Telegraph cheers success of state schools, but has it fudged the figures?

Hold the front page: it turns out that the best state schools in England are genuinely very good – and even as good as their famous independent peers. This won’t surprise the families of children who for many years have attended state schools and received an excellent education. But it appears to have come as a shock to the editors of the the Daily Telegraph and Spectator – hence the headline “State pupils put private schools in the shade”. Yet the chairman of the Independent Schools Council, Barnaby Lenon, called the comparison “grossly unfair”. While appeals to fairness jar coming from an organisation whose schools charge £12,000 a year per pupil, he has a point. What the Spectator and Telegraph have done is crudely compare the top 500 state sixth forms with almost every private school that offers A-levels. The research involved a few simple clicks on the Department for Education’s performance tables. Admissions to sixth form are selective in the state sector, and for the best schools it is highly competitive. Private schools, on the other hand, admit primarily on the basis of disposable income – and there are a limited number of families who can afford the £15,000 to £30,000 that independent schools charge. The result is a competition between state schools that select on academic ability and private schools that select on parental income. And guess what? Selecting bright kids for free turns out to be a better way of filling your school with kids who get top results. It tells us that there are more bright kids in the state sector – because 93% of the school-going population is so much bigger than the 7% who attend private schools in England. It also tells us that behind the famous names of Eton and Winchester – which doesn’t even show up in the DfE tables – there is a tail of less spectacular fee-paying schools out there. As with any set of statistics, there are many ways of rating each category. Ranking by average A-level grade, for example, tells a different story – then the top of the league table is packed with the big beasts of the independent sector: Magdalen college school, St Paul’s, Eton and so on, until the selective state powerhouse of Henrietta Barnett school in north London appears in 14th. Advertisement The analysis is weakened further by the Telegraph making something of a schoolboy error in its calculations. It did a simple average of the total A-level points-per-pupil to reach the conclusion that state schools were ahead of private schools. But in the DfE’s table, there are two outliers – Colchester royal grammar school and Colyton grammar school in Devon – that enter pupils for more A and AS levels, and skew the average in favour of state schools. Using a median score instead finds that there is no statistically significant gap between the 500 state and independent schools. The Guardian’s calculations show that independent schools have a median score of 848 points and the 500 top state schools have a median of 852 – a wafer-thin difference. Interestingly, comparing the median point score of the top 100 of both groups also shows very little difference, although independent schools have a clear advantage in getting higher average grades. In truth, when talking about which schools are better, it is useful to know what difference they make to their pupils. Do the hothouse top state schools do a better job of improving their performance? Or do the small classes and better facilities of private schools do better? It’s impossible to tell from these figures. What is significant is that two Conservative party house organs are now cheering for the quality of state schools. Lenon – whose organisation represents about 85% of independent schools – says it is well known that there are many good state schools, and that it is counterproductive to set the two groups against each other. He senses other forces at work. “This government has been in power now for five years and they think it’s important that they show their reforms are working,” said Lenon, the former head of Harrow. Lenon’s view is supported by a DfE source, who said: “We think the data is hugely welcomed and we think that it vindicates that our reforms are working.” Never mind that the data is from pupils who started school in 2000. So it will be interesting to see if the government allows selective grammar schools in Kent to expand to different towns, as at least one wants to. Michael Gove turned such applications down and put his faith in non-selective schools. But now that the editor of the Spectator has declared their work to be “miraculous”, will Nicky Morgan be brave enough to do the same? collect by...http://www.theguardian.com