Much has been said in the last couple of weeks about the superiority of English private schools over state ones.
Dr Seldon, head of Wellington College, suggested state schools should emulate the best features of private schools unaware that state schools do most of these already. Education Secretary Michael Gove said in his latest
Govoration that the standards of state schools should be indistinguishable from those in the private schools.
But do private schools do better than English state ones? The evidence suggests not.
OFSTED INSPECTION DATA
69% of
non-affiliated private schools inspected under the old framework from September 2012 and 31 December 2012 were good or better and 31% were judged “less than good”*.
64% of private schools
inspected under the new framework from 1 January 2013 to 31 August 2013 were good or better; 36% were “less than good” and 13% were inadequate.
For
state schools inspected between 1 September 2012 and 31 August 2013 under the old and new framework:
64% were good or better: 30% required improvement and 6% were inadequate.
These figures suggest little difference between Ofsted judgements of non-affiliated private and state schools although more non-affiliated private schools were judged inadequate. However, these figures should be approached with caution because there’s no differentiation in the state school data between schools inspected under the old and new regime.
There appears to be no corresponding data about the small number of independent schools inspected by the
Bridge Schools Inspectorate and the
School Inspection Service or the 1,200 schools inspected by the
Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI). ISI inspects independent schools affiliated to independent schools associations. Affiliation usually depends on maintaining good or better inspections. This makes it difficult to compare ISI schools, which tend to be highly selective, and the state sector which caters for the whole ability range and does not exclude schools with a poor inspection result from its ranks.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND SCHOOL INTAKE
The
Institute of Fiscal Studies (2011) found a school’s academic achievement is governed by the ability range of its intake. The private schools admired by Gove tend to be highly selective so it’s hardly surprising their headline results would be better than non-selective schools with the full ability range or one skewed to the bottom of the ability range.
INTERNATIONAL EVIDENCE
The
OECD found pupils who attend private schools tend to perform significantly better in PISA tests BUT
pupils in state schools with a similar socio-economic background as private schools tend to achieve the same results.
The private school “advantage”, wrote OECD, may be less than it seems. Any difference that remained after socio-economic background was taken into account could be accounted for by higher levels of autonomy over curricula and resources in private schools. All state schools in England have considerable autonomy over budget spending and the strictures of the national curriculum could be untied by allowing all schools the freedom to opt out.
The OECD** recognised that UK independent schools achieved high results BUT when socio-economic background was taken into account UK state schools outperformed independent ones.
It’s worth repeating that last finding: UK state schools outperform UK private schools when socio-economic background is factored in. In other words, UK state schools do a better job than UK private schools in more difficult circumstances. The seeming superiority of UK private schools is down to their advantaged intake.
*The description “less than good” referred to Grade 3 private schools officially judged “Satisfactory” until December 2012 and “
Adequate” from January 2013. Grade 3 state schools are neither “Satisfactory” nor “Adequate” but judged as “Requires Improvement”. Grade 3 schools inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (if any exist given that affiliation depends on a good quality inspection) are neither “Satisfactory” nor “Adequate” and certainly not “Requires Improvement”. They are “
Sound”.
**OECD 2010
Viewing the UK School System through the Prism of PISA page 13
CORRECTION 5 FEBRUARY 2014
The above has been amended. I wrongly said Dr Seldon was head of Westminster College. It should, of course, have been Wellington College. Thanks to Matt for pointing this out.
Comments
How does that sit with the OECD findings that poverty does not hold pupils back? It strikes me that either the OECD position is that socioeconomic background is a factor, which Janet's article refers to, or it is a myth and ergo only personal ability and/or ineffective T&L make a difference. They cannot have it both ways, can they?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-26015532
The key seemed to be the amount of time pupils spent studying a particular subject (the focus was science but it applies for all subjects). That doesn't necessarily mean extending the school day (Gove's solution) but ensuring pupils are present.
OECD wrote (first link):
"They [schools] could start by providing more opportunities for disadvantaged students to learn in class by developing activities, classroom practices and teaching methods that encourage learning and foster motivation and self-confidence among those students."
The short versions of PISA research into this subject:
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/5k9h362p77tf.pdf?expires...
http://oecdinsights.org/2011/06/22/lessons-in-resilience-from-pisa/
And the longer ones:
http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/programmeforinternationalstudentassessmen...
http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/programmeforinternationalstudentassessmen...
For an example of just one hypothesis to be tested it could be that while in the UK poverty is correlated with lower parental support for learning, this might not be the case in Shanghai.
As everybody knows correlation does not mean causation. While there is a strong correlation between poverty in the UK and low attainment, does anyone think that "poverty causes poor attainment"? Perhaps there are common factors in the homes of some parents in the UK who are poor, which might be causal factors for the children from those homes not doing as well in school as children in the UK from more advantaged homes. But it is not necessarily poverty in itself that is the cause.
Perhaps the answer would be to bring children out of poverty.
However, that's not the subject of this thread (interesting though it is). The point is that the OECD found that when socio-economic background is accounted for then UK state schools outperform private ones.
In other words (sorry to keep repeating myself), the private school "superiority" depends on an advantaged intake. In England the pupils in the top-performing private schools tend to be advantaged and selected for their academic ability.
http://www.suttontrust.com/news/news/comprehensive-pupils-outperform/
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2013/06/two-new-reports-confirm-th...
So OECD are right that it is not poverty that holds pupils back. (It is lower cognitive ability.) Taking socio-economic background as a proxy for lower cognitive ability, your apparent contradiction disappears.
I started my engineering science degree at one of the top five universities in the 1980's but for various reasons left and had a much much happier 3 years finished at a University ranked 20th, a move I have never regretted . However in one year at the former I had already done far more maths and applied maths than I did in 3 years for the same course at the latter.
