Right. Growing up in Melbourne (Australia) there was a marked difference in the performance of state school and private school students at university. Theory (don't know about studies) was that the private schools were selective about their students, but also held a lot of their reputation (and their ability to justify tuition) on TER (Tertiary Entrance Ranking) scores, and as such, taught their students extremely well "how to get a very high TER", but not necessarily how to be an independent learner - information spoon-fed in classes as such meant that assignment and essay scores were quite a bit higher than those in state schools, where there wasn't the individual and personalized attention available.

Once those students got to university, while the state school students were used to conducting independent research, having no-one who particularly cared or was going to crack the whip on assignment turn-in ("You're adults - turn your work in or don't. Not my problem."), and such thrived, while many private students found themselves at a loss. I remember many questions about elementary "Well, how would I go about researching that/studying this/doing that" in my first year of university that were along the lines of this theory.