Value added scores for independent schools

Based on a small sample (one!) I would disagree with Talking. DD did poorly in the 11+ exam at the nearest super-selective, consistent with her relatively low CAT score, coming in the bottom third of the 1000+ applicants. She did not take SATs but was not an academic star at her Prep.

Five years later and grades for her 10 GCSEs should be at least as as good as the average for the Grammar, and she is confidently expecting to gain a place on a popular course at a good RG or equivalent.

Part is good teaching, and smaller class sizes, but a lot has been confidence building both by academic and extra-curricular staff. Learning support at her school has been fabulous, and indeed an eye opener for her to discover the problems some of the other pupils are struggling with. It has been lovely to see her start to believe that she can start competing academically and start having ambitions.

Her school takes a good proportion from the state sector at 11+ and based on coffee morning complaints about various tutors, my guess is a good proportion of those also tried Grammars and failed. Given results at her Indi are better than the Grammar I think it is reasonable to assume that the Indi is providing better value added. The Grammar, being free, will be far more selective.

The sad thing is that had my daughter remained in the state sector (leaving aside the fact that the state school she was offered was not one we applied to and was pretty troubled), given her low CAT score and relatively low attainment at 11+, could well have been given low targets and got lost.

There is a reason why div can't be introduced in any school, be it state or independent... English public schools like Winchester have an exceptionally long history of placing a lot of importance on what other schools call history, RE and English literature. It would be a huge surprise for somewhere like Winchester not to be able to teach these subjects to an exceptionally high level. Most schools have to "prove" themselves in these areas, by forcing their students through public exams, because then there is some measurable evidence of the effect of their teaching. Only schools like Winchester can get away with not having to prove this at GCSE level and still have Oxford, Cambridge and the like believe this is not remotely an issue. In fact, in the distant past, when you went to Oxford to do a general BA, not a specific subject, it sounds to me like you went to university to do advanced "Div" plus the other classical subjects public schools have always been renowned for - Greek and Latin... Oxford and Cambridge may have modernised considerably, but their pasts are still closely intertwined with the ethos of the big public schools which fed boys to them for centuries.

Eton don't do Eng Lit either, but Div is very popular. Boys choose 10 subjects (a mix of GCSEs and IGCSEs) and can drop one after a year if they want. 14 subjects sounds like an awful lot of work to me, it's not only lesson time but all the homework and studying too.

There is absolutely no reason why div can't be introduced in any school be it state or independent, it's no more expensive to teach, although I suspect it requires a greater degree of skill to teach it effectively. Im very surprised more independent schools don't do it. My science/math orientated DS has really benefited from it. I'm also unsure if parents who "expect" their DC's to do 12+ GSCE's would be happy especially as Eng Lit and history are not taken at GCSE. I frequently hear/read that Eng Lit is essential for entry into Oxbridge/RG Uni it even though it clearly isn't. Many are very surprised when I say my DS isn't doing Eng lit GCSE.

There's no doubt in my mind that Div is a wonderful alternative to GCSEs in history and lit. The way lit is organised and tested by controlled assessments is dire and adds nothing to the sum of human understanding of literature.

At our Indie schoo lwe use MIDYS and ALIS as mentioned above. Round here it is the Grammar schools which enter pupils for crazy numbers of exams; we limit to 10, or 11 if they do Latin after school. Same at other (high performing) local Indies. Comps also seem to favour 14 or even more subjects for top sets. madness.

The thing that worries me about this value added thing is at what cost have these better than expected grades been achieved? There's a thread on MN about cheating in a MFL oral, I've not read all of it but there are posters reporting "cheating" in other subjects. Oxfordshire are putting a full time school nurse in all 34 senior schools at a cost if 1.5 million because of the rise in mental health problems. I can't help but think that this pressure to achieve beyond your predicted ability is coming at a cost.

It sounds fab. I wish I could have gone.

