Super selectives: how much value do they add?

portico I think you miss the issue. All the schools that OP mentioned are good schools that will start challenging their girls with GCSE level work from the start, in fact in Year 10 everything had to go down a notch in terms of my girls being given challenging and inspiring work that provided them with an education because the teachers had to focus on the restrictive requirements of GCSE syllabus. So they went from interesting and challenging work to being equipped to pass slightly less challenging and in some cases distinctly uninspiring exams that didn't need them to be "stretched unbelievably hard" , so they were able to be in school drama productions, compete for school and national teams, do 19 hours of rowing training a week etc etc.

The Schools OP mentions as "superselective" are Lady Eleanor Holles and Guildford High School (private) and Tiffin Girls' (state grammar) (and there is a long discussion downthread about how the results at Tiffin Girls' compared to private schools and top sets in comprehensives don't quite match the extent to which it should be able to select the brightest from over 2000 applicants, which may reflect weaknesses in selection, and the fact that there is heavy tutoring which doesn't end when they get in tends to back that up, or teaching). However the schools that are less selective, Surbiton High and Tormead are also good schools, they enable their brightest to get A*s and As and to top universities, so sending your child there, rather than the more selective schools is not going to mean they do not get challenged and enabled to achieve their potential. It is just there are so many good schools around here that tiny differences in the points that place them at different points in the league tables get magnified into distinguishing them as "superselective" or not. To put it in perspective the average points per exam entry at A level are around 270 at LEH, GHS and Tiffin and around 250 at SHS and Tormead, a difference more than easily explained by the extent to which they select from the brightest.

No, not local, Oxfordshire, and round here I have been a bit taken aback at the extent of what is not on offer at some schools, with MFL an early casualty to make room for the soft stuff, particularly in smaller schools.

Typos.. Is that state selective or private selective

Poison woodpile

My DS is in a top 10 grammar school, top 10 by GCSEs and a level results that is. In his first term at Y7 he has been tasked with revising GCSEs work now, and his other subjects are moving along at the same frenetic pace. Yes, they are stretched unbelievably hard because, a) the cohort is already strong and b) competition amongst the cohort drives further excellence.

Ps, you mentioned your dd wee in a high selective environment. Is that stTe or private.

Children who get accepted into super selectives are often already working at their potential, so there isn't so much scope for value added, as there is with an intake of children who are underachieving.

value added being low isn't a reflection on the school in those circumstances.

Sorry missed out a key word...for HIGH attainers, there was marginal difference.

Look at the data sets for schools in your area.

I was tying myself in knots until I did this. For attainers, (which I believe my DC would be classed as on SATs), there was marginal difference in outcomes at GCSE between the comps & the super selective. Obviously the super selective got just on 100% but the comps were high 90s - the lowest being around 95%.

Obviously there was no data to compare for middle/lower attainers as the super selective didn't have any of these.

In the end we did go on feel as we had solid local alternatives.

We're not in a grammar area so it was the super selective or comp.

roguedad and portico are you local? All the schools OP mentions will do all the things you mention although the claim that they will be stretched "unbelievably hard" is not one I recognise having had two DDs in one of the most selective schools mentioned. They were occasionally challenged and inspired, sometimes bored and sometimes taught downright badly, but they did work hard so whatever the teaching, like most pupils there, got As and A*s, and thankfully didn't need "stretching unbelievably hard" to do that. In fact if any school was aiming to stretch my child unbelievably hard to get good exam results I would run a mile, every year the school Heads set great store by the fact that excellent exam results were achieved alongside the pursuit of a whole range of other activities.

Don't forget to look at Curriculum options as well as value added. The more selective schools tend to offer a wider more solid core of genuinely academic subjects that are the sort of things the top unis like to see. You might pay special attention to the breadth of options in modern and classical languages for example, which will tend to be better in the more academically focused schools. You would need a larger non-selective school to provide similar options, given that they have to resource the more vocational stuff too.

To the OP. Super Selectives add a lot of value in so far as they stretch the very bright cohort therein. They do not necessarily bring them along and add value; rather they work with very good inputs (Y7 students) and stretch them unbelievably hard to attain the highest gcse and A 2 scores

As well as cultural bias I would also add SEN. DD was hundreds of places off an offer from Tiffin Girls despite far more practice than her brother. (We knew she would have problems at 11+ so used Tiffin as a trial run for other external exams.)

