State school 6th forms oversubscribed

Why are you not suggesting increasing staffing as an option? More bums on seats = more funding = ability to increase staffing.

Okay @noblegiraffe : me explaining that we know what schools’ A-level class sizes actually are, was in response to the posters saying you can just add more pupils to A-level classes, and their kids were taught in A-level class sizes of 30.

You asked me how I know, so I explained. If you write school references, as you say, then you should know all of this already — and if you write school references, then you must be an A-level teacher, or head of year/head of school. So, please tell me, what are the sizes of the A-level classes you teach; and how many pupils would you be willing to add to them before decreasing your timetabling elsewhere?

Well exactly. You were trying to make out that it's massively important and unis have this data and scrutinise it incredibly closely. And that I should be 'worried' that my 'competitors' were providing this data.

Oh yeah, definitely, that’s exactly what would swing it. We make our decisions just purely on this. 🙄

Do people genuinely have so little idea of teaching that they think an A-level English or Biology teacher can just double the number of pupils in the class

Baffled as to why you think class sizes are going to double.

I thought the problem here was that kids weren't going to get into those classes.

I feel sorry for all those kids sweating out their personal statements, doing work experience, volunteering etc when apparently what might swing it is their class having 20 kids instead of 16.

The situation at your DC's school sounds difficult @OhCrumbsWhereNow but it must be quite unusual. There can't be many schools with "a queue of kids with all grade 9s wanting a place" and such a big drop in PAN between year 11 and 12. I mean last year there were only 1270 pupils in the whole of England who achieved all 9s at GCSE and there are about 2800 schools/colleges with 6th forms. I know attainment is not spread evenly across the country and results are highest in London but even so it seems improbable that there will be many schools swamped with such high achievers.
I'm sure it must be very stressful for parents and pupils who are in that position and I'm sympathetic to them but it must be a pretty localised problem and the relevant LEA needs to look at their provision. It doesn't sound like increased numbers of private school pupils is really the problem. When a school is already unable to offer 6th form places to such a small proportion of year 11 I can see that even a few extra applicants makes a bad situation worse, but surely the root cause of the problem is that there's an inadequately sized 6th form at a large, high achieving school? That's nothing to do with VAT on private education.

So we add a lot of additional data, plus our applicants fill in part of the form about the quality of their A-level teaching, any disruptions, etc. But we do this every year for large numbers of applicants, so we get to know how schools across the country work very well.

BUT the point here is that posters seem to think that A-levels can just be taught in massive classes the same way Year 7 or GCSE classes are. That isn’t the norm and it isn’t feasible without employing more teachers. In STEM each student needs additional practical time and resources; they all need work intensively marked and more individual teaching time than in lower school classes.

Do people genuinely have so little idea of teaching that they think an A-level English or Biology teacher can just double the number of pupils in the class with no effect on workload and school resources?

Seems a no brainer to me. Otherwise why would grammar schools be so popular with parents of high achievers.

True

Average A-level class size tells you fuck all about the classes those students are actually in.

Our applicants fill in an additional form telling us — BUT, the vast majority of our school references do actually tell us (eg. in Maths X student is in the top 2 of an A-level class/cohort of y); School Z is a mixed-entry comprehensive with xx pupils in the sixth form; our average A-level class is 15 etc. If your references aren’t doing that then I hate to tell you, your competitors are.

Plus the UCAS school reference page has a figure entry for the total numbers in each the upper and lower sixth cohorts in the school. In addition to the school data we get from the national DfE databases, which shows comparative pupil number figures and achievement levels across that LEA and nationally, number of FE and HE offers for that school per year for the last five years plus achieved places; number of Oxbridge offers and achieved places, FSM percentages at each level, POLAR pupil neighbourhood and school scores, among many other things.

We also keep and maintain pretty extensive background knowledge of all schools throughout the country because it factors into our offer decisions for each subject, school type and individual school. It’s all very data-driven these days.

