Don't want to send DS to school with 40% GCSE pass rate

People are muddling cause and effect here though.
If you have a school with a less able intake they will get poorer results no matter how great the school is.
Equally schools with strong intakes (which the people claiming 80% at 5+ must be) are going to get good results.

The results need to be compared against the intake. (which is why progress 8 is more useful). A school with a strong intake getting good but not as good as expected results may have a better set of results than a school with a lower ability intake who are all doing better than expected. Which is the better school?

Can I ask a clarification.

Are you saying only 40% get a 5 or above in English and only 40% get a 5 and above in maths

Or only 40% get a 5 or above in English AND maths.

As it is slightly different. The last isn't massively off national average (which is 45ish%)

Is there anything obvious like an SEN unit at one that isn't at the other.

What's the progress score?

@Hemiola 81%???? Is it a selective school? Either overtly or covertly?

I'll be honest, that's not great, and we managed to avoid our catchment school where the English + Maths at 5+ was only 33%. Whereas the (comprehensive) DD is at had 80% (5+ for maths and English); the other two good comps nearby had 69% and 73%. Anecdotally, the behaviour at the local school isn't great either - if you have other options, I'd go for them.

DD's school had a lower pass rare than that but she got nearly all 9s and 8s.
The figures might mean teaching is poor but they're more likely to reflect the intake.
DD's school had a high proportion of refugee and asylum seeking kids, kids who didn't have English as a first language, kids with serious SEND needs, kids living in extreme poverty, and looked after children. Many of those kids extremely bright and talented but they were facing huge challenges so it's not surprising that the school has a lower pass rate than the school up the road with a different demographic.

It very much depends on the type of children attending and your child. My DC went to 2 different schools.

School 1 - where DC1 went. A 'good school', religious school, very high levels of attainment and academic achievement. Affluent, engaged parents, loads of tutoring etc. DC was average in school. Felt stupid and did pass all GCSEs but not at a high level.

School 2 - where DD and DS2 go. Dodgy area, high pupil premium, low attainment. BUT they really push and and encourage their 'high attainers' (means anyone on track for 6 and above). My DC1 would have been one of these. I think he'd have done MUCH better at this school from a self esteem point of view, as well as grades. My Y11 DCs are predicted all 7-9 at GCSE. There are so many measures in place to grades, after school lessons, lunchtime lessons, loads of info on how to revise etc etc. They are looking to do a lot lot better than my niece who went to a good private school from nursery (she wasn't considered a high achiever and treated accordingly).

So even if your DC is average a school where he is valued will make him feel good and therefore do better. If he's really clever then he'll stand out. These schools often really value their 'high achievers'.

You need to have a look at the achievement of the high, middle and lower attainers. If the school, for whatever reason has a high % of low attainers it will skew the results.

I agree with you. I wouldn’t either. Our school which Is a non selective is 84% level 5 in English and maths and 93% 4+. I wouldn’t have been happy with my kids being in a school with less than half the kids passing and I’d certainly have concerns about whether they’re really teaching to 7-9 level for the more able students

A grade 4 is a pass at GCSE.

Hmm.

Is your son a low, high or middle attainer?

If he's a low attainer - struggled to do well in his sats and reading isn't good then actually this could be a good school for him IF it's focused on teaching children at his level (which most of them will be) and has a good behaviour policy/is on top of behaviour.

Middle or higher attainer is more problematic but if the school is largely set by attainment it might be ok.

Yr6 is 10-11yos. They start secondary school at 1yo in England, only a few months younger than Scotland.

Not a resident of England (Edinburgh) but that sounds CRAZY young to have to commit! At the end of the da, thought, it's the home environment that has vastly the biggest impact so....

Bear in mind that 40% can be specifically referring to 40% of those who had just started Secondary when Covid kicked off and had also taken their SATs at the end of KS2.

So in a cohort of 150, depending upon area, that could mean your 40% is actually nearer 40 of 100 or fewer children who did pretty damn well considering the disruption, the health and living condition for their families and whether they were new to English at the start of Year 6 (and whether there is a lot of movement, such as post Brexit returns to home countries or a more transient population due to insecure accommodation, following employment opportunities, being unable to afford accommodation in the area when the CoL started to bite, Home Office moves, etc).

If you're also in a grammar area or within easy travelling distance of one or there are a significant number of private schools, that reduces the baseline of students further and could also mean that a significant number then changed schools in the last two academic years so that the school has lost a number of results that could have changed the headline figures.

As previous posters have said

• Check the rates for Maths & English individually
• Check the actual pass rates (4+)
• Check the results for previous high attainers
• Check the school's setting policy

I can see the concern - I would be worried that education isn't prioritised by many families.

The secondary school my DC went to sat around that level. My kids both got nothing lower than a B/6 and a swathe of 7,8 and 9 for the majority of their grades. Our town is very m8xed, with some leafy bits and some very deprived bits, but a student who wanted to work hard and succeed would do well.

I went to a comp that had a 41% 'five A-C pass rate'.

