Industry News
State schools 'failing children'
Posted on 25th September 2007
The education system is failing children by teaching them to parrot not think and hinders state school pupils from gaining entry to "elite" universities, a commentator has said.
Writing in the Guardian, Jenni Russell made her comments in response to the current debate on testing, in which many experts claimed children suffered from over-examination.
She said that children who have attended state schools will struggle to gain admission to elite universities because of the way their schools are forced to teach them.
"What the top universities are looking for, besides academic performance, is intellectual creativity, a capacity for lateral thought and argument, and a deep knowledge of and enthusiasm for the subject," she argued.
The Sutton Trust recently reported that 100 elite schools had accounted for one third of Oxbridge admissions and that 80 per cent of those schools were independent.
Its chairperson Sir Peter Lampl said the findings were "deeply worrying" and that a large majority of the population did not have access to the same opportunities offered at those schools.
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