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Royal Society of Chemistry Slams UK Exam Standards
cheesethegreat writes "The Royal Society of Chemistry has sharply criticized the 'catastrophically' falling standards for UK school exams in the sciences. The RSC had 1,300 highly achieving students take an exam made up of questions taken from the last 50 years. The students averaged an appalling 15% on 'hard' numerical questions set in the 1960s, but managing much higher marks on the more recent 'soft' non-numerical questions. This latest report has garnered mainstream media attention. The RSC has also created a petition on the UK Prime Minister's official website, calling for urgent intervention to halt the slide, which has garnered over 3,000 signatures. The issue of declining exam standards has been an ongoing concern in the UK, with allegations that exam results have been manipulated by the government to increase pass rates and meet its own targets."
US Schools do the same shit
News at 11
its well known in the uk that exam standards have been falling year after year, exam boards make their exams slightly easier, so that the students taking that one get better grades, so more people use that board over one of their competitors, and its just a downward spiral, its ruining our education, universities are having to work harder and harder to teach students what they would have come in knowing a few years ago. The universities cant let their standards slip so it just gets harder and harder for the students that actually go to university, while making those who stop at a-level seem better than they really are compared to those who sat the 'same' exams a few years ago
fuck all this learning must be fun horse shit, making learning fun hasn't helped anyone actually learn. maybe this recession will be a good thing, you have an entire spoilt generation out there who think they don't actually need to learn anything in order to make it through life.
Not sure what they mean by "Instead, they are doing the completely different, and more rigorous, International GCSEs, which are still in demand in Commonwealth countries."
Having taught first-year engineering in one form or another for 7 years at an Australian university, I can say whatever standards are implemented in other Commonwealth nations (like ours) are failing too.
The bright kids are as bright as ever (maybe even brighter), but the median just seems to sink lower, and lower and lower...
Even bright students with enthusiastic teachers are being compelled to "learn to the test", answering undemanding questions to satisfy the needs of league tables and national targets
I have to say, that aside from less quantifiable testing (ie essay based) the mentality of "study the test" is prevalent everywhere, even in higher education. I'm sure that if it were not, the pass rate would be attrocious and consequently, for many schools/institutions: "Goodbye tuition fees".
I record my sleeptalking
Science is incredibly maths based, how can you expect to be in any way competent in a related job after school, if you've spent your entire education doing simplified unrealistic tasks? Its like essay subjects such as history and geography saying you don't need to be able to write in clear English.
... in the UK is that young people now care more about who is going to win X-Factor and Britain's Got Talent than own performance at school.
And when you can just show up for an audition to a TV program, do a little dance and become rich and famous overnight, why on earth would you want an education?
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Keep numerical questions for the maths exams.
You're clearly a complete idiot. Without mathematics, chemistry and physics become meaningless qualitative handwaving. Without mathematics, it is impossible to interpret the results of an experiment, or even to demonstrate that your experiment is measuring the think that you think it's measuring.
If you think that science is in anyway separable from mathematics, I can only come to the conclusion that you know nothing of science.
Pirate Party UK
I'm sick of this "Kids in the 1950s were smarter than today" rubbish. I know that these old accidemics studied back then and want to feel smart but making kids feel dumb today is wrong and they should feel ashamaned.
Let me break it down for them and you:
- Kids in the 1950s did not study what we study today
- Kids today did not study what kids studied back in the 1950s
I know this is a shocking revolation but still true. If possible I would love to see what would happen if you sat a 1950s kid down in front of a 2008 exam, my guess is the results would be similar.
The only school subject which might be the same between the 1950s and today is Maths. But even then there is less focus on doing long calculations on the page and more using a calculator.
You can claim that doing them on the calculator is dumbing people down but I think voluntarily spending five minutes and likely introducing errors already makes you fairly dumb given an alternative.
First, let's get one thing straight.
This is not an argument anyone in a position of power can possibly win. More students fail? Your teaching standards are falling, your education system is lousy. More students pass? Your exams are too easy.
So instead, let's look at what organisations which aren't obliged to follow the state-designed education system think.
Several universities are introducing entrance exams, whereas previously this was more-or-less exclusive to Oxford and Cambridge.
Several universities are having to introduce more basic maths into their first year syllabus to get students up to speed.