Hmm history (usually a specified period, I think DS is doing 18 th century history currently, although the don is free to do what ever he wants within the specified period) is studied extensively usually daily in the first three years at a Win Coll and boys sit internal history exams twice yearly. 25 boys did history Pre U last year and 19 got the equivalent of an A or an A*. As I said not doing it at IGCSE isn't doing them any harm.

HmmOxford free ranging history topics in Div works as well as it does for English Lit. My other DC who is one of the 12 GCSE brigade (if you count Add maths which I am not sure I would) decided not to do History due to being bored with World War II. A shame and certainly would n't have happened with a Div like approach. I'm not sure why more independent schools don't adopt something like Div.

Millymolly
I've no idea why she is doing so many - they slotted them all into the timetable easily enough for her and the rest of the upper sets. In part I do think its GCSEs they are less rigorous than they were when we used to sit 8 or 9 GCEs. Extra curricular has been utterly unaffected by the number of subjects. The school stopped early takes and retakes two years ago.

I agree to a large extent about the no Eng Lit thing that they do at Win Coll. (Less sure about no history). I do think Div sounds fantastic and would be delighted to find a less selective (ds is bright, but not Win Coll bright) day school that had a similar offer.

You still don't need 12 though, TalkinPeace. My DD also did 2 choirs, MUN, Head of House, 2 instruments, singing, orchestra, string quartet, badminton squad, LAMDA, school play and numerous rehearsals for house plays, house music and house dance. We can all do lists!

This school claims to have some of the best VA scores in the country, so explains it reasonably clearly:

www.dunottarschool.com/library/News_Items/what_is_added_value_final_version.pdf

I suggest that if a school isn't happy to show you their score, they may not score very highly...

I fear I agree that not doing Eng. Lit is a way of encouraging a love of literature. My son is doing iGCSE Eng Lit, and is studying To Kill a Mocking Bird in such detail that it is putting him off reading fiction.

Oh, and I'd be surprised if the return to linear affected ds's more than the local comps; it's really likely to be much less affected.

For a start, they do no early entry, no resits (except, in the past for Maths, which will still be allowed), they do fewer qualifications overall, and they do full end of year exams under exam conditions every year from year 5/7 for newbies, whereas two of the comps I know of do tests at the end of each half term from year 7 but not end of year, so no being used to retaining stuff for longer than 7 weeks.

In all of the above regards, the grammars I know of are the same as the independent.

TheWordFactory, your dd's school sounds very similar in terms of intake:results to my ds's (above).

The funny thing is, staff and parents of the grammars like to brag that they have much better results than this independent - well, duh! You have 90% high attainers - as do the staff and parents at the highly sought after comp in another part of the county - which has 88% high attainers on entry, as opposed to 40% at the independent.

But actually, for both schools, only the 5 A-Cs is better, not the percentage of A/A* s overall, or the Value Added.

talkin the boys may not be formally examined on English Lit or a History but they have been extensively covering both subjects in their daily Div lesson. My DS2, who's not a natural literature enthusiast by any stretch of the imagination, has talked and written with surprising competence and enthusiasm about a wide selection of authors ranging from early English, Shakespeare, French philosophers, the romantics, a broad selection of poetry, through to 20 th century authors, inspired he has voluntarily read books he would not normally even consider. It also doesn't seem to do their Pre U results any harm in both subjects.
In contrast DS1 a passionate and enthusiastic reader who of course sat GCSE Eng Lit has been put off well known classics and even reading slightly for life.

talkin the majoirty of girls in the secondary school come from the prep which does take SATs.

And of course a sizable majority come from state schools so the data is forwarded from there.

Of the very few girls who didn't take SATs, the schools will make their own assessment, as state schools do for those students entering the system at 11 from abroad or from non SAT private schools.

From this the school can work out the ability spread of the intake. It's usually about average. Often more mixed than the local terribly nice comps ...

