What % A - A* GCSE pass rate

I imagine the teachers at Westminster keep kicking them up the arse until they work, whereas hard work seems to be optional at the grammar school my DD goes to

For me it doesn't matter too much what percentage the school achieves - what's more relevant is what percentage of A*/A my child will achieve at that school. This is much harder to determine in advance, but if they achieve 90%+ and the school only achieves 50% then I'm quite happy.

binnsandbottwell that was one of the 8! there were 440+ that didn't manage more than 90% A/A*. Tsk!

Surely 70-80% would be a pretty outstanding result given that children are not robots and there will be children experiencing problems like divorce, bereavement, ill health of a family memeber, or ill health themselves, including things like depression?

When I was 16 my grandma who I was incredibly attached to died and I fell into depression, I recovered after a year or so but still had trouble sleeping and concentrating as I kept seeing her and feeling her all the time. I wonder how some of these schools deal with things like that? If I was choosing a school I would want to make sure my child got the right support.

I know a family whose child was diagnosed with cancer aged 15 and the school turfed her out as they couldn't risk her spoiling their exam results....just food for thought.

The non-selective rural school DS is going to achieved 45% A/A and 100% 5 x GCSE's at A-C.

The "in the top 30" uber-selective we decided against was 89% for A/A but honestly it felt like a prison camp on visiting. For me, paying for DS's education means him enjoying everything a school has to offer, not just those A/A's.

I know he will still achieve 4 or 5 A*/A's and any more than that will be fantastic, but he will also play sport, act, sing and hopefully have a huge amount of fun as well.

Yes, Being Fluffy, I too thought 90%/60% would be about as high as you'd get, but I've just had a look at Westminster's website (not that I have DCs there). Apparently they achieved over 85% A grades this year with 97% of grades either A or A.

OK thanks nobleg

So Seeker based on this years GCSE results published by the ISC you would be only prepared to pay for 8 schools in the country, all but one in West London and the Southern and Western Home Counties! Mind if you could contenance 89% A/A* then you could add in 3 more, 1 of those isn't in the Home Counties. And they are all superselective and mostly single sex......

If it converted to an academy in the last academic year it won't have any results yet. If you want to see the results for the school before it became an academy then there should either be a link at the top of the page for the academy, or you could look under the school's name before it converted.

As far as I know academies still have to provide this info, the ones I've looked at do.

Tiffin Girls' got about 90% A & A and Henrietta Barnett about 92% this year. Both about 60% A. That is about the highest possible I think - with teenagers not robots.

Breakdowns should be found on the LEA website (though a year behind) if not on the school website. We have a local academy but it is co-sponsored by our borough. I have no idea if academies are made to provide this information.

Thanks Seeker. The school website definitely isn't giving that info at the moment. From your link I think I've just learnt that as an Academy the DfE doesn't have that info either? Life could just be getting harder for the information seeking parent.

Try here

Or the school website- it's often there somewhere.

Slightly off topic but does anyone know where I can find the A-A GCSE results for a state secondary? They only seem to report A-C as do tables in the newspapers. thanks.

I don't. But that's what I would expect if I was paying.

I thought you didn't like selective education systems seeker? You won't get anywhere near 90-95% A*/A without a pretty tough selection exam at some point (most likely 11 or 13) however much you pay.

I would expect 90%-95% if I was paying.

I've just had a look at results for an independent I know for family reasons: their combined IGCSE/GCSE A*/A rates are over 85% for those taken in year 11, and over 95% for those taken a year early in year 10. It is selective, but has a reputation for being only moderately so.

Ha, I know which school you went to, blueemerald!

Whoops, 'French/German' I mean, not Maths/German.

Yes, it might even out across the board if students are entered for all subjects. I'm sure your DCs' school is very good.

Lots of state schools (and non-selective private schools) specialise in science or humanities, however, so maybe the variation makes it harder to compare schools with different specialisms on A/A as a measure. It surprised me to find out that nearly half of science GCSE entries nationally achieve A/A compared to Maths/German, at around 26%.

I hope the fact that it is harder to get a top grade in languages and humanities compared to science isn't putting children off from studying these subjects. While it's important for pupils to study a broad curriculum, I'm starting to wish GCSEs could be abolished altogether (not all countries test at 16) so that children could follow their interest and not worry about overall point score.

Muminlondon. I guess most of the variation is to do with who takes the subject. Most people have to do English so you get a full range of results, whereas only the better scientists do triple science rather than double.

My children's independent selective mixed school got 82% A*/A at GCSE and 73% at A level. We are in quite a rural area although their school is in the only city in the county. It's very different up here compared to London!

My old school (independent but not selective) got 50% A-A and about 15% got all As/As. When I was there around 15% of the year group had dyslexia or similar. That was in a non competitive area. In the same area, a selective school (with no students with any learning difficulties) 44% of all passes were A*s.

Interesting to compare with the national statistics for A/A passes - see the graphic here. It varies so much per subject. Twice as many students nationally achieved A/A in single sciences (about 48% for Chemistry, Biology, Physics) compared to English (15%) or French/German. See also History (30%). It depends which subjects your child is interested in.

The private selective mixed school I went to got 90% A and A grades at GCSE (55% A grades) and 78% A and A at A level this year. Of 141 students 82 got all A/A. For GCSE there were 2 D grades in the entire year.

The private selective boys school nearby got 82.8% A and A grades at GCSE (47% A) and 62.4% A and A at A level. Of 198 pupils 71 got all A/A
For GCSE there were 10 D grades in the entire year.

The private selective girls school nearby got 90% A and A (56% A) at GCSE and 76% A and A* at A level. For GCSE there were no D grades and 8 C grades.

These results are normal where I live in south east London. I would consider the boys school's results disappointing given their circumstances.

They don't really work in an urban area either where the pupils that are best at passing exams will tend to go into the most selective schools and exam results may reflect the cohort rather than the quality of teaching. The school that will best enable your child to fulfill their potential may not be the one with the best results. Good article on choosing independent schools here