Debunking myths of elite learning (1 Viewer)

[Frigid]

read, discuss. not to start flame war

Debunking myths of elite learning
Ross Gittins
November 24, 2004

Private schools are overrated as incubators of excellence, writes Ross Gittins.

In my observation of private schools, there's an unwritten contract between the parents and the school: parents pay huge fees and, in return, the school guarantees kids get to university.

Question is: does it work? Well, if all you want is for your kid to make it to uni, it often does. But if you also want your kid to do well at uni, maybe not.

Various studies have shown that, on average, students from private schools gain higher tertiary entrance ranks (TERs - now known as the universities admission index in NSW) than students from government schools.

According to one study, the average TER was 5.9 percentage points higher for independent schools and 5 percentage points higher for Catholic systemic schools.

But two new studies by Paul Miller, professor of economics at the University of Western Australia, have put that result in a new light. One study, with Rosemary Win, looked at the academic performance of students completing first year at UWA. The other, with Elisa Rose Birch, looked at the performance of students completing first year at another, anonymous large university.

Miller and Win found that, at the end of first year, the order had been reversed. Taking students with the same TER, those from government schools outperformed those from Catholic schools, with the Catholic kids outperforming those from independent schools.

How is this reversal explained? Here, of course, we move from hard statistical facts to the more arguable interpretation of facts.

Researchers argue that private-school students tend to have higher TERs because they enjoy a higher level of confidence in their own ability, because the school environment is more conducive to learning and because their parents have higher aspirations.

It seems, however, that the superior resources and more attentive coaching of non-government schools serve to artificially inflate students' TERs relative to their raw abilities. The private schools' "value-added" is short-lived.

It may be that students from non-government schools have difficulty adjusting to the greater freedom and reduced supervision of university life. It's even been argued that some students from private schools are less enthusiastic because their courses have been selected by their parents.

You discover another reversal when you look at the types of school students attended. Many studies have demonstrated that, in general, students do better in single-sex schools than co-educational schools.

But Miller and Win find that students from co-ed schools tend to get better university grades than those from single-sex schools. Why? Perhaps because they're less flummoxed by getting to uni and discovering the opposite sex.

Note that Miller's two studies look at students' marks out of 100 at the end of first year, averaged over each subject studied. They therefore ignore those students who drop out before the end of first year.

Of course, not everyone who drops out is a drop-out. Some may merely have interrupted their study to spend some time travelling overseas.

But those who fail to complete first year are more likely to be female, to be from rural areas and to have attended rural schools. They're also a bit more likely to have attended an independent school.

The average TER of students who fail to complete first year, however, is only a little lower than that of those who do complete.

Many researchers have found that more educated and wealthier parents have children who, on average, perform better at school. Miller and Win confirm that this carries through to university performance.

It seems, however, that parents' level of education is more significant than their wealth. Research suggests that access to material things - such as nutritious food, comfortable housing and reading materials that stimulate intellectual interests - doesn't have consistent effects on children's learning.

Rather, it's the skills of the mother - measured by the extent of her formal education - that are a critical resource in determining children's achievement.

You probably won't be surprised to hear that female students outperform males in the first year of uni - on average, gaining grades more than 5 percentage points higher, according to Miller and Birch.

What may surprise is that girls' superiority doesn't seem to be the case in other countries.

Miller and Birch find that, on average, students who've been accepted into courses that were only their third or fourth preference get grades 3.4 percentage points lower than those achieving their first or second preference. They're probably less motivated.

Miller and Birch find that students with a low TER, but who come from schools with a high proportion of kids going on to uni, tend to do better than expected in first year. They benefit from an "immersion effect" where the environment lifts them up.

This is to be distinguished from a "reinforcing effect" where students from schools that get good results in the tertiary entrance assessment tend to do better in first year than students from schools with poorer results.

Despite these various quirks, both studies confirm that a student's TER is a good predictor of their success in first year. Miller and Birch estimate that each extra percentage point of TER is associated with an increase of between 0.75 and 1 percentage point in first-year grades.

But even this finding has a twist. All universities have arrangements that permit them to admit a small proportion of school-leavers with TERs below the official cut-off, but only in special circumstances.

