton, so naturally people are going to respond to that.

@NomadicSpirit and in my extensive experience of the kids there over the years, I will say that while there are always a few whose parents don't pay attention to them or are rebelling (they are teenage boys after all) the vast majority are nothing like this. If anything they can be too focused on beasting themselves getting top marks, top achievements and getting into prestigious universities to the detriment of their mental health and happiness.

Eton isn't a specialist school.

Eton has about 1000 students, most schools in the UK are that size or smaller, the school you mention take 850 students a year.

Eton takes children with parents who can pay, academic ability is second.

Eton doesn't have any female students. Ok there can be a few, but generally it is a boys' school.

I think it would be more important to look at a conventional sense of achievement as in happy family life, higher rate tax payer, 2-3 well turned out kids rather than tech geniuses.

I actually agree with this - I read a book a few years ago about how many super successful people had significant childhood trauma or loss which seemed to drive them and while they were high fliers, it was because they were so driven by this rather than having happy childhoods. www.waterstones.com/book/what-i-wish-id-known-when-i-was-young/rachel-sylvester/alice-thomson/9780008497460

@sashh Eton has over 1300 pupils. 260 a year. It’s big. Inevitably boys are not all the same. I’ve known boys from Harrow with pretty standard holidays and cars. DDs friends. I have seen them work hard and achieve well. In nearly every school some are square pegs in round holes. They don’t all fit in. Just because parents have money it doesn’t make Dc bright but Eton is selective and offers a great deal. Lots can pay but don’t get in. You don’t understand selection tests if you think paying comes first! Selection comes first.

Harry was there for other reasons. He thought to be looked after by William. Wherever he went, it would have been an issue. He wasn’t going as a day pupil anywhere either. Dad and Camilla would have had problems with that!

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.

Xiang Really? That’s interesting because if they set such store by the boy’s background, how in that case did the present Duke of Marlborough, a grandson of Harold Macmillan, the present Baron Margadale, Lord Linley (or Lord Snowdon as he is now) to name a few, fail to get in in the 1970s?

@justanotherdaduser yes. For example, we live in London. Most parents choose not to try to send kids out to Kent grammars as it is simply so far, so it's private or state. I don't think that privates necessarily get the top 5%, however that is assessed.

But you are reliant on the school to take note of their alumni. And people can do extremely well in their field but it's not always going to create headlines! My own father was a pioneer in a certain medical field, not in discovering but in creating access to the underprivileged (this is in the US, though he was English educated) and was invited by other governments to talk and advise. He opened his own ground breaking clinic. But while the medical community knew about it he had no PR, he wasn't interested in that side of things. He was very successful and he truly changed peoples lives. But I'm sure he's not on any list of note at his old school or university.

One of the Mumsnet founders went to DD's private girls school - does she count 😁

There are quite a lot of different issues on the thread. The academic boarding schools usually make children sit a pre test 2 years in advance so they can weed out those not bright enough 2 years before common entrance which is a good plan. Also the prep schools usually make it clear to parents who think their child is a genius but he is as thick as a plank, several years in advance, which schools might be suitable so the not so bright child is not pointlessly trying to get into a school not really suitable for that child.

As for what is success in some religious schools it will be if you are a virgin until marriage and spend your life serving God or that you are totally free like in summerhill or if your family is rich school might not be about becoming a nobel laureate but about learning enough to handle the fortune.

On who well the UK does I think we do very well indeed at tech. However the UK tends to play itself down and not show off so I am sure if has no issues with others thinking that is not so.

Just did a random google of many different scientists of all ages, from David Attenborough, Sarah Gilbert, Robert Winston, Paul Nurse, Brian Cox, and many others.

The majority went to Grammar Schools, most went to Oxbridge.

@Xenia
Sorry, going off topic here but am always curious when I hear statements like this

"On who well the UK does I think we do very well indeed at tech. However the UK tends to play itself down and not show off so I am sure if has no issues with others thinking that is not so."

What major technological innovations of this century will you count as British innovation, either in public or private sector?

I work in tech, sadly nowhere near the cutting edge of research, but try to keep in touch with advances in my area.

I can think of one, Graphene (not my area), but would like to know if I am missing others?

I enjoyed this list: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_innovations_and_discoveries

Particularly around computing and telecoms - just to choose one example, the ARM chip is something without which we wouldn't have smartphones. From Wiki: "In 2010, producers of chips based on ARM architectures reported shipments of 6.1 billion ARM-based processors, representing 95% of smartphones, 35% of digital televisions and set-top boxes, and 10% of mobile computers. In 2011, the 32-bit ARM architecture was the most widely used architecture in mobile devices and the most popular 32-bit one in embedded systems."

