State School Pupils 'fare better' at University than the Privately Educated

Or at least that's what this study has found: Guardian.co.uk

According to the article. students from state schools are four percentage points more likely to get a first or 2:1 than those who had been in private education before attending university. Apparently they also outperform many of the independent schools by almost the same amount, according to the LSE's Centre for Economic Performance.

I'm fairly surprised at that, but as it says you get a lot more help on applying to university at state schools than private ones, or at least that's what I've found. My friends who go to private schools had no help whatsoever in filling out their application form, yet we had it basically shoved down our throat at every given opportunity. You also get the chance to study independently a lot more at state schools as the class sizes are bigger.

Reassuring news.

Doesn't surprise me, I think people who go to private schools know they have a back up. Their parents are more than likely rich.

Public schooled kids know that if they don't do their best at uni they will end up working at McDonalds, well maybe not McDonalds but they don't have the same safety net for failure as rich kids.

Yeah, mind you The Guardian isnt exactly unbiased!!! lol.

It was a study carried out by the London School of Economics, the Guardian are only reporting what they found. Stereotypically, those that read the Guardian are middle class/upper middle class and so are more likely to have children in independent schools, so it's not really an issue here.

I know lol - but papers have a way of only publishing studies on their 'side of the fence'. You see it all the time.

I dont think there's any guarantees of a better future either way frankly, when there's often tons of graduates queueing up for menial jobs.

Actually the Guardian is a pretty lefty rag for 'intellectual' types lol. I though posh people read the Telegraph or something?

I don't mean the properly posh people. I mean those who live very comfortably- you only need to look at the clothes advertised in the Weekend magazine to see what I mean. Yes it's fairly left-thinking in it's views but it isn't particularly biased in that article as it was reporting on a study. It mentioned that it was only a low percentage, so it wasn't heralding it as some success for the state school system.

I know that much, I've studied newspapers enough to know they slant the article to suit their view. Hell that's going to be my job one day (finger crossed) so I'm no stranger to the technique But it doesn't really appear to be the case here. I haven't looked but I imagine there's a similar story on this in other papers- the Guardian is just my preferred newspaper.

I completely agree that there's no guarantee, in this climate no graduate has job security at all.

'When the results of all undergraduates are considered, those from private schools are more likely to get a first or 2:1, with 68% doing so, compared with 64% of those from state schools. But when students from the same family backgrounds, studying the same subjects at the same universities were considered alongside each other, it was the former state school pupils who got better degrees.'

Overall, privately educated students are more likely to do better. It says with the same family backgrounds, same subject and same university - a small selection really, depending on their view of 'family background'. But your probably looking at middle class, with university educated parents. Comfortable.

But either way, 4% isn't much - I don't think it can really be used to say state is better or that private is better.