I have tutored in private schools (rich, not religious) and have heard of how they structure their day. One prominent thing is that of more freedom. They have m

I have tutored in private schools (rich, not religious) and have heard of how they structure their day. One prominent thing is that of more freedom. They have more time in between classes, more freedom to socialize, and more choice in their life. This is huge. Additionally, they can get tutored as I just mentioned. Related to that are all the test preps and extra-curricular activities that can be supported with money, etc. These additional resources enrich what students can bring to the classroom. It is hard, however, to ascertain whether their outcomes are better because of anything to do with the school. They have more resources, family connections, and connecting to each other who also have other resources. Fundamentally, my belief is that one should focus on grooming intelligence, not knowledge. The question then becomes how does one help a person become more intelligent? Programming them with knowledge does not help; it just creates miserable robots. Instead, allowing them to be free, moving, interacting, socializing, making a mess out of exploring reality, this is what grows the brain, IMO. I work for a Sudbury school and this is what we focus on making happen. Demonstrative anecdote: we had a student who was with us from age 5 to age 12. He never had any formal instruction. He wanted to go to a different school to join their baseball team. It is a highly respected private school in the area. They interviewed him and were impressed and let him in. In his first weeks of school, he did not know about parts of speech or that a dot meant multiplication of numbers. He quickly learned all of that (pretty simple, after all) and got 90's on his first tests. Intelligence is hard to acquire and it requires freedom to explore, freedom to move, freedom to socialize. Knowledge is relatively straightforward to acquire when the brain is ready for it.