| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Comprehensive Schools - Conclusive Evidence | |
| Posted by: | Tom Pike | |
| Date/Time: | 23/02/12 18:53:00 |
| Michael, A very reasonable check! In fact the figures I used are for education as a whole, and so what's really needed here is the breakdown for primary and secondary education by state and private funding. OECD have put these here: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=RFIN2 In 2008 the €6.5 bn spent on independent private institutions was 11% of the total spending of €60 bn. Hence for the 6.3% in private institutions, the spend per student is 1.7 times higher. The €6.5 bn is spent on about 600,000 privately educated pupils, or around €11k a pupil. That seems a more reasonable number than €27.5k and should be compared to €6.5k spent for state students. Latymer is indeed a successful private school. OECD are trying to tease out what exactly is a successful school system. The question is not whether students from a particular school performed well on the PISA test, but how similar students in different schools within the UK, and indeed across the world fared. For the UK, 77% of the difference in performance between schools is explained by the average socioeconomic background of the students in the school. After Luxembourg, this is the second highest value in the developed world! The major effect of paying school fees in the UK is that your child will be educated alongside students from a privileged socioeconomic background, and this gives a very considerable boost to the PISA score of 47 points. This is on top of the 35 points that can be attributed to the individual socioeconomic background of the average fee-paying student - and this would come into play whatever the school. However, strip both of these out and a student educated with the same classmates will on average score 20 points less in a fee-paying school compared to a state school in the UK. Statistically, as far as PISA scores for the UK independent sector as a whole are concerned, the benefit of school fees comes down mostly to the resulting socio-economic segregation and not any increased quality of teaching. I doubt this is what parents think they are paying for. |