Private school alumni have better health outcomes by middle age than peers who went to public, state … [+] schools (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Going to private school is good for your health, according to a U.K. study by researchers at University College London.
Private school alumni have better health across a number of measures in middle age, including blood pressure, memory and BMI, than their peers who went to public school.
The link was apparent even when researchers took household income into account, suggesting that private education makes a difference over and above the effect of family background.
And attending a highs-tatus university has a similar impact, according to the study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, published by the British Medical Journal.
Researchers suggest a number of possible reasons for the findings, including that private schools may promote healthier behavior, including more physical activity.
Students at top private schools have access to as much as 10 times more outdoor space as children who go to public, state schools, according to an investigation published this week by The Guardian newspaper.
Better health may also result if attending a private school or a high-status university means individuals are more likely to move into higher-paying jobs.
The results chime with previous U.S. studies that found that attending a school with a low student:teacher ratio or a high-status university is linked with better cognitive function in old age.
And they will have particular resonance for the U.K. general election, with the opposition Labour Party pledging to remove tax exemptions for private schools.
“Our findings suggest that the type of education could potentially contribute to understanding links between education and health,” the researchers wrote in the journal article.
“If this association is causal, future policies aimed at reducing health inequalities could take education quality into account as well as attainment.”
Previous studies have established a link between education and health, with researchers even calculating that every year spent in education cuts the risk of premature death by two per cent.
But the latest study used data on more than 12,000 people born in 1970 to explore whether the type of education also had an impact.
Researchers grouped participants into those who had gone to a private, fee-paying school and those who went to a public, state school.
Those who had degrees were also put into two groups, depending on whether the university they attended was a member of the Russell Group — 24 research-intensive institutions including Oxford and Cambridge.
This was then plotted against health measures including BMI, pulse, blood pressure, memory, verbal fluency and executive function, taken between the ages of 46 and 48.
The results found that a private school education was associated with a better cardiometabolic health, and a higher-status university education with better cognitive function.
Those who went to private school had an average BMI of 26.9, for example, compared with 28.6 for state or public school alumni, and a pulse rate of 66.3 beats per minute compared with 68.4 for ex-public school students.
Researchers also looked at a range of potential influences, including health at age 10, parental education and household income, as well as factors such as how often the parent read to the child, how often the child went to museums and libraries, and whether the parent was interested in the child’s education, as assessed by the teacher.
Even when these factors had been taken into account, a private education and higher-status university were linked to better health.
“Higher- status institution attendance was associated with better subsequent health in mid- adulthood, using multiple objective health measures,” researchers wrote.
Possible reasons for the link are a greater emphasis on physical activity in private schools and better career opportunities for private school alumni, as well as for graduates of higher-status universities.
Researchers acknowledged, however, that some elements of socioeconomic background — such as how far parents pushed their children to do well at school — were hard to capture and may have an influence on health outcomes.
They said future research should focus on the relationship between the type of education and health, and on whether these findings also apply to other generations, particularly given the expansion in the number of young people going to university.
