Alex Hecht, a fifth-year pupil at Mearns Castle High, is one of the pupils who has opted for an East Renfrewshire school, having previously been at the independent Craigholme School in Glasgow.
She is one of 11 in the upper stages of the top-performing council school who started out in the independent sector.
Experts are unclear whether Alex and others like her are part of a trend, which East Renfrewshire officials prefer to describe as a “steady drift.”
But the authority’s experience does confirm the implication from the recent study by Professor Lindsay Paterson of Edinburgh University that state schools can prove as attractive as the independent sector if they perform well.
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