She is quite dyslexic and her scores on the different papers would have been very unbalanced. We did not try, but I am almost certain that they would have been pleased to offer her a sixth form place, and would, quite possibly, have then placed her in the top maths set. The very selective schools are often effectively looking for kids who are good at everything. There are plenty of kids who have a real flair for maths or English, who won't get over the super-selective 11+ hurdle.

Needmore Absolutely, and as you know your scenario is also mine. It is why I now campaign about our Council's very unfair school place strategies, including providing No 2 at the expense of No 1. I do think though that the tutoring issue has got worse. A few of my DCs contemporaries from Nursery etc did get places at the Tiffins, the only alternative being a failing local school , with minimal practise. However now I gather the intake is even more skewed to those who have been sent to tutoring factories for ever longer times (and it doesn't end after getting in) and the failing local school is now a real alternative as are many of the local comprehensives. However OP is clearly considering private schools, and then I think the decision is a little different.

I might add that the choice involved me working full time to help pay fees, and a lot of juggling and budgeting. Swings and roundabouts. I wish I had had more family time. But pleased I have an occupational pension. And glad that the DC had the example of us working hard to secure their education.

A place at Tiffin might have meant more time and energy to support education through good quality family time.

I guess there is no right answer, we all muddle through as best we can. Having said that I don't regret DS narrowly missing a place.

Ullen it does n't discriminate against those DCs who are subjected to learning lists of common VR vocab as preparation and are biddable enough to do it I suspect that is not uncommon but for most DCs it would mean a year or more of extra work with less time for playing and exploring. That approach must also fuel the tutor industry for EAL parents who lack confidence in teaching the appropriate vocabulary.

Poison

Part of the problem though is that:

1. Not everyone lives in the catchment for a good secondary
2. Not everyone is able to access good CofE or Catholic schools
3. Not everyone can afford to go private.

Tiffin traditionally has had a huge catchment, though smaller now. If your child is bright enough to be within tutoring distance of a place, and you dont have attractive alternatives you will be tempted to have a go, and if you really need a place you give it all you've got.

Luckily I did not have to watch over my DC as they did years of VR and non VR practice. With a choice it did not seem like an attractive alternative. But then I did have a choice.

I had to do VR in the 80s and most of the schools around me (state and private) used VR. My family also recalled doing VR in the 50s/60s so I think it must have varied to some extent by region?

uilen but part of the point I was making was that the 11+ IQ tests I and my parents sat were not verbal. Maybe that was because I am from a city which always had a large immigrant community, we almost all had some different cultural background, whether it was Irish, Jewish, Easter European or Muslim, but it was a system that enabled pupils from different cultures and with EAL, and from poor backgrounds to have opportunities, including reaching the highest levels of government, Cabinet even, in the last century. I agree that would be unlikely to happen now.

I think the question OP is wrestling with though is one a lot of parents wrestle with in this area. We have a lot of selective schools around here. Tiny differences in results translate into percieved league tables that place some schools such as LEH, GHS etc. as "superselective" with associated perceptions they are "better" and schools like SHS as somehow inferior and "back ups". Prep and Primary Schools like to be able to say their pupils get places at the"names" whether or not they prepare them. So it feels that there is pressure to send your child to the most selective school they can get into, the one with the best results.

In fact what you are talking about is whether a school is 1st, 10th, 50th or 70th in the country, by its academic results by whatever formula a particular league table choses to measure. However to be in the top 100 schools in the country by any academic measure and to compete in the local market a school has to be providing a good education, and have good teachers, and excellent facilities, extra curricular etc. The most selective schools may tend to attract the brightest but they don't get all the brightest. Pupils develop at different paces, have off days when they sit exams, parents decide they prefer the atmosphere of a less selective school (and it is certainly not a given that the parents of bright pupils apply to Tiffin in the first place, or even accept a place if they get in, there are increasingly good state schools all around) All these schools are sending bright pupils to top universities including Oxford. However the atmospheres in the school are very different and none of these schools suit all the pupils all the time or even all of the pupils some of the time....

There are of course also the perceptions that the "superselective" schools that get the best results are pressured hot houses, filled with pupils with mental health problems and that isn't entirely true of every pupil's experience either.

So with the benefit of hindsight I would recommend going to visit the schools and decide which of all the excellent schools is right for your child.

I think it is part of the OP's question - are superselectives genuinely picking out students of higher ability and potential?

