competitive university, I was shocked to find that the level of work in first year was what I had experienced in Grade 8. Frankly, there is no way a public institution, committed to educating all (or nearly all) comers can offer the same pacing and intensity of instruction. The research on public-vs-private school effectiveness is not at all clear cut, and certainly does not favour private schools as being generally superior to public schools. When other factors are controlled for, they come out about equally effective. There are rotten, ghastly private schools (academically speaking) that the parents who patronize them are quite pleased with because -- imagine this -- those parents don't much care about academics. Really! There are plenty of people who consider academic achievement to be well down the list (or missing from the list) of important goals for their children. Stanovich pointed out that the scientific method means that a particular study is merely one data point; it is the balance of cumulative evidence that shifts the scale towards proof of one position or another. The evidence in the private-vs-public school debate does not tilt either way, in large part because apples and shoelaces are being compared, and in other cases because what patrons of private schools value and support differs markedly from public school foci and also from those of other private schools. What we need is more variability within the public system to meet the needs of the kids in between, who don't fit the