Private schools are seriously considering dropping the state-set exams (GCSEs and A-levels) in favour of something else such as the International Baccalaureate. I myself have looked at papers which were set only 5 or 6 years after I left school and exams which I should by rights have been completely lost on - I could immediately see how to answer at least half the questions.
On the other hand, a lot of countries in north Africa and the Middle East consider that education is the only way they're going to improve their lot in the long term. Tunisia, for example, spends a third of its money on education and children leave school speaking at least three languages reasonably fluently. Many of the Arab emirates are doing something similar - they know the oil's not going to be there forever, and they want to be prepared for the day the wells dry up. No chance they can do that if most of their population can hardly read.
As for China - if you think you can move all your manufacturing out there and the locals won't one day say to themselves "Hang on a minute. We own all the factories, we know exactly how to build the kind of things that they buy in the West - why don't we design them ourselves and keep all the money?" you're living on another planet.
20 years from now, the West isn't going to be the technical research place it is today.
When that comparison between easy English and hard Chinese exams was in the news I asked a Chinese guy about it. He said that although the questions are harder, they vary very little across years so the students all just practice the question forms a lot beforehand, and regurgitate the method with minor changes during the exam.
Still, I'm sure exams have got easier over the years. It would be interesting to see if this has happened to university exams - Oxford and Cambridge must have records going back hundreds of years...
Your friendly neighborhood anarcho-capitalist chiming in again.
I understand that people think that education is a right. I don't see it that way, but it's where we are today. If people want to socialize education, so be it. My problem is in the grading system.
If you were allowed to grade the work you do at the office, what would you give yourself? This is the problem with teachers also being graders. When you socialize learning, you never want to strive for the perfect straight A class, or the complete disaster total failure class. Ending up with a C average means you can moan for more money and staff and administration next year.
I would accept socialize teaching if we had completely private and competitive grading systems. Think of the ACT and the SAT, but on a per-class basis. Let teachers know what is required for each tier in terms of learning, and then let the teachers hammer that home.
With private, competitive grading systems, different future work industries might look for different scores or even different grading systems. The student can pay for the ones they need, and take those tests. The educators can focus on "educating," and the cost of grading isn't passed on to the taxpayer. Some students may just want a "Social Equivalency" exam, and most private graders would offer similar ones. Other higher level students might need specific exams, to get an interview, for example.
When you socialize learning AND grading, of course you're going to eventually dumb down the system. That's how these things work.
It's referred to as 'Exam Technique' and is total bullshit. But hey, I did it, and got 11A*s, so who am I to complain? Anyway, things seem a little better at A- (AS-) Level, from what I've seen so far.
I went to a selective school - called a "grammar school" - which took the top 20% of the population based on a mixed IQ/attainment test. I was then in the top set for maths and the three sciences - so that's the top 5%. In the last two years at school I was in special groups that were applying to Cambridge (our school was heavily science biased to did not have Oxford applicants, who had to do Latin)- the top 1% in maths and physics. If you failed the Cambridge Entrance there was always Durham, Imperial or University College London, or Sussex.
There is your explanation. The exams in the 60s were aimed at - let's call it an elite. In those days there were few distractions - hardly anything on television, no mobile phones, electronic gadgets were basically for nerds who were already into electronics, music was about playing instruments or listening to a few very expensive recordings, not the iPod generation, theatre was about the school theatre group or the local AmDram society if you were good enough. To be absolutely honest, if you were a nerd, and there were enough of us, school was actually the most interesting place to be, where really intelligent adults spent quite a lot of spare time encouraging those of us who were interested in their subjects.
Nowadays schools are expected to spread their teaching assets over the entire pupil list, and the children have far more things to think about outside school. Exams are taken by most children, not just around 15% in each subject. Of course the emphasis has changed.
But if you are one of the top few percent, you can still get the education you want. Despite going through the state system, my children and their friends still go to Oxbridge and the top tier universities, and they still emerge just as well educated as our generation ever did.
I don't think the problem is anything at all to do with exams. It is that society nowadays needs a higher percentage of technically educated people, but the media give the impression that the best opportunities for the bright are in banking, finance, law and celebrity culture. Most journalists are technically illiterate, and the rest follows.