The results are shockingly good...though I'll be interested to see how the return to linear affects things of course.

Happy
See I think missing out History and Eng lit is a shame.
DS is refusing to do Geography - his loss IMHO
but the number of subjects he's doing will be less as the curriculum moves fully back from modules to linear
full circle and all that!

wordfactory
How are the schools measuring the "ability curve" without the FFT or raiseonline data that state schools use?

Sorry posted too soon.

DD's school doesn't pubish te VA stats. However, you could simply ask for the ability curve figures and then compare them with the results. That should tell you what you need to know .

DD's school offers amazing VA.

Most girls do arrive having done SATs and all girls sit an entrance test anyway (though is is only as a gauge, there is no pass/fail). The ability curve is very much in line with national averages.

Yet the results are way above what you would expect. God, knows how they manage it!

DS school is super selective, so one would expect fabulous results. The value there is derived from things unconnected with raw GCSE and A level resulst etc.

12 subjects talkin IMO opinion it's ridiculous, DS1 so called outstanding high performing academy did 12 he really struggled to choose 12 subjects and juggle them all. His Tony Blair clone head teacher told me that there was insufficient time in the curriculum to do more than an hour of sport a week, hardly surprising when a child has to do so many GCSE's, apparently in Middleclassville where I live that's what parents "expect". In contrast DS2 (Win Coll) only does 9, no history or Eng Lit at IGCSE it Win Coll parents clearly have different expectations!

DDs exams start next week.
She is doing ;Eng Lang, Eng Lit, Maths, Further maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography, History, Latin, an MFL and a tech.
She's also had time to do music and dancing and sport after school.
The raw number of subjects reflects more how some have been dumbed down than any astounding ability on the part of her and her cohort.

One way some schools do VA is to do a baseline test when the children enter at 11 or 13. These are often called MIDYIS scores and are administered by Durham Uni. They are similar to an IQ test and give a score for maths, English, VR and NVR. They place pupils in quartile s compared to the whole school population and compared to the independent school population. These can be then used to do GCSE predictions. VA is measured by using the 2.
Likewise VA ias often measured between 16 and 18 by looking at GCSE and A level results. Again, Durham do predictions based on GCSES and account for the fact that some subjects are easier than others. Students at 16 often sit another baseline test called ALIS which again measures IQ and predicts for different A level subjects. many schools use both GCSE and ALIS to measure the value added to A level.
Often these measures are there, but not published, but if you ask, schools may well give you some kinds of measure.
prep schools sometimes use CAT scores in a. Similar way.
It is useful to ask the school what percentage of children come in at each ability quartile, so get a sense of how academic the intake is.

There have been plenty of threads on MN where young people are struggling with GCSEs or equivalents that add up to an excessive number of GCSEs. Oxford and Cambridge are perfectly happy with 10, as long as they are the right ones with no glaring academic omissions. Some people and schools always think more is better judging by the articles in our local papers. However, the local state grammar schools do not do this. I think hardly any independents do this because extra curricular activities are seen as more important and they would encourage drama and music exams, for example.

I would ask how the independent schools obtain their VA scores if they are not published in the official tables. Are they done in the same way as the official tables or some in-house or computer based system? Somehow you need to compare like with like, and, as you have seen, it is difficult.

I think the other interesting issue is whether GCSE courses are 2 years or 3. It seems unfair that some children are given a lot longer to learn essentially the same material, with less workload, but some parents and children like it because they jettison the subjects they do not like a year earlier (at the end of year 8). I have a suspicion that the stronger academic schools do traditional 2 year courses, but other posters may know if this is the case. When they take the GCSE exams is also another issue. How many are taken early and what grades are obtained?

I think you can tell which schools take the very bright from their GCSE and A level results. (Very high percentages of A*s) However, there are plenty of schools who have a varied intake who do get good results. You may also like to consider if it is an IB school or an A level school or both. So much to think about as the ground keeps shifting!