To wonder what Teresa May's plans for secondary moderns are

[Neverthelessshepersisted]

That's it really.
I am a bit disappointed with her tbh.

Efterling, if comprehensives fail the high achievers, how do you explain the fact that there is no significant difference in GCSE results between wholly selective authorities and comprehensive ones?

From what I can make out, many comprehensives seem to pull people towards the middle trying to jump the grade C level in as many subjects as possible. I think it is at FE level that the real problems arise where the spread of ability, and therefore qualifications widens.i don't see how a school of say 800/1000 pupils can effectively serve the full ability range.

"From what I can make out, many comprehensives seem to pull people towards the middle trying to jump the grade C level in as many subjects as possible. "

Have you actually got any evidence that this happens?

Anyway, even if it did, the new OFSTED framework will stop it happening,

if comprehensives fail the high achievers, how do you explain the fact that there is no significant difference in GCSE results between wholly selective authorities and comprehensive ones?

I think

1. that figures are flawed because of cross border flow and 'leakages' from the system. So for example where I live there is an opt out 11+ syastem.The typical number of Y6s in catchment will be about 300. About 22% are placed at the GS (66 ) and then teh remaining 50 places go to out of catchment.Instead of the SM taking 234 who didn't get to the GS they will get maybe 70 - the remainder being bussed 15 + miles to faith schools and comps in another area or go private. those that go to sm are statistically likely to be less engaged with their DCs education and are not interested/unwilling to pay for bus fares. So what I am saying is that adding up the stats of the sm & the GS in my area would give a very misleading picture!

It stands to reason up until now, a school would try to get its pupils to grade c rather than get a similar number from b to a.
It would then be higher in the league tables.
It's seen that it's more important to get a c - the returns on higher grades are less for league table purposes.

Even if overall, achievement was similar, as an average, that may mask differences in the spread of results. Furthermore, i think there are other things we should take into consideration. Such as happiness at school.
Results are only one measure.

Both my oldest two left secondary comps to environments where they were much happier and were taught amongst peers of similar academic ability.

Well it stands to reason- if you have no respect for teachers and think that they don't care about their pupils.....

Even if you don't think teachers care about their pupils, teachers tend to care about their pay rises which are tied to pupils hitting their individual targets even if the whole school was only measured on A*-C (which it wasn't, there was also the value added score).

I think most teachers care very much about their pupils. However league table results have really looked at percentage passing - although I know value added is reported it isn't often what sticks in the mind of parents or comes up in conversation.

The school put far more effort into DD2 trying to get a handful of Cs than DD1 who was aiming for A* . I'm not sure if that's a bad thing, but I do know that it how it appeared. (Booster classes etc )

My disappointment with the comp system is mainly from having a child of very low academic ability. She hated being in classes with pupils achieving more than her, all the time.

Having finally reached the end of a few centuries of post-Enlightenment, the measures of intelligence will shift back towards the appreciation of 'doing' and the intelligence of mastery in craft and artisanship will regain their importance. The current and prevailing emphasis on intelligence as measured through academic ability and the craft of thinking and intellectual analysis will eventually take its place alongside and equal to the crafts of production. The innate intelligence of the hedgelayers and stonemasons, who learned their crafts by 'doing' - who is more intelligent? The craftsman/woman who already knows - or the reasonably rich investment analyst/lawyer/public sector manager who pays the craftsperson to teach them hedgelaying/masonry in their second homes? Dunno me, just sum foughts...

A comment that Theresa May's plans will not benefit poorer children at all:

www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/03/theresa-may-selling-her-new-grammar-schools-program-under-false-pretences

IadoreEfteling
Angel, comprehensive have also been heavily criticised by ofsted for low expectations, failing top sets and all the others actually

Ofsted a group that has complained that schools are teaching a too narrow curriculum, whilst at the same time saying that its too broad, complaining about Latin being taught then complaining that its not being taught.

Arse and elbow springs to mind

A check between Bucks and Oxfordshire -selective and non-selective. They have exactly the same Progress 8 score. Bucks does score better on the A-C figure (73% to 67%) but when you compare the school populations it has 2437 High Achievers (out of 5622) compared to Oxfordshire which has 1672 (out of 5975). Again with Low Achievers Oxon has 1042 whereas Bucks has only 639.

