Value added scores for independent schools

I thought Thornden's VA score was way above average? Click on 'Value Added'- 2012 results I think.

Indeed.

If any parent thinks 14 GCSEs is a good idea, they need some advice to the contrary, urgently. My DD at an independent school took more GCSEs than the local High as they limited girls to 9. Far better 9 or 10 at A* than 14 at a mix of grades. Perhaps best 8 will get schools to think again and keep GCSEs to a sensible number. No-one needs more than 10.

Indeed.

And here's another thing: some schools (often independents, but I'm not saying always) have their children sitting fewer qualifications than other schools so they have might have high ability children get a run of 8/9 straight A/As where in the other school they might have got 6/7A/As plus 6/7Bs. So in that scenario, the first school would get better value added and, you might argue, have the students' better interests in mind. But some dc (or their parents) might prefer 14 GCSes (for whatever reason), so school B would suit them better.

No comparison on our school ISI report with state schools. Last one done 2010 though.

Our local state High School, which is a selective girls' grammar in a selective county, (so not highly selective) has a value added of 1028 on the best 8 GCSEs. Only higher and middle attainers. That is a fairly healthy value added for a grammar school.

The Btec game on VA ground to a shuddering halt three years ago.

secMods tend to have much better VA than their local grammar schools - for entirely obvious reasons.
High level admission comps (like THornden up the way from me) have lower VA because of the catchment.

VA is interesting, but is just one part of the portfolio of ways to measure schools.

Ha! I wondered how quickly someone would pick up on the fact I hadn't caveated for the fact that I/the Head didn't mean socio-economically comprehensive.

Anyway, the stats are what they are for academic ability on intake. This school also has a higher percentage of children with SEN including statements than some of the local 'comps' (because the LEA has begged it to take children with dyslexia, dyspraxia and ASD that their maintained schools have failed - and pays their fees) and a much higher percentage of level 3 and 4 on intake children than two of the local highly-desired comps in expensive catchments.

You've made a huge sweeping generalisation about what independent schools do and don't do with different ability children, TalkinPeace. Surely, just like all state schools, they vary. You wouldn't say 'all secondary moderns are rubbish at teaching languages' or 'all comps teach top sets brilliantly' or 'grammar schools don't take art seriously'. There's no such thing as 'all non-selective independents'.

The bottom set children at ds's school are in classes of 8. At least 75% of these children, coming in on level 3 or below, achieve 5 good GCSEs. As they should, with small classes and specialist intervention.

In any case, in both sectors, value added is very difficult to judge without bias. Some state schools get fantastic value added 'playing the system' putting children through loads of BTecs etc. But they don't all, of course. Would be silly to tar them all with the same brush.

marni
among those whose parents can afford to pay are a FAR lower proportion of SEN children and parents and parents with MH, criminal and other problems.
therefore statistically those who can afford fees are MUCH more likely to be able to support their children through lessons.

not many parents coughing up wads of cash care zilch about attendance, homework, nutrition etc etc

therefore private schools cannot ever be representative of the general population

A 'comprehensive intake' in this context refers to not selecting by ability or aptitude. Nothing to do with ability to pay. Unless you're suggesting that the children of those who can pay fees are somehow cleverer than the general populous?

bearing in mind we have a truly comprehensive intake
utterly impossible for any fee paying school because the fees are beyond the wildest dream of well over half of the families in the country

Any selective school is likely to have low VA so is highly unlikely to publish it.
They will still get great raw exam results, but do it by selecting, not adding value.

Non selective private schools get great VA with the middling kids but ess so with the top and bottom, so their average is low, so they will not publish it.

Ds's school has amazing value added but they don't seem to have a format for publishing it as such.

Their own prep children sits SATs and most of the other new children come from state schools so they have entry data to go from. They take roughly 40% high attainers, 40% middle and 20% low (obviously varies year to year) and achieve roughly 50% A/A of all exams taken at GCSE with at least 95% of students attaining 5 A- C.

On their website, if you looked at the section with exam results they just say something like 'this is a remarkable set of results bearing in mind we have a truly comprehensive intake'. But in the newsletters/speech days, the Head will go into more detail on the intake per year and just how well they've done.

Don't the ISI reports compare the individual school with their equivalent in the state sector?

This message interested me because the independent school my DDs attended used to publish value added data. However, currently their data is not included in the latest published data for the County and neither is any independent school. As mentioned above, they did not do SATs.

On their brand new website they boast that they are at the pinacle of the county value added tables which makes me wonder what tables they are talking about when this data is clearly not on the official tables. I wonder if there are tables produced by the independent schools and maybe there is information available from the independent schools' council. The claim of the school is exceptionally hard to validate but another approach might be to ask each school because their pupil progress tracking information may well give you a crude comparison for each school.

Ask, but generally none is available as they don't have baseline scores on entry.

Private schools don't have to sit SATs, so if the kids are from private primaries where they don't do SATs, I don't see how value added (which is progression from KS2 SATs) could be calculated.