Daughter kicked out of 6th form **Title edited by MNHQ**

in schools that only offer A-levels.......the selectivity will probably become more equal for internal and external candidates.
I agree - minimum entry requirements will be raised for internal candidates.

Ta1kinPeece
At your dcs' 6th form college last year 70 students obtained a U grade for AS Maths and I think the minimum entry requirement was an A grade at GCSE.

cantkeep
I live in an entirely comp county with 6th form colleges
we already have the shuffling that seems to be so freaking out the people in Bromley
it works
its minimal stress
they all select but nobody seems to hit the gaps
and no 11+ or god bothering

I suppose what I mean is:

• in schools that only offer A-levels, unless they wish to reduce cohort size and lose funding, the selectivity will probably become more equal for internal and external candidates.

• However, in schools and colleges that offer a mix of qualifications, there will be less willingness to allow borderline students a stab at A-levels before readjusting - they will simply be pushed towards non-A-level courses from the beginning.

Noble,

I can see your point, but the 'pool' of prospective Y12s won't be any smaller - in fact rather larger as the cohort size is due to grow year on year in line with the birth rate.

I can see more 'shuffling' at the end of Y11 in selective schools. For example, they will seek to get rid of any of their Y11s who have not made the grade (locally at least, progress from Y11-Y12 WITHIN selective schools is MUCH easier than getting in from another school) but, unless they want their funding to decrease, they will have to take roughly the same numbers as currently.

Equally, more 'lower end of selective spectrum' pupils will be released to the non-selective schools - whether that will make up for the higher number of top ability kids these non-selective schools will lose, i don't know.

Where I think it will really bite is that, in schools or colleges who offer both A-levels and Btecs there will be much more selectivity about who they allow to take A-levels and who they push towards non A-level courses.

noble
what they'll do is raise their entry requirements at the start of Y12?
Actually I do not have a problem with that
because it means that other schools will get more and more pupils who can get high grade A levels
and thus spread the excellence

Their cohort might still get stellar results, but it will shrink by a lot

What will we see these schools doing in the future? Why do I suspect that rather than raising their game and taking the 'B' grade kids at the end of Y12 onto top grades in Y13, what they'll do is raise their entry requirements at the start of Y12?

cantkeep
I do think that if we arrive at a situation where a pupil CANNOT have it suggested that continuing to an A-level is not the best course of action
I would never ever suggest that scenario
BUT
Schools (and colleges) set GCSE limits for A level entry - I totally approve - at DCs college it is generally B or above

If, only a year later , the child is at U grade, something has gone badly wrong, not just with the child.

If the situation is that the school guessed it wrong and the child needs to take courses the school cannot offer, then the SCHOOL should find the replacement place, not the parents.
Because the school are the ones who screwed up (as they have the multi year, multi pupil data sets, not the parents)

Selective schools will be hit hard by this as they tend not to have BTECs and NVQs on tap
a somebody who hates selective state schools
bring it on

haha!

Hello Piggy, I'm BOOP Nice to meet you!

I actually now basically think I am called Piggy...

Ah, I see, thanks Piggy (I feel rude calling you that!)

The title mentioned the town so I think it was too identifying.

I can see that Piggy

What was the title before MNHQ edited?

The OP's situation is irrelevant now anyway since her DD has miraculously gone up 2 grades in the course of 48 hours over a weekend

(Percentages purely imaginary, and just for illustration)

However, there should be a mechanism for the schools on which these children are 'dumped' to ALSO have successes recorded. It might mean that schools have to report 2 sets of results: the results gained by the pupils who were on the daily register at the point the exams were taken, and also the results gained by the pupils who started the school in Y12, wherever they took their exams.

So a school like Olave's might have 90% A-B on the first figure, but with maybe only 80% on the second (as 12% of their pupils had gone elsewhere after Y12 and 10% hadn't got those grades), whereas a local 'destination school for those dropped by high performing schools' might get 25% A-B for pupils who started there, but 35% once they had done well by those dumped on them.

@cantkeepawayforever that's what we would like to happen as we 'pick up' the dumped perceived underachievers from the Grammars.

Titchy, sorry, I was unclear.

What I meant was that 'AS levels were not universal', not that 'not having AS levels was universal'. As soon as there is a 'mixed economy' - ie from this summer - you can't use AS levels to create a fair set of admissions criteria.

DS will take AS levels - which he starts this week - as that's a decision his school have taken and will apply to every student doing A-levels. So that particular school COULD apply AS-level-based criteria for Y12-Y13 progression within A-level courses. However, that's not going to be the case in many other schools.

the new 'no universal AS level' scenario has already happened,

Actually it hasn't. The 17/18 cohort are the first for whom there is no AS Level that counts across the board. For the 16/17 cohort a lot of courses, including Maths, still have AS exams that count.

I do think that if we arrive at a situation where a pupil CANNOT have it suggested that continuing to an A-level is not the best course of action - and that ultimately a school has no right to transfer a student an track for UUU at A-level after a year of the course to a more suitable course for them - then that is equally unsatisfactory.

However, what might be sensible - I have suggested this on another thread - might perhaps be that any school admitting a pupil to Y12 retains 'ownership' of their ultimate results, even if they in fact ultimately attend a different institution (by agreement - like schools that use alternative provision for some pupils) to obtain them. So a pupil who starts Y12, is getting poor results and by mutual agreement moves onto a BTEC course at that institution OR ANOTHER ONE, has their results counted at the place where they started their Y12. It would mean that schools would have to continually work on getting the best from every pupil, rather than being able to 'palm off' underachievers to other institutions.

I would imagine parents would also have a right to query progress levels and what support was given to DCs when it became apparent they might not reach targets. In fact, they may well have been achieving their potential, just not St Olave's apparently required grades (still no one has been able to show that there is a clearly stated policy!)

The vast vast majority of A levels are reformed, with ASs that do not count towards the final grade.

prh - define inadequate.

practice - OP buggered off ages ago ! We are carrying on regardless!

prh, a lot of pupils didn't take AS levels this year, because their subjects are now linear. To refuse entry to Y13 to those who did AS, but to allow through those who didn't, would surely be unreasonable and likely to be unlawful - and in the absence of an externally-marked AS, the fairness and comparability of the internal exams would be suspect. for example, a department setting a hard Physics exam (or one with higher 'grade' boundaries) might end up with 'worse looking' results than a department which set a slightly easier History exam, while in fact the future A-level results of those two groups of students might be identical.

the last year of what you describe as 'the current position' was actually 12 months ago - the new 'no universal AS level' scenario has already happened, but schools haven't adapted their 'progress into Year 13' approach to match.

It is anyway unclear to me whether an existing 'progress into y13 is dependent on AS grades' form of admissions criteria would stand up to scrutiny, as most are informal and no precisely quantified, rather than being collected and administered publicly, as other admissions criteria are.

Did you read the quote I posted ?

And several of the Olaves kids took internal exams ....

6th form courses are now a two year linear block

Yes, things are changing. However I am talking about the current position. Right now, as far as I can see, if a pupil takes an AS level there is nothing to stop the school from refusing entry to Y13 if the grade is inadequate.