So if pupils are doing better in the grammars than in Oxon's comps then logically you can only conclude that pupils in Bucks secondary moderns are doing worse - otherwise their progress 8 would be ahead of Oxon's. Of course you could also conclude that all pupils are doing as well as their starting scores indicate they will. In which case let's spend the much-needed new grammars money somewhere else.

HPFA i think the new GCSEs will show a different story. "High achievers" with a level 5 at the end of KS2 and A grade at GCSE are too blunt an instrument to measure progress of the most academically able students IMO.

This was certainly my experience with bright but not exceptional ds in yrs 5 and 6. I kept being told " he is above average, he is achieving well" when in fact he wasnt making the progress he should have because the teaching resources were going to get dcs from level 3 to level 4 or up to level 5. As ds was never not going to reach that bench mark very little resource was directed at him. This is a "good with outstanding features" primary. He was in a class of 34- not their fault. But not fair on him either.

All these musnetters extolling the virtues of 'doing' rather than 'learning'... (and in that context supporting the reprehensible idea of 'technical' schools for the 80%-90% and GSs for the 20% or even 10%

Is there no value then that you can see in a good education achieved in an excellent all round school, for its own sake?

not tied to whether someone goes to Oxbridge
not tied to what job they will do in the future
but about the idea of learning, becoming knowledgeable, because as a society we value that and we believe in the idea of a knowledgeable and a well educated population, whatever the outcome in terms of a future job?

I despair sometimes with these threads.

High achievers" with a level 5 at the end of KS2 and A grade at GCSE are too blunt an instrument to measure progress

That's not how progress is measured though.

My DC's Comp doesn't pull towards the middle. Plenty of pupils go to Oxbridge. For GCSE you can end up with As and "A*" in the third set, but it also caters (although is struggling more to do this with reduced funding and government targets) to those who are "not academic" and struggling.

This in a Tory but 100% Comprehensive area.

And i absolutely concur that parents of academically able dcs do feel by the end of primary their dcs have done their bit of "helping" ,"supporting" and " leading by example" the less able. Unfortunately round here the experience is that the comps spend yr 7 " consolidating" some not even streaming till year 8. So poteintially you have a dc who was already level 5/6 old money by the beginging of year 6 ( not that unusual) who then has 2 years of stagnation - basically waiting for the others to catch upso they can all move on together in yr9. It's a travesty to treat our brightest young minds this way. I am not saying this happens in every comprehensive, but that is what has happened to every one of ds's primary classmates ( range of schools) except those who went private. Ds is yr 8 btw.

Sorry noble i thought that was the definition of high achiever, would be delighted to be corrected. Can you explain how progress from KS2 to KS4 is measured ?

HPFA i think the new GCSEs will show a different story. "High achievers" with a level 5 at the end of KS2 and A grade at GCSE are too blunt an instrument to measure progress of the most academically able students IMO.

Surely we have to go off the evidence we have now rather than speculating about what new exams might show? And even if you're right this wouldn't affect those in the secondary moderns who MAY (evidence indicates this is more of a "will") do worse than in comprehensives.

But it would (and i accept this speculation) show just how much better high achievers do in a suitable enviroment.

And why not make secondary moderns (or high schools as they are called in Kent) better -? Those proponents of comprehensives know deep down that in some schools these kid's potential is being sacrificed for the greater good.

well fwiw folks my conclusions are

Firstly, my kids are lucky to be in a leafy comp.

There is one powerful argument against me: that we select already by postcode. That is the only rational basis for grammars I've found so far in the thread. That you would select by ability instead of postcode where this would result in less extreme favouritism of the prosperous to that we have now. Good luck with that one though Mrs May!

Can you explain how progress from KS2 to KS4 is measured?

It depends on what you're looking at. However they use the actual scores out of 100 for KS2, add them together, then do calculations based on that rather than merely 'level 5'. For the new progress 8 measure the numerical scores for GCSE are added, divided by 10 then compared to other students who have the same fine grades KS2 score.

For things like FFT target grades in individual subjects the KS2 data is used with contextual data (e.g. FSM, Chinese, girl) to give individual target grades based on how that group performed in the most recent GCSEs (so target grades can change yearly). Schools can also choose whether to use targets that would give average progress, or progress in the top 25% of schools.