In recent history, the LSE has consistently shown a strong bias towards students from private schools when considering the proportion of the general UK student population as a whole, with privately educated students being over-represented five times over. As a (formerly) renowned and well-respected institution, the LSE has a responsibility to build and maintain an academic reputation befitting its claim to be “one of the foremost social science universities in the world”. A key factor in this equation is ensuring that only the finest students are admitted to the university, in order to breed a culture of learning and academia. Thus, the LSE’s admissions policy begs the question, are students from independent schools truly superior to their state-educated counterparts?
On paper, evidence would suggest so. In terms of public examination results, independent schools have reliably dominated the league tables, occupying eight out of the top ten places in terms of A-level performance in 2009, an impressive figure considering a significant number of elite independent schools decided to boycott this year’s league tables, preferring to submit their results to the Independent Schools Council instead. The exceptional results of private schools are hardly surprising – parents do not pay up to £30,000 a year for their children to receive a substandard education.
Of course, behind the statistics lie dedicated teachers motivated by high salaries; a stable environment conducive to learning; and the well-publicised private school practice of rigourous spoon-feeding and hand-holding throughout the entirety of a student’s academic life, from exam preparation to the university application process. Does this cheapen the intrinsic value conveyed to a student by the private school system? Perhaps. It is a system whose intent is to ensure its beneficiaries are afforded the university education of their choice and, in this respect, it performs admirably. However, it would be frivolous and frankly insulting to suggest that privately-educated students perform better purely because of the inherent advantages that come with a private school, especially when considering the extremely selective nature of elite independent schools.
The government initiative to reduce the overrepresentation of independent schools at leading universities in the UK is simply a ploy to compensate for the failings of the abomination that is the state education system. After all, why should students who choose to receive a private education be penalised for their academic success when their schools already do not take taxpayer money, whilst their families generally pay well above the national average in taxes, which, in turn, go towards the provision of state-funded education.
Rewarding mediocrity through the establishment of minimum quotas for state-educated students can only lead to a worsening of standards at the UK’s top universities. Rather, the government should take measures to improve its education system, namely, increasing free competition between schools and reducing the power of teachers’ unions that effectively make it impossible to fire incompetent teachers.
With its severely declining rankings in recent university league tables, there has been no other time when it is of the utmost importance that the LSE should reserve the right to select the students it considers best, instead of following a set of government guidelines whose only purpose is to draw attention away from an education system that has proved to be highly ineffective on a large scale in recent years.
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on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 7:21 am and is filed under Comment.
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Social engineering gone made? – 3
by Bryan Ong on 23 Oct 2009 in Comment
In recent history, the LSE has consistently shown a strong bias towards students from private schools when considering the proportion of the general UK student population as a whole, with privately educated students being over-represented five times over. As a (formerly) renowned and well-respected institution, the LSE has a responsibility to build and maintain an academic reputation befitting its claim to be “one of the foremost social science universities in the world”. A key factor in this equation is ensuring that only the finest students are admitted to the university, in order to breed a culture of learning and academia. Thus, the LSE’s admissions policy begs the question, are students from independent schools truly superior to their state-educated counterparts?
On paper, evidence would suggest so. In terms of public examination results, independent schools have reliably dominated the league tables, occupying eight out of the top ten places in terms of A-level performance in 2009, an impressive figure considering a significant number of elite independent schools decided to boycott this year’s league tables, preferring to submit their results to the Independent Schools Council instead. The exceptional results of private schools are hardly surprising – parents do not pay up to £30,000 a year for their children to receive a substandard education.
Of course, behind the statistics lie dedicated teachers motivated by high salaries; a stable environment conducive to learning; and the well-publicised private school practice of rigourous spoon-feeding and hand-holding throughout the entirety of a student’s academic life, from exam preparation to the university application process. Does this cheapen the intrinsic value conveyed to a student by the private school system? Perhaps. It is a system whose intent is to ensure its beneficiaries are afforded the university education of their choice and, in this respect, it performs admirably. However, it would be frivolous and frankly insulting to suggest that privately-educated students perform better purely because of the inherent advantages that come with a private school, especially when considering the extremely selective nature of elite independent schools.
The government initiative to reduce the overrepresentation of independent schools at leading universities in the UK is simply a ploy to compensate for the failings of the abomination that is the state education system. After all, why should students who choose to receive a private education be penalised for their academic success when their schools already do not take taxpayer money, whilst their families generally pay well above the national average in taxes, which, in turn, go towards the provision of state-funded education.
Rewarding mediocrity through the establishment of minimum quotas for state-educated students can only lead to a worsening of standards at the UK’s top universities. Rather, the government should take measures to improve its education system, namely, increasing free competition between schools and reducing the power of teachers’ unions that effectively make it impossible to fire incompetent teachers.
With its severely declining rankings in recent university league tables, there has been no other time when it is of the utmost importance that the LSE should reserve the right to select the students it considers best, instead of following a set of government guidelines whose only purpose is to draw attention away from an education system that has proved to be highly ineffective on a large scale in recent years.
This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 7:21 am and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.