I believe that the consultation is currently open through which Independent schools can comment on proposals to change the Ofsted inspection framework, making it more similar to that operating in the state system. I'm not sure, though, whether all privately funded schools have to have Ofsted inspections. Isn't there an independent inspection service? So, how independent or accountable does such a service have to be? Any comments received with interest.
Whether this means British teachers are performing miracles with the poorest or letting down the others, is another question.
You should, perhaps, think about changing your first paragraph / checking your facts. Dr Seldon is Head at Wellington College, not Westminster College.
Whoops! Thanks Matt - the error has been changed with correction noted.
The inspection regimes are different as are the judgements (see explanation at bottom of original thread).
For further info click on the links in the thread.
Click on the links in my comment for further info.
Roger - am i misunderstanding you? Are you saying that CHILDREN born of parents with low qualifications / parental income / certain postcodes have low cognitive ability (generally). In other words are you proposing a genetic cause of cognitive ability, or an unassailable effect on cogntive ability in early development, or have I totally misread your comment?
We also know that CATs scores are very strongly related to GCSE performance (more than SATs), A Level performance especially in maths and science and admissions to top universities.
Any Hackney head would be able to confirm all this. When you list the Y11 GCSE results for pupils in order of their Y6 CATs scores the link jumps off the page.
For a long time, the strong link between parental qualifications and their children's exam results, going to university etc, has also been clear.
Parents with high level qualifications tend to get higher paying jobs and live in posher houses in posher areas.
So the link you are worrying about doesn't seem to be very surprising to me.
None of this requires general intelligence to be inherited, but it would be very odd if some of it wasn't, rather like general athletic ability. Much more important to me is the work of Shayer and Adey that shows that cognitive ability at 11, however acquired, can be significantly raised through the right kind of developmental teaching and that this transfers across subjects. I agree with them that children should be taught in such a way that acquiring skills and knowledge results in cognitive gains, rather than being drilled to pass exams, which doesn't result in cognitive gains.
Very long term longitudinal research on IQ tests has shown that the IQ scores of pensioners that have had cognitively demanding careers have increased with age despite the grey cells dying off!
I deal with much of this in this post.
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2013/04/my-personal-account-of-the...
The argument is further developed in my paper
Titcombe R, Cognitive Ability and School Improvement, Practical Research for Education, Issue 36, 2006
You can access this from the NfER website.
If you are hung up on the whole notion of general intelligence, as mistakenly are many on the left, then I do recommend
Adey P & Shayer M (Edited) (2002), Learning Intelligence, Open University Press
and
Adey P & Dillon J (Edited 2012), Bad Education, Open University Press
I hope this helps.
I omitted to answer your question. No, I do not believe that cognitive ability is fixed at birth through genetic inheritance. In fact it is not fixed at any age. However not all types of teaching enhance cognitive ability. Gove's favoured knowledge based behaviourism doesn't.
For me other pertinent factors in what some might liken to a cognitive skills post code lottery, is that for a child in a family setting where there is a history of weak educational achievement are likely to inherit a mindset that militates against breaking that cycle. Therefore personal attitude, ambition and aspiration are also core factors in breaking underperformance.
In terms of nurturing cognitive skills and abilities there may well be a correlation between weak or low levels of parental nurturing skills that creates a barrier for the child:
http://www.howkidsdevelop.com/developSkills.html
It follows, for me at least, that achievement and performance are not solely underpinned by cognitive skills/abilities.
I think Michael Faraday is a telling example. He was a humble lab technician. We will never know, but I doubt that he was a genetically endowed genius from birth. I believe his genius developed from his experience of developing brilliant experiments and demonstrations with electro-magnetism, which every pupil in a Nuffield Science equipped school can repeat for herself, if lucky enough to have a teacher that has read Shayer and Adey. Genius it certainly became, because as that great science communicator Brian Cox demonstrated in a recent TV program, there is a direct, unbroken, logical progression from Michael Faraday's simple electromagnetic experiments to Einstein's Relativity.
While of course recognising the advantages of parental nurture and support, I do think schools can do a lot to mitigate against poor parenting. The example is Mossbourne Academy. Having crucially obtained a balanced intake in terms of cognitive ability through its CATs driven banded admissions system, Mossbourne is still dominated by pupils from socially deprived backgrounds associated with developmental deficits. Although I think Sir Michael Wilshaw's faith in the positive contribution of uniforms and punishments is illusory, there is no doubt about the extraordinary lengths the school takes to compensate for the disadvantages of poor upbringing. To a very great extent, what a middle class child gets from home, a Mossbourne pupil gets from quality schooling support that few other schools can match.
This is the most important lesson from Mossbourne, to which the education debate owes a lot to Sir Michael. All ability comprehensive schools can do a great deal to compensate for an impoverished early upbringing. Michael Gove thinks its all to do with posh uniforms, teachers in suits and harsh punishments. He is wrong.
It also strikes me that the correlation trend between socioeconomic factors may well mask the incidence of well qualified career minded parents and weak CAT scores (e.g. if both parents work long hours and have limited substantive contact with their child(ren) then that is likely to manifest in under developed cognitive skills/abilities).
"No amount of striving and intensity of ambition would ever have made me into a good footballer or musician, even though I love football and music. Unfortunately, no talent"
The questions are, how much did you want either of these, how much were you encouraged and supported, and how much did you practice? We may have been denied a latter day Stanley Matthews or modern Benjamin Britten ... ;-)
It was said of my football skills,"his pace is deceptive". I was much slower than I looked. Believe me I really, really wanted to play for Aston Villa. Failing that I would have settled for being a pop star.
I don't recall Nobby Stiles or Norman Hunter being overly speedy ... and I recall that they used to say that punk rock was ageless ;-)
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