Miller and Birch find that, on average, such students get first-year grades 7 percentage points higher than the grades of students above the cut-off.

Special-admission students may be better motivated, but this finding also suggests that uni administrators can pick winners better when they judge applicants by factors other than just their TERs.

We can do better than making the TERs the be-all and the end-all of entrance to a university.

 

[theone123]

meh, nothing to say

 

[babydoll_]

meh, nothing to say

youre an idiot, if you have nothing to say then why are you posting

I SEE A REAL GENIUS HERE PEOPLE

 

[Not-That-Bright]

I'm gunna say because only the nerdy/hardworking kids from public schools get in, while alot of private school kids drift thru having the research done for them by expensive teachers.

 

[Zarathustra]

Great article Frigid!
I completely agree with the opinions expressed, and coming from a government school it increases my confidence that I can compete with the private kiddies.

Btw - Which university did Ross Gittins go to (and did he attend a Gov't or private school)?

 

[Assasinator_2]

Doesn't go far to explain why 1/10th of my graduating year (11 people) are now doing Engineering at UQ, all of who are coping quite fine, and are probably in the top half of the group ability-wise.

Not to mention the other 3 or 4 outside that group doing maths/science degrees, plus another few doing IT degrees.

 

[omg_a]

mmm i read that article this morning too, and it's quite interesting. I'm not sure i agree that private schools artificiallly inflate students TERs relative to their raw abilities, rather i think it's a fault of the system that you are affected so much by how your peers perform. thus, it's not a private school thing, but a well performing school thing. A government selective school student also benefits from being in a very high performing peer group.

but i do agree that the TER/UAI may not be the best way to sum up 13 years of schooling. though i'm sure it's a lot easier/less expensive than interviews/applications etc.

it's also interesting that girls outperform boys in at least the first year at uni, as they do most of the way through school. how come then is there such a stark difference between men and women, in the opposite direction once they are working?

 

[Phanatical]

mmm i read that article this morning too, and it's quite interesting. I'm not sure i agree that private schools artificiallly inflate students TERs relative to their raw abilities, rather i think it's a fault of the system that you are affected so much by how your peers perform. thus, it's not a private school thing, but a well performing school thing. A government selective school student also benefits from being in a very high performing peer group.

but i do agree that the TER/UAI may not be the best way to sum up 13 years of schooling. though i'm sure it's a lot easier/less expensive than interviews/applications etc.

it's also interesting that girls outperform boys in at least the first year at uni, as they do most of the way through school. how come then is there such a stark difference between men and women, in the opposite direction once they are working?

You'll find that generally, boys and girls respond differently to various learning methods in schools and universities.

 

[Toodulu]

if you didn't want to start a "flame war", perhaps it would've been better to not post a completely one sided article

it seems the majority of people who believe that there is this elite teaching and learning in private institutions, don't actually belong in them. and then they go around trying to fight this so-called myth that they've made up for themselves. school education isn't just about getting into university and staying there - parents may also look for things like music and sports and d&t facilities.

i think anyone with common sense would know that it would be unfair to compare statistics between public and private schools - there may be a different focus on the curriculum, different private schools have different fees, and there are a lot more public schools than "elite" private schools. the idea that any "value-added" from a private education can be measured through grades at uni is so preposterous and narrow-minded. not to mention the degree of difficulty in obtaining high grades in different faculties and universities also vary greatly.

 

[Phanatical]

Just some ideas:


K-2
An emphasis on sitting down, being quiet and completing work in an assembly line fashion probably isn't the best method of teaching for a hyperactive boy who wants to use up that energy. I believe that boys at this age learn better by actually trying out things, instead of using passive teaching devices like worksheets.


K-12
Our schools need to explore boy-friendly methods of teaching. Experts argue that boys in particular need "strong, charismatic teachers who mix firm discipline with a good-natured acceptance of boyish energy" (Sacks). Schooling at this level needs to be more physical, energetic and challenging. Teachers should also develop good personal friendships with their students, rather than observing the traditional deferential teacher-student interaction. Back in year 11, I did extremely well in Legal Studies because of the emphasis on quizzes, and a good friendship with the teacher as a perceived equal, rather than as the teacher who one must never question. My year 12 teacher, on the other hand observed the deferential relationship, and the boys in the class never did as well as the girls.


