By Sean Zucker –
There are plenty of reasons that parents might enroll their kids in private school if their finances can support it. Private institutions typically offer smaller classes, a greater range of extracurriculars, and higher academic standards when compared to public alternatives. However, few likely do it in hopes of better health considerations. But that’s exactly what new research seems to indicate it will produce.
A new University College London study found that those who go to private school might have better overall health later in life, specifically by age 46. The researchers utilized data from the university’s 1970 British Cohort Study, which followed the lives of around 17,000 people born in England, Scotland and Wales during a single week in 1970. It analyzed students on the type of school and university they attended, alongside their educational accomplishment levels.
The study found that people who graduated from a prestigious Russell Group university, which comprises 24 private institutions renowned for their academic distinction, groundbreaking research and strong industry connections, typically exhibited superior performance on memory assessments, as well as evaluations designed to measure attention and visual processing skills.
The University College London team then examined health data collected from 8,500 participants during the Age 46 Biomedical Sweep. This survey included a thorough health evaluation, assessing cardiovascular health, physical capabilities and cognitive function through various objective tests and questionnaires.
The findings indicated that individuals who attended private schools generally had better cardiovascular health in midlife compared to their state-educated counterparts. They were less likely to be overweight or obese and had lower average blood pressure. Additionally, those who attended private schools performed better on cognitive assessments, particularly tests measuring attention and concentration.
Similarly, graduates of elite universities demonstrated superior performance on a range of cognitive tests compared to their peers from other institutions. At age 46, these individuals achieved higher scores in both word recall and animal naming tasks.
“Our findings suggest that the type of education institution people attend could potentially contribute to understanding the links between education and health. If this association is causal, future policies aimed at reducing health inequalities could take education quality into account as well as attainment,” the research team reported.
“This is particularly important given the increases in university attendance, in which other aspects of the education experience may better distinguish health inequality,” they added.
However, the team did add one major caveat. They cautioned that while the sample size is far from small, it is still too specific in terms of location and population to be definitive.
“The study focused on one generation in the UK who went to school in the 1980s and 1990s amid significant reforms in the UK education system. The generalizability of the results to the present day remains unclear, especially given the changes in the education system in recent years,” the researchers warned.
In America, this health divide may take a backseat to general attitudes toward college overall as positive responses across the board are plummeting. A 2023 Gallup poll found that only 36 percent of citizens had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. This was a sizable drop from 48 percent in 2018 and 57 percent in 2015.
This is especially concerning as American college graduates, regardless of whether they attended a private or public institution, live nearly a decade longer than those who do not have a degree.
