Message #3413

[AndyHB]

It's not only the quality of the education that's different in public schools to state schools, it's the whole ethos.  It's vastly different even for pupils of the same comparable ability.  Public schools and their culture of knowing that they are top dogs, the best, the most privileged, encourage confidence in most of their pupils.

I know of plenty of state schools who regard themselves as the top dog, and sadly this tends to destroy the confidence of the pupils unless they start very self-confident.  I can also think of several pupils at the public school I attended who were less confident when they left than they had been when they came in.  I think the only real difference is that public schools realise that they need to provide good quality material/equipment AND can afford to do so.  I'm not convinced about the ethos necessarily being different.  The state school our daughters went to had pretty well the same ethos as the public school I attended - aim to get every pupil to at least the level their innate ability allows. 

Unfortunately, the way state schools are set up, very few of the brightest are really pushed; this can often be seen by the number of very bright pupils who end up in special needs classes.  The way that state schools tend to work is that the middle ability range is catered for well, but the top and bottom levels aren't.  This means that Martin's utopian idea of the brighter pupils pulling the less able up to their level is largely just that - utopian.