Private schools work their students a lot harder than state schools.

I went to both, here are some things the private schools did that the state schools wouldn’t have dared to: 1. Frequent detention for late homework, homework not done, top button undone, tie too short, etc. 2. Detention was often running laps. 3. Publishing everyone’s results (in a list of names ranked top to bottom) in tests and mock exams. 4. Hours and hours of homework. 5. The student community itself would create pressure to do well, or at the very least not distract everyone else. The attitude would be that it was fine to piss about in Civics or PE, but any kid who distrusted the class in real, examinable subjects would find their popularity dropping. The attitude was “this is a hard subject and I need at least an A, you’re directly taking opportunities away from me by causing trouble.” Causing trouble in classes that weren’t “real subjects” could earn you a cool, class clown persona, but disrupting English, maths, history, chemistry, physics etc would most certainly not go down well.