Please can someone answer this simple question about state selective schools?

More academic A levels ? More achieving 3 As?

Are you an admissions tutor for a Russell group LaVolcan , I thought someone upthread said exactly that ?

I thought that was the findings of the sutton trust or am I mistaken ?

No one group of children is more or less deserving Hakluyt. Why should lower ability DC be seen as more deserving. What is your logic?

Grammar schools do better and supers electives probably better again.

Do they, so all the high achievers come from Kent/Bucks and Tiffin grammars? I can't say that I had noticed that.

Who says middle achievers and low achievers fare well in the comprehensive system? In Talkin's comp only 60% of middle achievers get 5 GCSEs A* to C and only 6% of low achievers get this benchmark.

Frogs the figures in Eng lang were screwed in 2012 but the impact affected selective schools too.

Sorry being distracted there are more middle ability dcs (and indeed more high schools than grammars)

Because the 10% is only 10% and dcs of middle ability do better in comprehensives and there is more of them.

That's utter rot hak and you know it!

However it is evidently pertinent to question here.

Because if there is relatively little to choose between the numbers of DC getting 5 GCSE passes but there is a difference in how the top achievers attain then there is surely still an argument in favour of selection,

And tbh the top 10% get far, far less in terms of resources than the bottom 10%, top sets are often bursting at the seams with 35 dcs per class, no TA whilst the lower sets are smaller with more individual attention. The middle is probably somewhere inbetween and in a comprehensive these dcs will be in the majority.

I am not saying the high achieving dcs are more deserving just equally so, in a selective system they get their fair share of them.

But the top few (10% is hardly a few) do matter. Just look at the cabinet 80% privately educated -why ? Because equally bright dcs in comprehensives just aren't pushed. Grammar schools do better and supers electives probably better again.

I do wonder why this has turned into imponderables about whether a child who gets six as and 4 a*s in a comprehensive might have got the other way around or better in a grammar rather than whether a child with six ds and four cs in a sec mod might have got ten cs in a comprehensive.

I think it's quite telling that we're angsting about the top few, to be honest.

When people say high ability dc should achieve 5+ A or more A than A grades at GCSE how are they defining high ability? Is it L5s at KS2 or something else?

Also on the school performance tables when they say x% of a cohort are high ability, what does that mean in terms of KS2 results. What should be expected in terms of GCSE results from those dc?

Talkin, I have a hunch that bright dc would do as well in your dd's school as in a selective school since a bunch of ~20-30 dc per cohort all achieving no less than an A is enough to move forward together as a group. What I am more doubtful of, is how high achievers perform in comprehensive schools where typically only one child per year achieves that highly where they will be very much in the minority.

65% of pupils who achieved Level 5 or above in both English and Maths at the end of Year 6 failed to attain A* or A grades in both these subjects at GCSE in 2012 in non-selective schools

2012 was an unusual year for English GCSE results. I know of one dc who got 8A*, 2A and a B in Eng language due to the grading issue (ie would have got an A if coursework had been submitted earlier or if any modules had been sat earlier) and I suspect they weren't an isolated case. This could have skewed the figures quite a bit.

Surely the real point is that there is no evidence that areas with selective schools do better than those without

implying that if the kids at the selective schools ALL went to non selective schools, their personal results would be unchanged

as academic outcome has a very great deal to do with parents and home
as against school where kids spend only 1/6 of their time

Bristol does the same. It proves that some Comprehensives don't have a balanced intake. As it happens the two comprehensives that my children went to are in this category, but not three other schools that they could have gone to.

It seems a blunt tool and not necessarily appropriate: parental occupation would have been a better indicator, because there is a world of difference between the child who is the offspring of two top research scientists with doctorates and one whose parents both left school at 15 with no qualifications (and perhaps don't value education)* and have struggled on with low waged jobs ever since.

*Perhaps, because some are damn sure that their children will get more support than they did.

"However should it be necessary ?? Kind of proves the point the comprehensive system lets these dcs down."

I'm all for increasing income tax to bring the spend per head on state school children to that spent on children from private schools.

I'd also be really happy if private schools were threatened with losing their charitable status if they refused to accommodate their fair share of disadvantaged/disruptive and unstatemented children with special needs.

Because the really fair thing would be for difficult to educate children to be spread fairly across our system of education, and for all children to have the same amount of money spent on their education.

Very true minifingers and I think such schemes are fantastic. However should it be necessary ?? Kind of proves the point the comprehensive system lets these dcs down.

"As I said before in either a selective or a private school the brightest (and the vast majority in a superselective) will be getting 5 or 6 A*s in academic subjects. This does matter- these are the grades needed for medicine, law or Oxbridge."

There are some Universities who accept students for medicine from non-selective state schools with lower grades. Kings runs one such programme.

Apparently it produces very successful doctors....

Mum - only a quick reply as I need to go out. Yes, much better to label these schools as selective as an intake of 80% high achievers is comparable to many of the ordinary grammar schools in Glos, Kent, Lincs etc. A few of the grammars have less than 70% high achievers.
Obviously not all dc will be as clever as their siblings but there must be a good statistical chance which is borne out by the stats for these schools - they've run with an admissions policy that gets the intake they want - why do all the low achievers end up at the school around the corner?
Regarding the property prices around Parmiters - I don't live in the area but a 10% chance of getting into a school on proximity wouldn't be enough for me to buy a house I didn't like unless I had the means to move straight out again once my child had secured a place. Many newspaper reporters don't know what they're talking about I've found.

Eeek: "90% with KS2 SATS 5a"