Education - It's The Students That Matter

[Trausti]

The solution often given for disparities in educational outcomes is that not enough money is being spent on this or that; spending will equalize the difference. This feelgood solution seems right but is likely wrong. Whether a student does well is ultimately up to the student and not the teacher or school. If this is so, what would be a more realistic educational policy?

Does your kids’ DNA matter more than which school they go to?

On average, the teenagers attending selective schools – including both fee-paying private schools and state-funded grammar schools – did do better than the rest. They scored about a grade higher in the exams done at age 16 in the UK, called GCSEs.

These raw results suggest that about 7 per cent of the differences in exam results are due to the type of school. But when the team adjusted for the fact that selective schools pick more able pupils, and also that these pupils tend to come from families with higher socio-economic status – that can afford to pay school fees, for instance – the differences vanished.

In other words, the results imply that the pupils at selective schools would have done equally well at non-selective ones. “We’re saying there’s no value added,” says team member Robert Plomin, also at King’s. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Differences in exam performance between pupils attending selective and non-selective schools mirror the genetic differences between them

 

[bilby]

The abstract doesn't say what the article implies it says; and the article doesn't say what you imply it says. The thread title stretches this unreality even further.

This OP is only of any value as an exemplar of bad science reporting made worse by reporting on the reports about reports.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I disagree. Selective schools do help students. Yes, they are students that would have done better anyway but there's another effect going on: A teacher inherently has a speed at which they teach a class. Any student whose ability is above this point is not going to learn to their full potential. Any student whose ability is below this point is going to struggle and very well might fall behind. With a selective school you have clipped off the lower part of the curve of student ability, the teacher can increase the teaching speed without leaving students behind. Thus the students learn more.