(I am British by the way so I know the history of VR and NVR but in my opinion VR has always discriminated against EAL immigrants and indeed against returning British children who lived abroad and went to schools in the local language.)

uilen The use of VR / NVR is actually historic, back in the mid to late twentieth century Grammar Schools were aimed to be a vehicle for social mobility and ability based rather than attainment based testing gave a lot of bright but poorer and disadvantaged pupils a chance of a good education, and a chance to go to university. My mother was one of those, a teacher who grew up in a back to back slum. Even when I was at the "superselective" I had many friends from poor backgrounds, especially immigrant backgrounds, a lot of friends whose family were from Eastern Europe. In fact the 11+ test I did was an IQ test that was much more of NVR than VR (and rather weirdly I was part of something called the Thorne scheme which interviewed us and made us build lego brick towers as well ) The Tiffin selection system seems designed to exclude the bright but poor and immigrant pupils my school included which is why I think it is immoral, even without the experiences abuse inflicted on children by the tutoring factories. However this is a long way from answering OPs question except to question the nature of Tiffin's superselectiveness and value added...........

Yes, I know the private schools take into account background more (my DC attend selective privates). But most people can't afford private schools and I believe selective state schools should be far more careful about unconscious biases in their entrance tests. There is a lot of discussion of the effects of tutoring, rightly so, but far less discussion about other biases in the tests.

VR strongly discriminates in both culture and language. I recall VR questions in which the ranks of the army had to be put in order, for example. Meanwhile my DC easily score in the 99.9+th percentile in (ed psych) verbal tests in their first language but were "only" scoring in the 95th+ in tests in English VR since there were always some words that they just didn't know (but they knew when I translated to their first language).

uilen Although even well designed VR tests do discriminate against those with EAL (and Tiffin may indeed have in the past found a away to make them not do, providing you are willing to put your child through years of mindless practise and they were prepared to miss out on the untutored bright ) most of the selective independent schools in London do actually positively want pupils with a wide range of experiences and will make allowances for those parts of the exam process that pupils from other cultures / with EAL might find difficult. As a result there are many children from overseas backgrounds in these schools, many bilingual and when my DD was going through the process with a friend who was bilingual and had spent her formative years in a Russian school they were positively embracing her in the interview room (and her parents were not uber rich ). My children were also educated in International Schools and I agree that it can effect pupils in ways the schools cannot even necessarily appreciate, I was shocked to find my DD didn't know what an acorn was at 11 but of course her knowledge of snakes was exhaustive...... However they do gather a lot of evidence on these children, through different sorts of questions in the English and Maths / NVR / VR / interview, so can build up a much fuller picture than Tiffin can testing 2000 + applicants within the constraints of budgets and the regulatory framework for admissions. The indies never have to explain decisions at appeal......

VR can discriminate in aspects of Brit culture too though, my DD was shocked by a VR question in her Ed Psych assessment (she is Dyslexic) that required a knowledge of wine storage (sorry can't remember exactly but along the lines of hay is to a stack as wine is to a barrel) though she said she did of course get the answer correct having alcoholic parents who had dragged her around wineries from an early age

I think the misunderstanding comes from the hoo-ha constantly in the press about pushing Oxbridge to widen access (why always us? The London Universities are just as bad, as is Bristol. Worse, actually!).

Many people think state schooled applicants are given blanket priority.

Which isn't true. The candidiates attracting contextualised offers are IME well deserving. And TBH, they're not that much lower.

That said, the endless pressure to increase the number of state schooled students (or at least to decrease the independently educated ones) will have some affect, even if only on a subconscious level, and grammar schooled applicants might feel an advantage here.

As uilen states, you wouldn't expect a candidtae from grammar school to attract a contextualised offer (unless on quite extreme personal grounds?).

I think there is some widespread belief that universities treat all state school candidates very differently than private school candidates. This is not true. The UCAS forms list polar data; they list the average scores of the school in terms of GCSE/A level points, % of students getting 5 good GCSEs etc. No special allowances are made for any candidate unless they come from a particularly poorly performing school with a low polar score. There is no intrinsic advantage at being a state school applicant - all cases are assessed on their own merits. Admissions tutors clearly don't treat Henrietta Barnett as being equivalent to a failing comprehensive. Students also have to declare all secondary education so universities can see if a candidate did their GCSEs at a private school/grammar before going on to a different sixth form.