why is it so difficult to find a good school

Change of name won't change anything but I think the failing ones do have new leadership parachuted in - that's what might turn them around.

If they get shed loads of cash that could help too. Money isn't everything in education but while teachers need paying and resources and equipment doesnt come free, more money doesn't half help the staff pupil ratio and holding the curriculum together, allowing the leadership to lead. Again, not a magic potion, but it could well help immensely.

Mossbourne isn't actually an example of failing school becoming an academy, although press articles have implied that it was. It was a brand new school that opened with just a first cohort of 11 year olds and filled up gradually for the next 5 years.

It is hard to see how an existing problem school will solve its problems by becoming an academy.

seeker I'm sure you appreciate that the Diabolo Academy (and schools like it, such as Saint Equilibristica's) does so well because its strong, Franconian ethos underpins everything it does.

And the teachers are, to a clown man, expert plate spinners.

The jury is out on the merits of the school down the road but if you're happy to take chances with your child's education, then so be it. I guess some of us have different priorities.

Currently most of the new conversions were outstanding so there is no reason why they should fail so quickly, especially as many have hardly seen a SIP for years as the money was diverted by LEA to other schools. Hence the reason why the figures work out to be so much better than conversion is attractive.

However, changes in senior leadership or some other major event could - indeed - change that as time goes on. Then the SOS will have to sort something. Academies still fall under Ofsted so probably special measures or notices to improve will lead to them returning regularly and the Academy required to spend some of the LACSEG it gets on buying in a SIP.

Thanks

Lee
No academy has failed - yet
but my local and its twin near where poster Cory lives have come darned close.
Bear in mind that older (Labour) sponsored academies are in their own little world.
The newer conversions still have strong links with the LEA.
If an academy is failed by Ofsted, there is no LEA parachute any more. If the SMT refuse to act then the school just stays dire until Whitehall directly intervene (so much for localism)

Schools
The school to which I refer is run by an evangelical trust that has several academies. They have NO clear strategy to make the place work better.

Ah. So academy status allows for certain measures to be imposed rather than just putting a new head in place at the existing school. What happens if a new head of an academy is ineffectual? Can academies fail or is more money just pumped in?

I'd love to know how turning a 'failed' school into an academy makes the problems disappear. The intake doesn't change.

balia
I do not regard special measures as being a category for sink schools
they are a short term thing.

sink schools have consistent and persistent failings over years and years and years
my local one has had CVA under 980 for 5 years running from before it was closed and converted to an academy to date.
According to the DFES site, the average GCSE grade for their high achievers is a C+
chances of ANY child getting 12 As there is zilch.

I sent my DD to a school that went into Special Measures when she was in year 8. It had the lowest GCSE pass rate in the LEA, had a high percentage of EAL kids, served a poverty stricken council estate and would doubtless have made certain MNers reach for the smelling salts and patronise me horribly for not knowing any better suggest I had ruined my DD's life forever.

She got 12 A's.

I suggest having a look at Value Added scores before you pick up your petticoats and tiptoe around the 'sink' schools.

every LEA has at least one
they do not take long to spot on the BBC league tables

my local one is particularly bad I admit

How many like that are there?

Definition of a sink school :
One that NOBODY who gives a stuff sends their kids to.
One that has an intake allowance of 200 but gets under 70 applicants per year
One that has had millions invested in it after it was named 18th worst in the country. Then got closed and merged into a sponsored academy.
The academy is getting a shiny new £16 million building for 900 pupils even though by the time they move in September there will be less than 300 on roll.
One that suppresses house values in its catchment by 33%

How do I know?
Easy.
I drive past it every day delivering my kids to their school in a convoy with all the other parents who care.

PS its an evangelical faith school.

Metabillis - there are indeed underperforming faith schools - the discussion of high achieveing ones is in the context of the OP of this thread.

And the chaotic families I refer to are the ones I deal with through my work and see something of at DS's inner city school. Where there is drug addiction and gun and knife crime and the children are out buying sweets from the petrol station at 4.30 am and are likely to wake up in the morning to find that the 'parent' is absent and there is no food for breakfast. There is a significant proportion of competely disaffected households like that in some areas of London and I seriously doubt that they are able to make themselves eligible for the The Cardinal Vaughhan, for example.

You will note that I also asked if it mattered much - what matters is that people understand the story the stats may tell.

Much of this thread is attempting to look at the facts behind the stats - not grinding axes.

Don't worry- there's a new school down the road that admits on crochet aptitude.

My juggling's coming on apace.

As long as they don't bloody well change the the entrance criteria and put uni-cycling higher, we should be OK....

I don't think anyone has suggested that all faith schools are bastions of priviledge. We all know that there are plenty of faith schools that are neither high achieving or oversubscribed. Some are even in close proximity to those that are. Our posts have just led on from poppytin's second post about top comprehensives being faith schools.

There are some very poorly performing (or at least, poor results reporting) faith schools too. Even in London. In most inner city areas in fact. But people never ever want to talk about that because it undercuts the idea that all faith schools are bastions of privilege.

To the poster who stated that chaotic families would never manage to get to mass every Sunday, let alone take functions within the church (eg altar boy) when I was a kid growing up on a London council estate, the one common factor between the several chaotic families I knew (where kids were in and out of care, among other things) was an almost perfect mass attendance record (not from the dads, but from the mums and the kids). Which contrasted starkly with the school attendance record.

Sorry- that made me sound as if I was an EAL student in the very early days!

What is a "sink school"?

What is. "sink school"?

Because all the criteria you have listed select bright middle class children.

I taught a very bright 17 year old. She had arrived from Poland aged 14. Her choice of school was the local sink school.

At 16 she had 10 GCSEs grades A*-C and one D grade. The D was in English so her school , yet again, failed to climb up the league tables.

Parents who look at the league tables and see this school see lots of EAL pupils and low A*-C (inc English and Maths) and bust a gut to get their child into a 'good' school.

But if this school can take a foreign child and in 2 years bring them up to the standard to get 10 GCSEs they are doing something right. How well would a native English speaker, with average or above average inteligence do?

Seeker, I went to a highly competitive 'direct grant' school (selective private - half the places went to the county's top performers in the 11+ paid for by the LA), my brother went to a normal county grammar, my sister went to my parents's 3rd choice of comp.

We all have exactly the same level and grade of graduate qualifications

This is all very interesting- and makes me feel like a case study. I have two equally bright children, who were brought up more or less the same. Older one passed the 11+ and is at grammar school (99% a-c) and on track for 10 a or as at GCSE. Younger one tanked the 11+ and is going to a school with sub 40% a-c. . But I am sure he will be in the 40% and will do as well as his sister. It's all about how you look at the stats.