As for maths, you are simply wrong through ignorance. My generation used calculators. They just were not electronic. We had Brunswiga mechanical calculators, mathematical tables (which are basically a hand operated calculator system) and slide rules. The knowledge of how to use them is obsolete, but the principle of assisted calculation is the same.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Standards are not falling in private schools
Which is why the NuLabour government is doing its best to get rid of private schools. There is a marked and increasing difference in standards, and levelling down is so much easier than levelling up.
A while ago, the UK government's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) fined 50 leading private schools a total of GBP3.5 million (about $5.25 million) for exchanging information about the fees they were charging. See, for instance, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1511429/50-public-schools-fined-for-fixing-their-fees.html
Note that in the UK, "public school" means a particular type of private (independent, non-state) school. The name was adopted before there was any state-run education in the modern sense, so it was logical in its day.
The irony is that most (all, AFAIK) of those schools have charitable status - they are "not-for-profit", so that the fees they charge merely pay their costs. No one is getting rich from running those schools. Moreover, the fine of about $100,000 per school could only be paid by increasing the fees!
Obviously, the purported motive of the fines - to stop the schools colluding to distort trade, reduce competition, and raise prices - was not applicable in the case of the public schools. What could be more ridiculous than fining a bunch of charities for not being competitive enough, when none of them makes a profit?
It's even stranger when you reflect that the body doing the fining - the UK government - forces all children who do not attend independent schools to go into its own state education system, which offers no competition at all. Moreover, competition law does not seem to apply to transport (where big companies enjoy state-granted monopolies), TV (where Sky has a monopoly in satellite and Virgin in cable), or banking (in which, as we have recently noticed, there has hardly been any regulation at all).
It seems pretty obvious that the motive for the investigation and subsequent fines could only have been to damage the public schools' reputation and financial status. As it had to be passed on to the parents, it was really a fine on them for daring to avoid the state education system. In itself, this attack has apparently not forced any of the schools to close (yet), but the government and its supporters live in hope.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
The following examples may help to clarify the difference between the new and old math.
1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit?
1970 (Traditional math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. What is his profit?
1975 (New Math): A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100 and each element is worth $1.
(a) make 100 dots representing the elements of the set M
(b) The set C representing costs of production contains 20 fewer points than set M. Represent the set C as a subset of the set M.
(c) What is the cardinality of the set P of profits?
1990 (Dumbed-down math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Underline the number 20.
1997 (Whole Math): By cutting down a forest full of beautiful trees, a logger makes $20.
(a) What do you think of this way of making money?
(b) How did the forest birds and squirrels feel?
(c) Draw a picture of the forest as you'd like it to look.
I left school the year before they merged GCE (General Certificate of Education) and CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education) into GCSE.
The CSE syllabus was taught to those who were less academically capable (as evidenced by their past results). In my opinion, GCE taught how to calculate an answer, whereas CSE taught how to recognise an answer from a group of candidates. But that wasn't "fair" so everybody had to learn at the lowest common level.
That is the problem.
I do have experience of both types as although I did GCEs at school, I also went to college to learn car mechanics where I had to take basic English (Communication Skills) and Maths (Numeracy) as part of the course. Having already got GCEs in both, I pissed the college courses with distinctions. The top grade in CSE was only ever a C in GCE. The laughable thing from this recent article is that you can pass with around a 20% score.
The problem with most education systems is their assessment focus. If you create a heavy emphasis on rewards (gradings), you make students work the system rather than learning. That's basic organizational psychology. Assignments are especially demented, because they are so damn easy to cheat on. The good teachers can't cut back on assignments though, because their students focus on the subjects with the most assignments. That's suboptimization. Unfortunately, most politicians use "education" and "the attainment of pieces of paper" interchangeably (as do hungry educators), which perpetuates the myth that gradings are education.
So this is a unique opportunity to talk on /. and actually know what I'm on about.
I agree, the science exams we work towards these days are a pitiful shadow of what was taught in the past, and the slide is continuing.
Have a look yourself if you're interested:
http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/gcse/index.html
This is our exam board at the moment. There are past papers and mark schemes etc so you can see what the kids get put up against.
Calculations have gone out of the window it seems, moved up to A-levels. That's why there is a massive drop off in A-levels - kids think that it's the same but as soon as they get a bit of real science to do, it's too hard.