University
The University of Sydney, and pretty much every other major university in this country has a Women's Studies department, yet there is no such thing as Men's studies. There is little movement towards offering a Men's Studies department, or course, or Men's Spaces, and little acknowledgement that perhaps the methods of teaching at our universities could be more attuned to the methods that men are proven to respond better to. Men are not going to stay at a university which is hostile towards their gender, and this is one of the reasons why I have proposed gender-netural Gender Officers at our SRC and Union to replace our Women's Officers, and a Gender Studies department to replace the Women's Studies department. They can no longer keep teaching one-sided points of views in relation to gender issues if they wish to make our universities better places of learning for males.

 

[shannonm]

did they do any research one correlation between low ter courses and high ter courses, with mean marks of students in those courses?
ie B.Bludging with entrance uai 75, has mean uni marks 65. Med, Law, 98+ uai req courses, mean mark 55

Put Mr b.bludging into law and he'll get 35
put mr. law in b.bludging and he'll get 75
(example)


did they compare students _in the same course_ ? or just a spread of whole first year students


"Miller and Birch find that, on average, students who've been accepted into courses that were only their third or fourth preference get grades 3.4 percentage points lower than those achieving their first or second preference. They're probably less motivated."
well no FUCKING SHIT! what kind of stupid statement is that


well done Phanatical couldnt have said better myself

another piece of shit study

 

[Generator]

K-12
Our schools need to explore boy-friendly methods of teaching.

Just for the record, many schools have been focusing on the boys for some time and often at the expense of the girls that you seem to believe are held on a pedestal by society at large.

 

[Frigid]

if you didn't want to start a "flame war", perhaps it would've been better to not post a completely one sided article

this article is to start a discussion. i do not agree with the opinion of Mr. Gittins (although i hold his words in high respect), nor do i agree with the conclusions of the studies. in fact, if you notice, only the first part is about so-called private school 'elitism'; the whole aim of the study, in my opinion, is to show the correllation, if any, between TERs and uni marks.

the idea that any "value-added" from a private education can be measured through grades at uni is so preposterous and narrow-minded. not to mention the degree of difficulty in obtaining high grades in different faculties and universities also vary greatly.

i agree.

if anyone is feeling brave, they can go email the researchers of this study to tell them what ignorant dumbshits they've been.

 

[Not-That-Bright]

Our school is running a new male class for english, trialing teaching the year 10 english syllabus in a more 'male' way, and they are achieving greater results than the females.

 

[Frigid]

Our school is running a new male class for english, trialing teaching the year 10 english syllabus in a more 'male' way, and they are achieving greater results than the females.

at my old school (single-sex male), they just made everyone do English Advanced.

 

[Not-That-Bright]

well at our school there's only like a few males who did english advanced... mainly because the males simply aren't as good at english.
Alot of people reckon this is because english is a more feminine subject, guys are afraid to express themselves in this way around girls, and it also needs to be taught in a more masculine way.
Our school trialed this with great success.... so maybe that's all that needs to be done? Segregated classes teaching the same thing but in different styles to each sex.

 

[Generator]

if anyone is feeling brave, they can go email the researchers of this study to tell them what ignorant dumbshits they've been.

I don't agree with that. The study was just as valid as any other educational research project, and there is no such thing as an objective measure of educational success given that everyone has an agenda.

 

[theone123]

Great article Frigid!
I completely agree with the opinions expressed, and coming from a government school it increases my confidence that I can compete with the private kiddies.

Btw - Which university did Ross Gittins go to (and did he attend a Gov't or private school)?

i went to his eco forum before,

 

[braindrainedAsh]

That's a really interesting article and I would have to agree with the majority of observations in it.

But being a female from a rural area from a public school where the majority of students didn't go to university it seems the odds have been stacked against me!!!!

 

[Farcanell]

pffft english lacks grunt... if language techniques were the kind of things you could sneak up on and stab with a spear, guys would be unbeatable at it...

For those who don't know, Ross Gittins isn't actually a researcher... rather he's a journalist, working as economics editor at SMH, as well as being some guy who occasionally writes editorials (such as this one).