There was definitely a culture of 'too cool for school' and kids that were clever/motivated were targeted and dragged down. The school wasn't big enough for effective streaming and there were kids in the top set who should have been in lower sets. They caused disruption in every lesson, every day.

If your child is academic, I'd seriously consider moving if you can afford to or applying for a local selective school if they exist in your area - e.g. 12+ or 13+ exam.

As others have said, the average across the country is 45%.

A previous poster provided a link to the compare school performance service gov.uk website. This is a great resource to compare schools in a local area.

The average across all schools for the Local Authority where I live is 36%. This ranges generally from 17% to 50% with one school at 79%.

The school that has the very high figure is a Church of England secondary school that has around 10% of places awarded based on passing an entrance exam or on musical ability.

The rest of the places are given to children of worshipping members of the Church of England or Methodist church. After that it goes to children of other Christian denominations and Other Major Faiths.

Only if there aren't enough pupils in any of the above categories will other local children be considered on a nearest to the school basis.

And they expect the parents to have been active, regular, worshippers for a number of years. You get points depending on how often you attend and for how many years. You are then ranked and those with the most points get offered places first. You can't fake it either, you have to get written confirmation from your vicar, priest, rabbi, pandit or imam.

The school is wildly oversubscribed and parents (unless they physically live very close to the school) plan several years in advance if they're planning for their children to attend this school.

If you look at the breakdown of the figures for this school on the gov.uk website (look for the school and then click on Secondary, Results by pupil characteristics, prior attainment) it gives figures for different groups of pupils based on how they did at Key Stage 2 - they are referred to as "Low Prior Attainers", "Middle Prior Attainers" and "High Prior Attainers".

For example, this school in particular had 5% low attainers, 45% middle attainers and 50% high attainers.

So they had a lot of very bright kids going to that school anyway to start with. But it also did great when it came to teaching those children and the Progress8 score was also very good as well for all groups. Also, they only had a very small number of disadvantaged pupils (8%) but they did well with a 46% pass rate.
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Contrast that to the school that came out bottom (excluding special schools etc).

This school had a 17% pass rate. But look at the type of children at the school. 48% disadvantaged. When it came attainment there were 45% low attainers, 45% middle attainers and only 5% high attainers.

But despite the overall low scores at that school those high attainers still managed to get an 85% pass rate (the pass rate for high attainers at the top school was 93%).

Having said that, their Progress 8 score was definitely down at the bottom end so there is definitely room for improvement.
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So, find out where your DC are in terms of Key Stage 2. Are they low, middle or high attainers? Are your DC disadvantaged or have English as an additional language?

Then have a look to see how each secondary school is doing for the relevant group for your DC rather than trying to compare an overall figure that may be very different simply because there are more high prior attainers at one school than at another.

England average is 45% so you're being unrealistic in terms of expectations. That's a completely average school you have there.

I wonder if I'm being sexist here, but I would especially worry about the effect of school culture for a boy. I went to a school where there was an anti-learning culture and hung out with a group of nerdy girls in a forgotten corner of the school and we had a great time and most of us ended up going to uni.

I think the penalty for nerdier boys who wanted to learn was worse, the idea of what a man was, was someone who was good at sport or who did loads of drugs and partied a lot (it was the 90s... hopefully less of that now). I would consider moving for a better school.

My GCSE year had 35% 5 A-Cs but my friendship group all had 8+ A/A some straight A/A and some with a couple of Bs C's. We got As and Bs at A levels. We are in our mid30s now and 2 of us have PhDs and another is a medical Dr!
I went to a good uni and got a 1st in an integrated master's and went on to get a PhD in the same university. I found the adjustment to uni much easier than my friend who went to a top ranking private school. We had the same A level grades but she came out with a 2:2 as she struggled with independent study. If I was sick and had to rely on her notes from a lecture they had half the information i usually had written in a lecture. I wrote pretty much everything the lecturer said down and she just wrote the notes the lecturer wrote. I definitely think I have had better life having been to a school with low results. My teachers generally taught to grade C in class. If you wanted to get a higher grade it was off your own back. They would run extra classes over the holidays and after school. If you showed willing they would go above and beyond for you. That self drive has stuck with me and I think it's the best thing I could have learnt from school. Having friends in the same situation helped too, we bought a text book on eBay and then shared that during our a levels.

My little sister went through the school too and she is a self taught accountant. She missed 2 years of school due to ill health and started with book keeping courses and went from there until she qualified. Grit and determination are very valuable skills!

Are you looking at the 4+ statistic rather than the 5+ (which is what OP is quoting)? 80% is incredibly good for a non-selective school and seems very unlikely if the demographic is "not great".

What's the percentage getting maths at 5+ and English at 5+ separately?

As others have said, that 40% is not far off the national average, so if the school has a slightly below average profile, that's what you'd expect. (If it has a much higher profile, then that is rather less than impressive ...)

What's the percentage for a 4? That's the pass rate. It's also, contrary to what the media would have you believe, not that easy to pass English Language. Especially if kids don't read themselves.