Greatest value-added score in England, A-level results

[lljkk]

Does anyone know which sixth form or school got the highest score, 2017 A-levels? Highest we have found so far is Queen Ethelberga's in Yorkshire with score = 0.54.

Thanks in advance.

[Clavinova]

King's College Maths School is 0.71 for A-levels.

[lljkk]

ta much. Is that the 6th form sponsored by the Uni...?.. I was trying to find a national list of all results I could sort from high to low... am I missing a trick how to do that?

[Rose0]

I'm not sure why you're looking for this so don't know if this is relevant, and I don't know how you'd do what you're looking to do but I think Queen Ethelburga's figures are skewed by the fact that they put students who aren't high achievers into the "faculty" (and I think encourage them to do BTECs).

[Scabbersley]

My dds old private school used to boast about this. It was odd because 95% of kids came directly up from it's own prep so seems to suggest the prep wasn't doing its job very well

[Notaguru66]

Harris Academy Battersea's A level value added was 1.01. But given the average points score 32.59 equivalent to a good C, the students must have had a very low starting point.

There are some small private schools with higher VA and Breckenbrough appears in the data download table but has no data in the tables.

Abbey College in Malvern 1.45
Bellerbys College London 1.15
Abbey College Cambridge 1.1
Newbury Hall School 1.08
Breckenbrough School 1.07
Harris Academy Battersea 1.01
Nottingham University Academy of Science and Technology 0.83
King's College London Maths School 0.77

[lljkk]

Interesting on the QEthelb. "faculty"

It's not me who needs to know... it's yr11 DD who asked. See her my moan in MN thread classics!! I'm trying to explain to her imprecision of the statistics, why they need to be presented in bands. She figured out that the average grade matters too, at least.

[AlexanderHamilton]

Are the scores derived from the progress between gcse & A levels or from KS2 SATS Onwards as many private preps don't do SATS. Also schools that do IGCSE don't get counted in league tables so this skews the score of many leading private schools.

[LoniceraJaponica]

I don't know about the added value, but Greenhead College in Huddersfield is one of the best 6th form colleges in the country.

[Notaguru66]

The A level measure is based on average GCSE results and is calculated for private schools. It's quite hard for schools which do fantastically at GCSE to have a very high value added. Westminster - as a random example - has a VA score of +0.06 (I think iGCSEs are counted btw.)

Kings maths school does so well because they recruit exceptional mathematicians who may not have done so well in other subjects - and then get excellent A level results. I suspect their VA will fall as the average attainment on entry rises.

[noblegiraffe]

I think Kings also have high entry requirements for progression to Y13 (although that may have changed post-St Olave).

[Rose0]

Oh yeah - Ethelburga's also recruit a lot, or they used to. DD (who just finished year 13) was spammed by them throughout year 11 because she was predicted over 8As and told she could get a near enough full scholarship if she got 8As, then bombarded post results day. We don't even know how they got her email but she and a few friends from the grammar school (also predicted 8A*s+) were all on the receiving end of this...

[DumbledoresApprentice]

It’s done on GCSE-A level progress. The school I teach in gets amazing GCSE progress scores but we then struggle to convert that to a decent A Level progess score. We don’t take many external students from other schools but when we do then tend to make much better “progress” than those that came from our own year 11 just because they tend to have lower GCSE grades.

[Dumbledore345]

The Harris Battersea figure is interesting as they also claim to have the highest progress 8 in the country to GCSE and to be the best performing secondary in Battersea. This would imply some very strong GCSE results. So how can they be adding all the value at A level? Does this mean they have a large cohort of low achieving students at GCSE who do not continue into 6th Form?

[Notaguru66]

Dumbledore - It would mean the opposite - high achievers leave and poor achievers stay. But I suspect that there is a structural change (new sixth form maybe) and as more pupils progress from KS4, their A level VA will fall considerably - whilst getting higher raw scores.

Noble - Kings had 65 pupils sit A levels - there were 69 on the roll for the 2015 January school census. So any cull was fairly small - although I think they do/did want Bs at AS.

[evenstrangerthings]

My DD was part of that King’s Maths School cohort. We were very pleased with her VA. It really is a great school. As the school gets more well known it’ll be interesting to see if they can maintain that strong VA.

DD entered after GCSE results day as they still had places. This year they filled all their places from their own waiting list, after 300+ applications for 70 places.

[noblegiraffe]

You'd expect any cull to be small, notaguru given their application process which includes an admission test!

[GHGN]

Bellerbys and Abbey recuits many students from my country and from the schools that specifically train competitiors for International Olympiads. They have no GCSE records and then ended up at very top universities. I would question why they don't have many more Oxbridge candidates :)

[user1467835354]

Queen Ethelburga’s often say in their advertising that they are ‘one of the UK’s top independent schools’ (sic) and use league table performance based on A level scores(%A*/A) to substantiate their claim. However, if you look at the Department of Education’s very granular data not all of their pupils are entered for A level, further on average the College students are being entered for less than 2 A levels and the Faculty less than 1 on average. If all schools carefully selected which pupils were entered for A level and for how many, a number would see an improvement in their league table performance.