This century I would bet that the work done here in the UK in biotech (eg. Vaccitech, Oxford Nanopore), AI and quantum computing will have a lasting impact.

Yes, ARM is a good story, and it's often mentioned when UK's technological lead is questioned.

But it's a 40 year old story.

That Wikipedia page shows how scarce such success stories have become in the last quarter century.

While technological advances taking place in our time probably haven't been quicker in the last 50 years.

Those are just happening elsewhere. I feel we are missing out, especially the next generation, they won't have as many opportunities of working in hi tech sectors, unless they migrate.

Amazing statistic that in the mid-60s, a quarter of all secondary aged students attended grammar schools. The number of grammar schools then fell from between the mid 60s and 1980 and we now have about 12% of the grammar schools we had in the 60s.

dera.ioe.ac.uk/24559/1/SN01398.pdf

Actually OP thinking about what my colleagues tell me who do have boys at Eton, Winchester and Westminster, these schools really do all that is possible at school level to produce outstanding scientists and pioneers. The phd teachers, beyond syllabus teaching and societies/clubs and outside speaker talks on offer is beyond comprehension for the “average” state school candidate. However, it should be noted that the speakers/lectures are often now open to local school children to attend as well.

So the issue isn’t at the school’s level and their offerings.
Academics are not paid much in our society and many people who are otherwise very talented end up choosing jobs that pay a good salary straight out to t university like IT, law, banking, medicine etc rather than studying and researching for longer to make large and important discoveries. Having said that Oxbridge ant many other universities in U.K. still do product significant talent for a small country.

Yep completely agree that we need to keep supporting this stuff, that's why we have Innovate UK, Plan for Growth, an Innovation Strategy, etc. (www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-innovation-strategy-leading-the-future-by-creating-it)

Thank you, this was insightful, and good to know.

Agree with what you said about the strong economic incentives in UK against doing research and academic jobs. Post doctoral pay on temp contracts here are a disgrace

In my area (fairly routine software development for banks) I regularly come across PhDs in physics, electrical engineering, mathematicians and so on. These people clearly had strong interest and talent to match in their areas, but gave up research for much less challenging work because those jobs pay substantially more with much better job security.

Eton doesn't have any female students. Ok there can be a few, but generally it is a boys' school.

Sashh maybe do some research before posting. For a short time in the 1980s a few girls joined the Oxbridge class, and a few daughters of masters attended the school but the practice was soon abolished.
No, there aren’t even a ‘few’ as you claim.

I think we do support researchers and academics but there is an argument to say there’s too many of them in some fields. With a hugely expanded university sector there’s “useful world beating vital research “and, frankly, self indulgent “research”. Happy to see a bit of a cull!

The entire uk system up until university is geared towards exam achievement. It doesn’t lend itself towards fostering the skills and mindsets that are more determinative of career success (curiosity, creativity, experimentation, reflection, etc.). My observation of my husband and his Oxford peers is that they were clever people who were quite skilled at jumping through the hoops laid out before them, but most struggled without the imposed structure of school / exams. Many ended up in consulting, law and finance where the career progression structure is very much a new set of clearly defined hoops.

far more of my American university peers pursued entrepreneurship (with mixed outcomes). Creativity and open problem solving are much more prevalent in the Us system, even in math and science courses. There is also much more encouragement (and a better reward system) for taking risks (pursuing a time intensive extracurricular, taking courses that you are interested in but aren’t ‘strengths’, or using class time to take on big open ended projects that aren’t relevant for exams)

Yes, I went to a very well regarded American Uni, father and sister went to MIT and Stanford. We are from South America. I had my 3 secondary school children here in the UK and God, I have never seen anything more elitist, narrow minded than the independent sector here. Mums truly believe that their heavily tutored children and the high fees they pay for schools somehow produce “better” or “smarter” kids. It doesn’t! Having lived in different countries, from first to third world really gives perspective. I’m more into raising motivated kids who are able to enjoy friendships through secondary and not worry about the class average exam results.

I do IP law and patents but I just don't have time to research successful British companies. I have worked with pharma, biotech and much else.

I am absolutely certain the UK does pretty well. If people don't think so that's fine too. I am not here trying to spend hours proving how wonderful our great nation of the UK is.

Funding of Academic research has fallen dramatically thanks to the policies of our Eton / Oxbridge educated leaders. Quite the paradox.
This article explains the dramatic reality: amp.theguardian.com/education/2023/feb/04/brexit-causes-collapse-in-european-research-funding-for-oxbridge-universities