to be absolutely horrified by Educating Essex

[spiderpig8]

i would stick pins in my eyes before i sent my kids to a place like that!!
I was watching it woth DS1 who is 16 and he was absolutely speechless at the lack of discipline and the immaturity of the pupils.
Where to start?

Why aren't they all seated in rows facing the front? They seem to be sitting clustered around tables like infants, .No wonder they don't concentrate and are disruptive.
The girls look like hookers with thick make up and very short skirts
If that was top set maths?? At 16 learning how to work out the area of a circle?? The teacher was uninspiring and unenthusiastic. And I had t laugh when it zoomed in on Carrie's so-called 9 GCSEs.She had b in English and |C in maths and that was it.the rest were btecs , functional skills, citizenship and crap that isn't worth the paper it's written on.

The head and deputy are twerps.Skating about in swivel chairs in the corridor, allowing the kids to snowball them.They try to be the kids mates rather than their role models.How can they command any respect?
Most of all allowing their pupils to appear on national television , making serious false allegations against staff, and sending abusive bullying texts.
And this is an ofsted outstanding school!!

'spiderpig, there aren't any secondary moderns any more. Comprehensives take all abilities, not just the lower end.'

Your post doesn't make sense! Of course comprehensives take the whole ability ranges the clue's in the name - comprehensive.
However in a grammar school area of course there are modern schools, because the 'non-grammar' school isn't taking the full ability range.if you look through school league tables under 'type of school' you will see some listed as 'modern'

..and Mr Drew? Strikes me as a short-arse of a guy who would never cut it in the adult world and rather enjoys the feeling of power bossing kids about, gives him.Saddo!

This school has been rated Ofsted outstanding so must he doing something right.

The management is spot on. They talk to the kids on an equal level. I hated being spoken down to at school.

They are doing a great job in an under-privileged area.

YABVU

If you live in a grammar school area as I do, then the surrounding schools are in effect secondary modern schools.

The situation, as far as I could tell from what was shown in the programme, with Vinnie was that he was disrupting the education others and to a far greater extent his own education due to his home life.

He was then put in a children's home, which both the social worker, the head and the school staff were concerned about, due to the kind of environment that operates in children's homes.

A generation ago, kids like Vinnie, who have broken no law but are vulnerable, troubled, and have no proper parental care would have been found a place in a state residential school. Then he wouldn't be in a children's home. He would have been in a school 24 hours a day with continuity of care from teachers like Mr Drew - teachers who have actually chosen to work and train in the teaching and care of kids exactly like Vinnie.

Instead he is in a children's home experiencing god only knows what. Well done him for passing his exams in such a ridiculous system. Shame on the posters on this thread for patting themselves on the back for how liberal they are for supporting the inclusion of everybody in mainstream education when it is clearly not meeting the needs of a child that nobody cares about outside of Monday - Friday between the hours of 9 and 3.

sugar Pi is a magic ratio between the outer circumference of any circle and its diameter - for any circle the circumference will always be just more than three times (Pi = 3.142....) as long as its diameter.

The circle can be microscopic or encompassing galaxies, this rule always applies, which makes it mathematically really useful.

I also think the teachers and head do a fab job there.... I'd send my DS.

It is giving everyone an insight in what goes on. very very brave move for them.

All you others, get a damn grip!

I send taqruin to a private school.... they don't act like that there... ummm yes the do.

Comprehensive - takes all pupils, usually regardless of their ability, aptitude or whether they have been selected for a place at a selective school, includes schools operating pupils banding admission arrangements.

Modern - takes pupils regardless of their ability or aptitude, including those who have not been selected for a place at a local selective school.

Secondary moderns had a completely different curriculum and prepared students for menial factory work. Secondary moderns were abolished and replaced by comprehensives. Modern just means it is a comp in a grammar system so while it takes all abilities, the top ability range usually goes elsewhere.

Passmores is designated a comprehensive.

Secondary moderns had a completely different curriculum and prepared students for menial factory work

Not here they didnt! We were prepared to be office girls, short hand, typewriting and we did proper O levels! We weren't grammar nor uni material but we were groomed to be supervisory (as it was back then) and lower management in the City

The tech colleges took the very non academic pupils and taught them a trade.

Bexley had the tri-part system until comprehensives arrived.

The non-selectives here still have the tri-part ethos. Children who cannot cope with academic schooling get syphoned off into AE colleges at 14 and are taught a trade.

Children at my school who can't cope with academic schooling are also found part-time college placements doing hairdressing or motor maintenance. They still sit some GCSEs with the school. But we also get the highest results for a state secondary in the area. That's what a comprehensive does as a matter of course, caters for all abilities. I notice that Passmores offers triple science for the most able scientists. The top set in maths appear to also do statistics GCSE. This is alongside the construction courses etc that we have seen students taking part in on the programme.

Vocational qualifications for the less academically able is not the same as the tri-part ethos, which wrote children off as failures and not further education material aged 11.

'We were prepared to be office girls' whether you wanted to be or not, I suppose. That statement rather horrifies me, I must admit.

I teach in an inner London State School no dissimilar to Passmores. I'll choose to ignore the comment about state schools being zoos.
A lot of the comments on this thread highlight what my colleagues and I have to battle through every day. Judgment after judgement. Some of the problems in school are nothing to do with the teachers or the systems in place, they are to do with the fact that society expects schools to be accountable for everything. Parents expect schools to raise their kids for them and the government expects schools to run like social services. Yet I still wake up at 5.30 every day to go and do the job that I love because regardless f the judgement the kids get and the staff get from people that don't have the first clue what it's like to attend or work in a state school, my first responsibility is to those young people. For what it's worth, I think passmores do a fantastic job.

Triple science legally has to be offered to pupils funtioning at L5 in Y9.

