NOT the Majority Opinion

The other side of the story. Not everything is rosy.

Sunday November 13, 2005

The Observer

There are as many different accounts of private schools as there are children who went to them.

In the week that the Office of Fair Trading found a cartel of schools had been fixing their fees - which investigators said allowed them to drive up charges for thousands of parents - the private versus state schools debate is fiercer than ever. At middle class dinner parties across the country it is a question up there with town or country living and Jamie or Nigella. And it is not just a matter of money or academic results. Worries over whether their children will experience the right social mix in the private sector and learn about the 'real world' are mulled over too.

There are around 615,000 children in independent education - a number that accounts for about 7 per cent of all school-age pupils. According to figures compiled by the Independent Schools Council, the annual cost of sending a secondary school-age child down the private route will be a minimum of £7,500 a year. If they are boarding then this figure can soar to more than £21,000, with further hikes likely over the next few years.

GCSE and A-level examination results show that almost half of A-levels taken by students at independent schools last summer were awarded an A grade, up by 2.6 per cent on last year and double the national average of 22.5 per cent. But when it comes to university, the effect of a private school education is less clear-cut: Dr Robin Naylor and Dr Jeremy Smith of the University of Warwick's department of economics analysed data from the Universities Statistical Records, covering every student at a British university from 1985 until 1993. They found that a student from an independent school has an 8 per cent lower chance of getting a first or an upper second than a state school pupil who enters university with the same A-level grades.

'There is a great deal of variation around the type of independent school you went to,' said Smith. 'We found that the students - the independent school students - who were the least successful in fact went to the highest fee-paying schools. 'The headline figure we got from that was, roughly, if you pay an extra £5,000 at an independent school, you are around 4 per cent less likely to get a good degree.' Naylor and Smith believe this effect is because A-level results are a product of ability and coaching but once at university, ability comes to the fore - and the boost provided by the independent schools' coaching does not live on. Jack Rabinowitz, from the specialist solicitors Teacher Stern Selby receives more than 30 inquiries a month from parents who believe their children have been failed by schools in the independent sector.

(For the full article: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1641456,00.html)