Private School Privilege:
The case for moderating down private school results next year By Rachel Hart, PPE student at Wadham College
LOOK AROUND
This is the case for moderating down private school results next year. Now, depending on your political persuasion, I can hear two questions being asked. Firstly: ‘why not moderate down private school results every year to better reflect their overabundance of resources and hoarding of money and land?’. Well, that’s another debate to be had, though not here. Or perhaps your question is more along the lines of ‘why punish privately educated school children for something that is not their fault?’. I will address the second question more adequately than the first, though later in this article after having laid out my case.
My proposition is as follows. As a result of various factors, privately educated children are receiving a much better quality and quantity of education during lockdown. This means that private schools will, most likely, perform even better than state schools in normal years, claiming more of the top grades. This could severely impact social mobility in the academic year 2020/2021, so this extra improvement over state schools must be reduced to usual levels of performance.
1. The Previous Situation
It is well known that, in any normal year, private schools already massively out-achieve state schools. Take the results of 2019 for instance. Cumulatively, between all private schools in the UK, 23.4% of GCSE entries were awarded a grade 9. The national average of GCSEs receiving this mark is 4.5%. This means that in 2019, the percentage of top grades that private schools attained was at least five times that of state schools. Figure 1 indicates that this trend is pervasive through all top grade levels.
Unsurprisingly, the trend is reflected in a similarly dramatic fashion at A-Level. Taking the year 2019 again, 17.6% of private school A-level entries achieved A*s, compared to the national average of 7.8%. The proportion of entries from independent school pupils achieving an A* or A grade was 46.4%, where nationally it was 25.5%. We can see a similar pattern in A level results to that of GCSE results in figure 2, So? Why does this matter?
26
Well, it massively skews the distribution of top grades, and thus top university places, that privately educated students receive. Many Russell Group and other competitive universities require AAB, AAA or higher in admissions, and often take GCSE profiles into account. As shown in figure 3 (produced by our very own Oxford University), despite 7% of children being
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
privately educated, they represent 26.8% of the total number of students achieving AAA or higher. This means they are roughly four times better represented in achieving these grades; grades which many universities seek. Correspondingly, private school students are much better represented at these top universities, limiting the social mobility of equally capable state school students.
2. The Current Situation
As a result of lockdown, both private and state schools have closed down and sent their students home. No room for disparity in education now, right?
LOOK LEFT TT20