We're all supposed to make science relevant etc. The courses are a joke and the science is a joke, filled with 'science for everyone'. The science of mobile phones to teach microwaves (plus discussion on phones causing brain tumours). Cooking potato as a first lesson in organic chemistry to check on texture and colour. I kid you not. Everything is a discussion and an opinion, with little right or wrong answers. They are expected to debate whether we should build nuclear power stations or not without (I'm not exaggerating here) useful knowledge of nuclear power, decent atomic structure, other forms of generation, pollution concerns, resource management or how electricity works. It's far too touchy feely with far too little rigorous intellectual content.
I work in a UK school, having moved some years ago out of my research discipline. My school is not private but it is not the standard product either, being girls-only and basically running its own affairs. We get mainly higher-end kids but still have a "tail" ability-wise. In addition to science for younger pupils, I have always specialised in physics (not exactly an easy sell to girls). So, here are my thoughts...
The RSC are broadly correct with their analysis. It's a question of breadth versus depth. Certainly many pupils are now putting in far more hours than in my day, but then they are usually taking a wider variety of subjects, with some distinctly eclectic choices. They are also heavily involved with external activities, often with an eye on the CV in order to compete effectively for the "best" courses and/or universities. Staff support them as much as possible in all this, in my school often working 80+ hours per week during term (I'm taking a break to write this!) So, more effort is going in for and by some pupils - but to what effect?
The GCSE science courses are very poorly thought out - with a random jumble of disconnected facts ranging from the trivial to the arcane being presented together on the same textbook page. Children of 14 who are only dimly aware of what an electron is (in VERY simple terms) suddenly meet HOLES in connection with p-n junctions at the start of their GCSE course. Oh, and allow about 15 minutes to get the idea of a p-n junction across - then move on! Similar lunacies occur elsewhere in the specification, but you get the idea. So make science sexy and "relevant" by dumping the structure and rigour. To paraphrase an old physics joke, teach them about real horses before they know anything about spherical horses.
The advanced courses are better, but here the mathematics has been almost entirely removed, which is a clear advantage for those who are not going to take the subject at university but a massive disservice to those who are. It's not all bad, since it forces pupils to focus on principles (Feynman-style) but it can easily give a totally wrong impression of what science is really like. Most of my pupils do maths (and often further maths) anyway, so it's not a major problem for me.
Teaching to the test? No, sorry, I believe in pupils being encouraged to develop their critical thinking skills, where this is reasonable. Thinking rigorously is a major life-skill, unlike the test which will be history once it has been taken. The immediate consequence is that the subject is perceived by some as "almost impossible" but, ironically, those brave enough to still take it and committed enough to work at it come to love it! Since this is a public forum, I'm not going to comment explicitly on the predictable conseqences this can have with management - you're all bright enough to do that yourselves. Suffice it to say that I have yet to be promoted.
So, are we developing a generation of box-ticking, multi-tasking, shallow-thinking children who cannot do things for themselves? In general, yes - although the VERY best are still as good as ever: and as rare.
Science is about the application of mathematics. If you can examine a problem, construct an equation, and then mess up solving it, then you have done well at the part that is science but badly at the part that is maths. Outside an exam, you would probably use a computer on more complex equations (in Physics there are a lot that would take months or years to solve by on paper, and just a few hours on a computer), but the computer can't produce the equation for you.
As I recall from looking at science examinations from the '50s when I was at school, their main focus was on substituting a simple equation that you'd memorised by rote into a problem and then spending 90% of the time with your slide rule solving it. This doesn't assess your scientific ability, and it doesn't really assess your mathematical ability either. The reason we moved away from these kinds of question is that they are very poor metrics of scientific ability (which is not to say that the questions in recent years are good - they are just bad in different ways).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This has not been the case since the last Conservative government
I don't understand your point -- nothing you write seems to contradict the message to which you're replying.
who changed the rules so state schools other than your closest one had to accept you. This distorted things even more, since the more affluent parents could afford to drive their children to more distant schools with better results, while the poorer parents had no choice but the nearest school.
Whereas before that change the parent who wanted their children to go to good schools hat to move house to get into the right catchment area. And having a car is so obviously much less achievable for the poor than moving into a prestige neighbourhood was under the old system. Er...
