Feedback on Grey Court School , Ham (Richmond)

@infinitwisdom apart from discouraging people to use the data in their decision ( read: a stick to bash other people's decisions who wanted to use data ) are you also discouraging people to rely on anything Ofsted produced? 😂 And therefore are you encouraging to listen to what biased opinions and rely on show off open days?

@Meredusoleil I heard from an insider that she recently dissapeared. Please read one of the more recent newsletters to the parents that you can find on their website.

Don't be so dramatic 😂.Did I force you to do as I say? No Everybody is entitled to his opinion which I merely expressed.

Which school's headmistress has left? Rebecca Poole still seems to be Head of Hampton High and its been about 4 or 5 years now.

No, but there is no need to be absolutist about it or to use it as a stick to bash other people's decisions with. Maybe relax a bit, and stop implying your choices are superior just because they're based on data. They're really not.

So are you saying that decision about schools should not be based at all on data?

I personally believe that a data from few years shows trend

Of course it can happen in any school. But it will have a bigger impact in smaller schools, and in kinder schools that don't manage out troubled kids in Year 9, and in the schools that have to take in those managed-out kids.

By the way, I have no connection to Twickenham School. I'm just challenging your faith in data, because I work in a (different) school and see from the inside what influences it from year to year.

I think that can happen in any school and not only in Twickenham School 😂

Also, one can only draw conclusion about data from the school by observing data for several years and not only a random year.

Btw a nearby Twickenham School is another school, Hampton High that had a very bad year. The Progress 8 went down down and is now well below the average and the headmistress left the school

@JustWingItLifeEyelinerEverything well the first thing to note about that cohort is that it only had 75 students (very few for a secondary school) and only 9 of them were high attainers when baselined by their SATS scores at the end of Y6. It would only need one of those high attainers to suffer a long term illness or life event that caused them to miss a lot of school, and it would have an enormous impact on not only their own GCSE results but also the average A8/P8 figures for the school.

@infinitwisdom not sure what you mean. It shows how those kids qualified earlier at KS2 as low, middle and high...performed then at various criteria around GCSE. Attached is the pic from Twickenham School

The behaviour of students on the 371 bus is abysmal. My heart sinks when I see Grey Court students getting on. I once over heard a conversation between students there bragging that they'd beaten the shit out of another boy in their class. Nice school.

Not really. The definition of a high/medium/low attainer in that context is a child who performed well/middling/poorly in their Year 6 SATs. A lot can happen to a child between Year 6 and Year 11. Any child who goes off the rails, e.g. with mental health issues, or family trauma, and misses a lot of school, can have an impact on results. If high performers go off the rails it obviously has a much bigger impact on progress scores than if low performers go off the rails. But that will tell you very little about how your own high/medium/low performing child would have done in the same cohort.

@3WildOnes that may be the case at the moment but TKA is doing very well and fast on the heels of Greycourt. Give a few more years and I will bet it does as well if not exceeds the results of Greycourt. Among people I know TKA is proving to be more popular - although these things are cyclical. Ultimately, they are both fantastic schools and I would be happy for my dc to go to either school.

If you ask enough people you find someone to say something negative about both schools - but the vast majority have a great experience at these schools. And I said earlier as it isn't really a choice but a preference you need to be happy with your child to going to either.

I have lots of friends with children at GC who are very happy. I would choose it over kingston accademy, it has a higher progress 8 score and higher attainment 8 score.

@infinitwisdom but we can always look at the gov page for a specific school and find out how the low attainers performer vs middle and achievers. It is all there including proportion of rsch group.

A very small number of school refuseniks can have a very significant impact on schools' Progress 8 and Attainment 8 scores. Students don't need to be disruptive to have an impact, just absent! Schools with consistently high results are adept at managing them out by Year 9, because they know Ofsted looks very closely at the profile of leavers in Years 10 and 11 and asks questions. Kinder, more inclusive schools do what they can to engage these kids and encourage them back into the classroom, but often its a lost cause, and the school's overall results suffer for it. So when you look at headline results, it is always worth considering that they are averages, and they mask a lot of individual circumstances. School's results that swing up and down from year to year are a sign of outliers in their cohorts, e.g. students who don't turn up for any of their exams, or have missed a substantial chunk of teaching time. (The DfE does allow some outliers to be discounted, but the criteria are very stringent).

We have lots of friends and family at greycourt, all of whom are happy with it. Its a large school set in lovely grounds, head is passionate and seems to have a great track record of raising the game of the school and is ambitious for it. Its a big school though and like others have said that brings highs and lows. We've got one in Tiffin, if she gets a place I would definitely take it. No contest. Its a great educational experience for the right child

H

Thanks

@infinitwisdom not only managed out but also those who had to escape. And that creates the problem because the school has there very challenging kids on both sides of the spectrum. Those who traumatise others and those who are traumatised. Definitely the gov should give more money to such schools to strengthen the pastoral care

@JustWingItLifeEyelinerEverything we are in the catchment of Greycourt and TKA and yes you're right Greycourt does go over the river. But TKA does not as far as I'm aware - so like I said it be unusual to be in the catchment for both and end up at Twickenham Academy - especially when you have Teddington so close on the otherside of the river.

Yep, it may take a few years to turn that around, and in the meantime it has spaces in upper year groups that mean it has no choice but to accept students who are "managed out" by other schools, so be kind to it.

Twickenham school is big @12345change and accepts widely. Whereas Grey Court catchment streches also to the other side of the river. Kids from Teddington go over the footbridgez through the park to Grey Court

Progress 8 of 0.15, 2023 GCSE 5+ in Maths and English 51 perc...I would dare to say that Twickenham School is in the bottom of the Borough's list when it comes to the results

Twickenham School (which hasn't been called Twickenham Academy since 2016) wasn't oversubscribed with preferences, but did fill up on allocations this year, which will bolster it financially. It also has a new Head who is a physicist (gold dust) and was a former associate Head at Hammersmith Academy. The previous Head worked hard to get the school to Good before she left, so it's in a much stronger position than it ever has been in living memory.