A new study has found that those who went to a private school in England were no happier in their lives in their early 20s than their state-educated peers. The results of the study were published in the journal ‘Cambridge Journal of Education’. Researchers from the University College London (UCL) analysed data from the Next Steps study, run by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, which follows the lives of a representative sample of 15,770 people born in England between 1989 and 1990.
The participants have been regularly surveyed since 2004 when they were 13 and 14-year-old secondary school pupils. Life satisfaction was measured at ages 20 and 25 by asking the participants how satisfied or dissatisfied they were with the way their life had turned out so far. While the participants who had gone to private school were happier with their lot, after factors such as socioeconomic background and ethnicity were factored in, the difference vanished.
Mental health was measured at 14, 16, and 25 by asking questions such as ‘Have you been able to concentrate on what you are doing?’ And ‘Have you lost sleep over worry?’. The results suggested that there was no private school advantage for boys’ mental health at any age. Girls in private schools at the age of 16, had slightly better mental health than their state school counterparts.
The researchers concluded that overall, there was no convincing evidence of a difference in mental health or life satisfaction between the private and school pupils, either in their teenage years or in their early 20s.
Sociologist Dr. Morag Henderson said, “I think it is possible that the increased pastoral support was just starting to make a difference for this cohort. But it is also likely that although school resource is greater in private schools, the academic stress students face might be too and so we see each force cancelling the other out.”
Dr. Henderson added that the results might be different for today's schoolchildren, due to private schools being better able to support pupils who are struggling with their mental health since the start of the pandemic.