Anyway, the rule about having to take kids from further away is a joke when there's barely adequate provision. There has to be some basis to decide who goes to which school (otherwise what would be the basis for any appeal) and they still all have locality as a selection criterion, and the good schools are all oversubscribed, so it's still down to where you live. When we were applying to secondary schools for my daughter we went around the schools, filled in all the forms, and the local authority said, in effect "Tough. You can't have any of the schools you wanted. This is the school she will go to." The whole thing about "choice" is that there can only be meaningful choice if there is over-provision, and there isn't over-provision in the UK state education system.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Yes, they are. Private schools are under even higher pressure to pass all students, because they have payed for the education. They also have to have higher average scores as the parents are more selective, if funds are limited (if it isn't an elite private school), then they have to cheat just like the public schools do.
I would give you points if I had any.
I can only speak for this side of the pond, since I'm not well versed in UK testing, but I specialize in educational assessment and the quality of state-sponsored standardized assessments are far below acceptable. Most schools will use expensive, well made psychometric assessments when they work with students with "special needs"; university admissions board require students to spend hundreds of dollars taking similarly high-quality exams; but when a state needs a "math" test, they contract it out to the lowest bidder and get what they pay for.
New York State, for example, has used norm-reference testing techniques (determining the passing score base on group mean) for what is a criterion-reference achievement test (8th grade Math A). The publisher's "technical report" also reported the exam scores to be bi-dimensional (per a principal component analysis), but that the two factors together only explained 20% of the total variance! They excused this by quoting an IRT theorist out of context. (The theorist was explaining when unidimensionality was acceptable in meeting the assumptions of IRT, NOT when unidimensionality was acceptable in a general sense.)
All this is to say that we have the know-how and the skills to create meaningful, educationally useful assessments that don't sacrifice the traditional qualities of score reliability or the validity of those scores' intended interpretations. The problem is that people in the government a) don't have those skills, b) refuse to talk with those of use who do(1), and c) are being blinding by the publishers who want to get a ROI for their test.
(1) Yes, I've tried to bring it up.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Odd thing is, I know a lot of kids, and the all work hard at their studies, help out on community programmes and generally behave very well. I don't suppose your view of kids might be based on the kids you notice rather than on the actual majority?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
"Hydrogen is composed of one Proton, one Neutron and one Electron. The proton and neutron are in the centre of the atom, while the electron orbits them. How do you think the electron feels about this?"
Distinctly charged. But, at times feels it could use a higher energy light source in order to raise its potential. And the constant moving about that central point now knowing exactly where it is and how fast it is supposed to move makes for uncertainty.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
... and I didn't really see that great a range in difficulty. They were all fairly straightforward, which is of course what you'd expect in a high school chemistry exam. The main differences I could see were that the more recent questions had a greater percentage of descriptive (non-numeric) questions. It was actually the questions from 1975 which had the greatest percentage of multiple-choice answers.
I suspect a lot of the difference in the students' results is from teaching to the test - they did well on the 2005 questions, because those are (in terms of phrasing and presentation) the ones they were taught to answer.
Oh come on you cant honestly believe this drivel! Public schools and paying for an education is the quintessential example of what is wrong with the world! It is incredibly unfair! Ignoring all the shit that is fed the poor kids that attend these institutions (I feel I am quite knowledgeable of the subject as I have spent a lot of time around public school pupils, and I am myself a state educated fellow) the strange elitist stuff and the notion that state educated people are "not as valid a member of society as public school educated people" (I am quoting someone I know there, who went to St Paul's). They should not have charitable status! It is plain bollocks that they are a charity. If you compare their salaries to the salaries of state school workers it is ridiculous, people do get very rich from running these institutions. I agree that there is always room for improvement in the education system but the public school system definitely isn't a model to go by!
"Public schools and paying for an education is the quintessential example of what is wrong with the world! It is incredibly unfair!"
So we should all get a shit education because we can't all afford the best one?
Fuck you and your race to the bottom. Your "friend" that went to St Pauls sounds like an arsehole, he's not typical of public school education.
"If you compare their salaries to the salaries of state school workers it is ridiculous"
How else are you going to attract and keep the best?
