Analysing the new league tables?

Some info on iGCSE English here under 'The unusual English attainment of pupils in independent schools'. One version of Cambridge International iGCSE is 'unregulated' and used to count but not any more, AQA and WJEC 'did not satisfy the requirements', and some English Language exams only count if taken with English Literature.

I'd say Ebacc does count for pupils who intend to take A-levels and apply to university (e.g. more options for 'facilitating subjects' preferred by some universities). The national average is for 65% of high attainers entered for Ebacc and 52% achieving it.

If the proportion is lower, the school may not be tailoring its curriculum for its top set pupils or may not have specialist teachers in sciences/languages.

It's so difficult to call from just statistics.

Our non-selective truly comprehensive school is slightly above average on most measures but has an amazing ebacc. This is because when the Government said languages were not compulsory, although our school didn't make students do a language we have such a fun and engaging MFL department most children wanted to carry one on. So, the school had more children who stood to qualify for this statistic (and this was before the statistic existed!). That's the problem with ebacc....it was a statistic dreamt up overnight and for a few years won't really be fair comparison from school to school.

sobbing
the filters in those tables allow you to do exactly that ....

There should be separate tables for each sector. One for comps, grammar,selective indies and non selective indies, IGCSEs and GCSEs. Its so confusing trying to work out the stats when so many variables are in play.

When the DfE do their league tables they split students into low, mid and high ability based on their KS2 scores.

Roughly students who are working at Level 5 (or 6) at the end of Primary are classed as high ability; Level 4 mid ability and Level 3 or lower as low ability.

This means some schools may have different numbers of students in each category. Selective schools may not have any mid or low ability students at all.

Think about your child - where do they fall into those categories? How do your local schools do with similar children?

Which subjects are of most importance to you? You can get the separate value added scores for Maths, English, Science, Humanities and Languages scores for each 'type' of student through the league tables too.

Look for whether the school are using non-GCSE qualifications (such as BTECs) to boost their results. One of the tables has the average grade per subject (split into low/mid and high ability students again) and also the average grade per GCSE. If these are significantly different then that may suggest lots of non-GCSE courses are being used. That may or may not be an issue for you.

but are the Telegraph tables "edited" ?
just that newspapers will always spin to match the prejudice of their readers ...

when a warrior poster and I argued the toss about 6th form a while back, it turned out that the Times had played fast and loose with the criteria to make private look better

• legal - it was in the descriptors

at the top of the dfee set of data are the national averages and the lea averages
that at least gives you a measure to compare the school against
you can also set the filters - to block out selective schools etc : its quite nice data but not intuitive to use

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25849548

Where is the list you are looking at?

sobbing The top 5 schools on the list (at GCSE) all have VA figures well over 1000. The top school on the list doesn't have an extensive culture of tutoring to get in.

I think another reason why very academic schools fall below other schools on VA is because they take children that have been extensively tutored to get into the school.

Bet the school's spitting tacks at having to do that! Extraordinary to have so few low attainers- where do the others go? It's a bit like our school but the other way up.

curlew, you may also be right about them lumping the low attainers in with the middle as they represent only 2% of the school and no figure has been recorded for them. Thanks again for your help :0)

Curlew: Gosh no, didn't think you sounding patronizing at all - not even one little bit. It seemed a bit odd and it's so easy to miss bits in statistics so genuinely wanted to see where I pooped. Thanks so much for your feedback, you're brill.

I think the best thing is not to try to understand the tables, honestly. There are other ways to tell if it's a good school for your kid.

Sorry, urbancupcake- I didn't mean to sound so patronizing! . That does sound a bit odd- unless for some reason they put their low and middle attainers together? If 5 or 6 of the 26 were getting Ds and Es that would bring the Bs and occasional As of the other 20 down to an C average, (I think).

@curlew - 26 pupils in their middle attainers group.

Hi Curlew, of course, I see your point. An intake of 120. Not sure if that would be deemed as small or medium.

I don't know what the situation is with IGCSEs though - some private schools prefer them (possibly precisely because they muddy the league table waters, I couldn't possibly comment). And I don't think High/Medium/Low is recorded for private schools either, is it?

High / Medium / low are defined on a national basis, but are very broad bands, so a highly selective school may have its intake skewed to the top end of the High and Medium bands, whereas a Secondary Modern may have its intake within those bands skewed to the bottom. The selective school mentioned above whose Mediums are getting C grades does look anomalous, dunno what's going on there.

Private schools tend to encourage the children to stick to 10 GCSE's in core / traditional subjects whereas lots of state schools encourage the children to take more GCSE's (often up towards 15), but some of those GCSE's might be in subjects that are neither use nor ornament once the child has moved on from GCSE stage. So it is very difficult to compare the results between state and private schools as the children taking 15 GCSE's might amass more points but not necessarily in subjects that will help them get on in life.

Urbancupcake- is it a small school? Sometimes %ages can be a bit misleading. In a small group, it only takes a couple of kids to do badly for the % to plummet.

"The tables are nonsense, I would like to see a table which includes data for the top set of comps against the selective schools, otherwise you really are comparing an apple with an orange."

Well, that's sort of what the breakdown into low, middle and high achievers does, isn't it? Broadly?

And mumtogremlins- in answer to your original question, I would probably think that the private school in question isn't as good as it's publicity.

We base our choices on our impressions when we visit the schools.

At Watford Girls', the pupils seemed polite, articulate and enthusiastic about learning. They made an effort to chat with DD, asking her about her interests. DD was particularly impressed by the art and textiles departments, as that is something she enjoys.

We are hoping to apply for a cross-sibling place, as DD is extremely unlikely to qualify for an academic place.

This is all really interesting. What do you think this means/translates to?

One high achieving school I just looked at (which has a high achieving intake of 77% mind) gets an average of A for high attainers (VA 1026) but only a C+ for their 22% middle attainers (va 1001). If they were that great overall would I be right to assume that their middle attainers should be achieving a B on average?