I write school references and they don't say class size for each class the pupil is in.

I'm pretty sure school-wide data wouldn't tell you how big individual classes are either.

@noblegiraffe our applicants have to fill in a form with all these details, but we also have very detailed data available to us from the school references on this, plus data about each school and how it compares to LEA and national averages for pupil sizes at each level.

Really?

If you have a very academic child and are targeting very selective university courses or Oxbridge, are you going to try and send your child to:

A) a school with an high achieving cohort where they have significant experience of Oxbridge pathways and a peer group at the same level.

B) a lower achieving school where your child may be an outlier or they don't have the same level of experience of managing those pathways and providing the support.

Seems a no brainer to me. Otherwise why would grammar schools be so popular with parents of high achievers.

It's interesting there's so much variation. Our (pretty leafy) outer London comps vary in minimum tariffs for internal applicants - from 6s (7 for maths) for academic subjects in the most sought after comp to 5s at the less popular ones. Ours is in the middle with a mix of 5s and 6s as the minimum.

The big "Outstanding" sixth form college has mixed grade requirements - 6s for maths and sciences, 4s for the rest.

The downside for private applicants to the school sixth forms is that they all prioritise existing students and have pretty small minimum PAN for external applicants (where the private students will be competing with other state students who want to change school for whatever reason.) For example ours has an external minimum PAN of 12 (out of 120 places.)

This thread has been a good reminder to check the relative starting point when looking at how good a school is based on results!

So: they clearly already have enough teachers to timetable that. As a result those teachers will already teach fewer lower school lessons (if they are in a school. Sixth form colleges are funded and staffed slightly differently to 11–18 schools.)

Completely different to asking existing teachers to double or triple their A-level workload. Do you honestly think that can be done with no increase in staffing? Do you think the average school sixth form can just add in loads more pupils without timetabling down the teachers’ lower school workload to compensate? Have you ever done any teaching?

If the only reason they are high scoring is because they have been highly selective in the first place I am not sure why it would attract "ever more academic and focused" children. It doesn't say anything about the quality of teaching.

I know they can increase the size of a class to 30 without employing more teachers because my children were in classes of 30 for some subjects in the sixth form.

I think it's fairly universally understood that if you are talking about something that only affects one school, or one town or one particular area or a particular type of school, then you make your thread specific to this and don't try to suggest that it affects the whole of the UK.

If I posted that all men liked podcasts because my DH does, I would have a lot of people telling me that they knew lots of men that hated podcasts/preferred cycling/didn't have any access to podcasts so DH should think himself lucky.

Nice try, but I do university admissions and as part of that we get data about the class size each A-level student is taught in.

How?

There have been many educated kids moved to state for 6th form to get into university. Oxbridge/Russell group look favourably on state educated students as it improves their stats. This has been going on for several years.

Nice try, but I do university admissions and as part of that we get data about the class size each A-level student is taught in.

Do you really think that you can simply increase A-level numbers without employing more teachers?

Multiple schools in this part of London with high grade requirements for 6th form places. A lot also want a particular attendance score for previous school years.

Why would they do that? Because if you can select high scoring candidates for the 6th form, you get more Oxbridge, medicine, vet science and RG places and your school goes up the ranks and attracts ever more academic and focused children.

Why wouldn't a school want to have a highly focused, high achieving cohort? Less disruption, less behaviour management and a happier life for the staff.

They are certainly taught in class sizes of 30 in the sixth form in the grammar schools where I live, particularly for maths and sciences.

So you are talking about one specific school rather than the whole of London. Not sure why it is so hard to expand the number of sixth form places given pupils usually have lessons in the rest of the school. They aren't usually confined to a specific sixth form site. Obviously pupils have to meet certain grades in order to be able to do a levels i have never heard of a comprehensive or even a grammar raising them to ridiculously high levels to chuck out internal candidates and take external candidates. Why would they do that?