I Went to a State School

Today I saw the hashtag ‘I went to a state school’ trending on Twitter and immediately felt compelled to write this blog.

You may be shocked to hear that I too went to a state school. And do you know what else? All my friends went to a state school, my family went to a state school, my boyfriend and his friends and family also went to a state school. My neighbours went to a state school.

Heck, more than 90% of the country went to a state school.

So “Why on Earth is this ‘I Went to a State School’ trending?” might be a reasonable question to be asking.

Well, here’s why…

• Since 1945 we’ve had five Prime Ministers that went to Eton – this is just one private school in the UK
• 39% of MPs went to private school (this is, at least, down from 50% in 1979)
• 50% of MPs went to a non-public grammar school
• On average, those individuals who attend a private school go on to have higher levels of educational achievement (Dearden et al., 2002; Sullivan et al., 2014).
• On average, those that went to private school are more likely to secure a high-status occupation and have higher wages (Dearden et al., 2002; Sullivan et al., 2014). In fact, students who are privately educated are likely to earn almost £200,000 more than state schools students
• The private school advantage — equivalently, the state school disadvantage — has increased over the latter part of the twentieth century (Green et al., 2012)
• 54% of chief executives of FTSE 100 companies, 51% of top medics, 54% of leading news journalists and 70% of High Court judges were privately educated

The recent monumental f**k up that was the A-Level and GCSE algorithm grading has highlighted the huge disadvantages of being a state school student compared to the advantages of a private school student.

The most obvious of which, is that students were given an average grade based on factors which included the school’s average historical grades – a huge disadvantage for brighter students who were set to over-achieve compared to their peers but a great advantage for private school students who may have been piggy-backing off of a school with high grades.

Why is this true, and therefore such a problem?

We know that, on average, private school students tend to have higher levels of educational achievement (see list above). Is this because people who can afford to pay for an education are smarter? Realistically, no, it is not. So why might it be that they get better grades?

I’m going to share some of the actual things that happen in state schools…

• Students are sent out of the class for not having the correct uniform, or uniform being ‘shabby’ (NB: if you can’t afford private school, let’s be honest, you may not be able to afford other things and for some of my classmates that often involved a new uniform)
• Classes are almost always over 30 students (NB: private school classes are, on average, between 10-15 students per class)
• Teachers are employed despite not being able to speak English simply because they accepted a lower wage and the school was having funding problems (NB: difficult to learn when you aren’t speaking the same language as your teacher)
• Students must buy their own books because the school can’t afford them (NB: often, we couldn’t either and turning up without your book didn’t mean sharing with a mate, it meant – yet again – being kicked out of the class)
• Students need to fill their CV / Uni application with diverse extra-curriculars, except the school doesn’t really offer extra-curriculars other than sport (NB: three-quarters of state school pupils said their school did not provide enough in the way of debating, volunteering or outdoor experiences other than sport, compared with less than half of those at independent schools.)Fun fact on this: while I was in Sixth Form at my state school, myself and a friend created our own clubs to help tackle this problem. However, it was difficult to control and recruit members and we often had to come up with our own plan for the club. Ultimately, it ate into a lot of our time and made our already packed schedules more stressful and harder to ensure nothing slipped. Perhaps an anecdote that shows it’s no wonder more private school students go to the most selective universities, including Oxbridge*

*36% of students at Cambridge and 42% at Oxford went to private school. But only 15% of all students over 16 are privately educated.

• My first day of Uni our class was asked to do a show of hands who was raised on a council estate, when only two of us from a class of 22 put our hands up, our lecturer said “Well done, you broke the odds. Most council estate kids don’t make it to this level of education.” A depressing postcode lottery.

And at my specific state school…

• We consistently had supply teachers throughout school, and this included the entirety of our GCSE Maths studies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of our class got lower than a C. (NB: The 2016/2017 ISC report found that ‘as pupil numbers in independent schools have increased, so have teacher numbers’. This is not the case for state schools, as pupil numbers continue to rise and teacher numbers fall (Around 42,000 full-time equivalent qualified teachers left the state-funded sector in the 12 months to November 2018 according to a Government Teacher Retention briefing)).
• These words actually came out of my A-Level History teacher’s mouth one day
  before an exam “Oops, I must’ve forgotten to tell you that part – well, you’ve got the night to revise” (NB: we all failed the exam the next day, she remained a teacher despite the oversight (unsurprising given the struggle to get teachers in the first place) and we all had to retake it or accept the black mark on our results card).

There is no denying the majority of private school students do work hard to achieve their grades, uni placement and career, and can also face added pressure to achieve from their fee-paying parents and grade-driven teachers. However, state school students face countless barriers to achieving, which largely come from a socio-economic perspective, and therefore an unfair disadvantage.

For this reason it’s not surprising people are calling out “I went to a state school”, because so much seems to mount up against state school students. It’s all about determination to succeed beyond your barriers and it’s about time we celebrated this and brought the inexcusable barriers to the forefront.

So, I went to a state school and while I faced a lot of these barriers I also:

•  Achieved two As and a B at A-Level – higher than my school average.
• Went to my chosen uni where I received a 2:1.
• Completed a diploma in Marketing and got a Distinction.
• Earn above the £401 per week wage average of my state school student
  counterparts (though less than my private school peers).
• Worked every waking second (and sometimes every second I should have been
  sleeping) to achieve in a school where often the odds felt against me (and where often I was told the odds were against me) while also keeping down a job to afford the books and uniform I needed to be able to attend my classes.
• Had many teachers who were dedicated to helping us go beyond our barriers and build our confidence.
• Know countless former state school students who rave about their school and have gone on to be very successful in a range of fields and sectors.