Statistics GCSE doesn't have to be offered at all.

'We were prepared to be office girls' whether you wanted to be or not, I suppose. That statement rather horrifies me, I must admit.

Ok a simplistic statement on my part - rather than being cashiers in supermarkets etc - we were encouraged to have high expectations and to go into The City and do well - and by and large we all did. This is some 30-odd years ago though! I did far better career wise than any of my primary contempararies who went to grammar or true comprehensives.

"maths" of some sort has to be legally taught until the end of Y11. Therefore, a lot of schools do put through pupils in Y10 - if they get A* or A they can go onto AS maths for Y11, B & Cs do GCSE statistics, D and below resit the normal GCSE maths.

I was watching something at the gym the other night, but didn't know what it was. Did the last episode focus on two teenagers splitting up? Did a blonde girl dye someone's hair?

Triple science legally has to be offered to pupils funtioning at L5 in Y9.

really!! I'm a science teacher and even i didn't know that!!

I thought only Core science had to be taught to all and what came with that was up to the school/kid....

The current school I work at is the only school I have ever worked at that has offered triple at all.

Funnily enough my school investigated the possibility of starting AS level maths in Y11 and concluded that it was a bad idea. Students who start AS maths early tend to do worse than they would if they started in sixth form and end up having to resit. Therefore our A*-A students do Stats in Y10 and Maths in Y11 (the other way around is also a poor choice as potential A-level mathematicians then haven't done any algebra for the year before starting A-Level).

The thought of B/C grade mathematicians taking the GCSE a year early then tacking on an extra GCSE in Y11 when they could take maths in Y11 and potentially go up a grade just seems bizarre.

Passmore's Statistics results don't look like the results of a B/C cohort. I suspect that was their top set.

The triple L5 rule came in 2 years ago, just as my son was taking his options.

But Im an EO and I have long held the view that the science department exists, in the main, to make my life as difficult as possible and to reduce it's staff to jibbering wrecks.

Six sets were I work - top do the triple, next 2 do core and additional, next 2 do double BTEC, bottom do single BTEC. factor in all the set changes every term, it fair does my head in!

We never do maths early; occassionally one pupil will sit in November then self teach FSMQ which is a stand alone maths qual equiv to one unit of AS.

Simplistically, other than the grammars (who I gather are making all their B grade GCSE maths resit it this November) no school really cares, from a statistical POV where a GCSE is grase A*,A,B or C .... it's C and above that get published. Money will be spend demanding remarks for pupils on a D grade in the hopes they can achieve the magical C, but no money will be spent on a B grade if they are a mark or two short of attaining an A

And that is exactly what's wrong with the league tables.

League tables exist becaue parents believe whats in them, unfortunately.

The CVA is a far more important marker of how a school really performs and how it has developed children.

Lesser qualifications of 'equal standing' have filtered their way in, simply in order to bolster league tables. Schools are run like business. You have to get bums-on-seats every september, if you cant get a cohort in then people get made redundant. 6th formers are vitally important to the funding, they bring a bounty with them, roughly twice what the pupil in Y7-11 brings with them. A massive Y12, regardless of ability is highly sought after. The As results arent published you see. Then you only keep the worthy ones in Y13. I see schools do this all over the borough.

Another big knock on to mainstream schools is the closure of special schools. These children have to be educated somewhere, and I'm all for inclusion, but when you have a class of 30 in a mainstream year group of 180 who have a mental age of 6-8 years old - that is a big effect on that Y11's statistics. Parents think the school has taken a sudden dip in results and is 'failing'. There comes a big scrabble in Y8 and Y9 to find courses these children can cope with - voila! The BTEC! it's all internally moderated and they all swimmingly pass with a PE BTEC worth 4x C grade GCSE equivalents. Ditto OCR Nationals. Shocking isn't it? Every non-selective school does it.

no school really cares, from a statistical POV where a GCSE is grase A,A,B or C .... it's C and above that get published.*

That is rubbish. C and above are the headline figure but the CVA (now just VA) shows whether students are making sufficient progress. And that includes A students getting As and not being fobbed off with a B in Y10. Only the best 8 GCSEs are looked at for each student so the fact that they've got a million doesn't matter, just the fact that the best 8 are at a lower grade than they should have been.

6th formers are vitally important to the funding
6th form funding has been cut drastically by the current government and looks to be cut further in the years to come.

Shocking isn't it?
That students who would fail a GCSE get the opportunity to take a qualification that they can succeed in? That's not shocking, that's just common sense. I understand the quibbles about equivalence to GCSE, but the fact that they are on offer at all is not in the slightest bit shocking. That they are considered equivalent to a number of GCSEs leading to students who could potentially succeed at GCSE being funneled into them inappropriately is also an issue. I think that is being addressed now with only 1 equivalent qualification counting in the 5 A*-C measure.

I don't teach, but have always held some curiosity for what it is like to teach.

I think this school do very well in dealing with their students. Did you see the episode where the young boy was kicked out of his house and place in FC? The HT did his absolute best for that young lad, and he was visibly upset that the boy was in that situation. The HT vowed to support him and get him through his GCSE's. That made me respect the HT and his commitment to his students.

I think the teachers show the very relevant challenges of schooling today's children, and dealing with issues that didn't arise when most MNters were at school (bullying via social networks for example). They try to deal with it very effectively IMO.

But I do agree with another poster who said that the female sports teacher does appear to give more supportive counselling to boys than girls. She has been fantastic at speaking to the boys but she is very dismissive when dealing with the girls.

MillyR how many children fail so he could pass

Helping these troubled children in a mainstream environment usually is at the expense of the all I am saying if a child is disrupting a class do we keep that child in the class support them at the expense of the rest

My feeling is that if it was your child unable to study you wouldn't feel the same