Students in private schools are more likely to mitch off class and get involved in anti-social behaviour, according to a new study.

The findings were delivered by ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute) Professor Emer Smyth to an international conference at Trinity College.

Prof Smyth noted that students in private schools have higher self-reported rates of:

• Stealing from a shop – 18% vs 12% other schools
• Bad behaviour in public – 22% vs 10%
• Stealing from school – 11% vs 5%

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Prof Smyth said her team was surprised when they first came across their findings.

“It’s a finding we actually published a couple of years ago and we're still puzzling about it,” she said.

“It may be that there's less punitive sanctions in fee-paying schools than there would be in more disadvantaged settings, which may give students some leeway.

“The higher levels of anti-social behaviour in fee-paying schools seems to be related to, kind of, things like taking money that didn't belong to them at school or at home.

“[It may be] that there was more money or more stuff to be taken in more privileged settings.

“So it was a surprise but it shows that you can't really assume that, you know, anti-social behaviour is really about the young fellas hanging around in working-class areas.”

Behaviour

Prof Smyth said despite the higher levels of anti-social behaviour, students in private schools actually have less of a problem with authority than those in other schools.

“We're seeing reasonably high levels of school engagement in mixed and more middle-class schools,” she said.

“We also had another measure that was known as an opposition to authority subscale, so if you had levels of that, you are really resistant to being told what to do and so on – and we find that the levels there are lower in fee-paying schools.”

Findings

She said the ESRI double-checked the findings to make sure they were correct.

“I mean you do get this temporary acting out in adolescence that really doesn't necessarily have long-term consequences, but the findings aren't what we expected and we ran them every which way to make sure they were real,” she said.

Prof Smyth said her research also notes that there is no significant difference in behaviours between mixed and single-sex schools.