And before you say "they'd be teaching state-school kids if they weren't at public institutions", think about it. A lot of them are intelligent people and could make a lot of cash elsewhere. Teaching may not be their primary motivation.
Actually, private schools consistently get better grade averages because:
1. They select their intake
2. The parents take part in the kids education
3. They can permanently expel disruptive children
4. They can afford to employ the best teachers
5. They can afford to buy better facilities
Here's my answer:
The Electron finds itself full of negativity, despite feeling an attraction toward the Proton; however, the Proton is distant and closely attached to the Neutron, and the Electron uncertain about itself, possibly on account of constant travel. Sometimes an outside influence, which feels like a flash of light, raises it to new spheres, so to speak, and at those times it is full of energy, but the feeling is short-lived and dissipates in a radiant burst of activity, and the usual negativity resumes.
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).
6. They can afford to employ more teachers, so they have smaller class sizes.
Stuff gets shuffled. Back in the 50s there was a lot more focus on geometry: I did as much maths as was possible at school (2 A-levels and an AS) and I'm sure I didn't cover nearly as much geometry as my mother. In fact, I doubt I covered 10% of Euclid. On the other hand, she was surprised that group theory had moved into the A-level syllabus - she didn't encounter it before university - and the two "discrete mathematics" modules I took covered topics such as graph theory which were research material in the late 50s and early 60s. (Dijkstra's algorithm, by way of example, was invented in 1959 if Wikipedia can be believed).
I would guess that numbers 2 and 3 account for 90% of educational success.
In the U.S., #4 is incorrect. I'm not sure how things are in the UK. But in America, private schools pay less than public schools. Is that different from the UK? I believe the reasoning is that teaching in a private school is more desirable than teaching in a public school. Where I live, which has terrible terrible schools, teachers get paid higher. It's like hazard pay.
The Charities Act 2006 brought in new rules, stating that a "charity" has to be operated for the public good, rather than merely being a non-profit organisation. This isn't specific to private schools, but also affects religious organisations etc. To many, it seems absurd that someone could gain charitable status for an organisation that is set up to only benefit certain racial, religious or social groups, and it is true that charitable status was being used by some as a blatant tax dodge.
"Under the 2006 Charities Act, for the first time all charities - including charities which advance education or religion, or relieve poverty - must show they are established for the public benefit. The Act gives the Commission, as the independent regulator, responsibility for raising awareness about the public benefit requirement and carrying out public benefit checks on charities" (Charity Commission, 2007, p.1).
It is hard to see how a school that generates an income of tens of millions of pounds a year from the wealthiest families in society, like Eton, is run for the public good. Certainly, it is hard to see why it should be given the same tax breaks as a real charity that, say, provides care and support for children with cancer.
And the changes aren't opposed by everyone in the private school system - "Jonathan Shephard, general secretary of the Independent Schools Council, said he could find 'no quarrel with the principles set out'". (source)
What exactly is wrong with a charity having to show that it does some work to benefit the public good? Otherwise there would be no difference between a charity and a NFP organisation, and every small business owner would be registering as a "charity" for the tax breaks (NFP status doesn't mean you can't pay employees whatever you wish, it just means the parent organisation should break even at the end of the year).
I find it interesting that so many kids put in 4+ hours at home on their studies and still struggle. To me this is indicative of the way we've added all this content that isn't relevant while standards have slipped.
To address you point about fining public schools. While they have a charitable status thier operation is of no benefit other than to their pupils and staff. To my mind, there is no "charity" here. So they should lose charitable status and operate just like a regular corporation. And their colluding to fix prices was clearly in breach of both thier charitable status and the law.
I think 1 is pretty important too
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
OK, I'd like you to sign under: "I am willing to let the rich poor divide of our nation increase exponentially by denying poor people a fair chance and I am a horrible, horrible person." As much as I agree that my "friend" (yes the quotes are definitely required, thank you!) was not a typical example of publicly educated people, I do believe (and I have been on various scholarship courses where I was the only state educated person out of a group of 60! as everybody else managed to put together enough cash to get in) that the overall population does lean that way. There is no indication that there are more people teaching in private schools that are industry standard. In fact there is data to suggest that there is a higher percentage of ex-industry personnel teaching in state schools. Probably because they have made their money and they want to give something back.