Don't want to send DS to school with 40% GCSE pass rate

[Ouch12]

My son is in year 6 and we submitted his choices for secondary school earlier this week.

The only schools he stands a chance of getting have GCSE pass rates in maths and English (grade 5) of 40%.

I have visited the schools and they had decent facilities, engaged students and teachers. I cannot work out why 60% would not get a grade 5 - which I know is a high C / low B.

About 500m away is a school where 60% of students get a grade 5, which isn't great but much better than 40%.

I feel I have to move so my son can get into a better school. Am I being unreasonable about not wants him to go to the 2 schools he could get into.

Application closing date has been, moving house won’t make a difference now.

Why not have the mindset that your son could be one of the 40% who achieve good grades. Maybe 6,7,8 or 9.

GCSE grade boundaries are calculated so a fixed percentage of kids don’t get level 5. Isn’t the national rate around 50 odd percent ?

Is your son in the top half of his class ? In which case he’ll probably pass.

40% grade 5 in both actually isn’t that bad for a non-selective school.

England average is 45%.

The exams are designed for many children to fail. And pass is a 4.

The headline figures are one thing, and yes, don't look great, but more importantly is the detailed data for results for each level of attainment.
https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/112989/belper-school-and-sixth-form-centre/secondary/results-by-pupil-characteristics?accordionstate=1 as an example.

The average may be 40% but if your son is a high achiever and 80% of that cohort gets a 5+ you probably don't have much to worry about. Equally if he's a middle level and they are not making good progress then you may need to start thinking how you can support.

If they’ve based that percentage on last years GCSE results, it could be because the GCSE mark scheme was higher than the previous few years, meaning less children passed than would have previously. I work in a school and we had many that didn’t pass when they should have.

Many children, far more than you would think start secondary school with a reading age below 8 years old. Depending on the particular catchment and feeder schools for that secondary school the cohort will be different to the one down the road. And those Grade 1-4 may well be a massive achievement for those children.

If you have a bright engaged child then they will do well too. The issue is more for middle ability students if behaviour management is lacking and are in a challenging group.

You want to look at the Progress 8 score instead.

The obvious thing to do would be to encourage your son, read with him, help him with his maths and make sure he studies, does extra curricular work.
If he’s bright he’ll be one of then ones who stands out in that school.

I know that the numbers seem low but remember that secondaries set so the kids in his class for English will be aiming for a similar grade to him. My dd was in a school which is 240 pupil entry and there were 8 sets (2x set 1, 2x set 2 etc) She was set 2 and achieved a grade 7 and 8 (literature and language) and wasn’t an anomaly in his class.

Don’t look at the results look at the kind of children who go, whether they cause trouble etc. I live in an Indian area (I’m black married to an Indian guy) and even the worst schools here with gang and stabbing issues have 60%+ GCSE pass rates.

I don’t blame you but I wouldn’t panic just yet. The school I am hoping my child gets into has a 75% rate for a 5 in English and maths and 98% for a 4 in both. So it can be done well in non selective state schools.

Our second choice the rate for 5 in both is about 60% and the year before was 45…. However I really liked the school and its results are improving every year and it has a lot of positives. We know kids who really like it there. So it may well be by the time your child is there and doing exams the results are better.

Just compared it to our state school in a not great demographic and it's 81% pass rate. Really surprised at the average being 40%. That seems so low!

Our local secondary school only had 20% of pupils achieving grade 5 in both maths and English. Plus lots of behavioural problems, and a recent Ofsted “Requires Improvement” rating. So yes, we moved, and current catchment school had 73% getting grade 5.

Look at the other schools in the area - there have to be some better schools around.

The average is low because there is a limit to how many can achieve each grade. Its not a pass fail exam. Its supposed to be approximately the same ratio of each grade each year.

What's the percentage for a 4? That's the pass rate. It's also, contrary to what the media would have you believe, not that easy to pass English Language. Especially if kids don't read themselves.

is your school selective? There isn't a school nearby that comes close to 80%. A few at 60%, one at 50%, a few at 40% and a few at 20%

What's the percentage getting maths at 5+ and English at 5+ separately?

As others have said, that 40% is not far off the national average, so if the school has a slightly below average profile, that's what you'd expect. (If it has a much higher profile, then that is rather less than impressive ...)

Are you looking at the 4+ statistic rather than the 5+ (which is what OP is quoting)? 80% is incredibly good for a non-selective school and seems very unlikely if the demographic is "not great".

My GCSE year had 35% 5 A-Cs but my friendship group all had 8+ A/A some straight A/A and some with a couple of Bs C's. We got As and Bs at A levels. We are in our mid30s now and 2 of us have PhDs and another is a medical Dr!
I went to a good uni and got a 1st in an integrated master's and went on to get a PhD in the same university. I found the adjustment to uni much easier than my friend who went to a top ranking private school. We had the same A level grades but she came out with a 2:2 as she struggled with independent study. If I was sick and had to rely on her notes from a lecture they had half the information i usually had written in a lecture. I wrote pretty much everything the lecturer said down and she just wrote the notes the lecturer wrote. I definitely think I have had better life having been to a school with low results. My teachers generally taught to grade C in class. If you wanted to get a higher grade it was off your own back. They would run extra classes over the holidays and after school. If you showed willing they would go above and beyond for you. That self drive has stuck with me and I think it's the best thing I could have learnt from school. Having friends in the same situation helped too, we bought a text book on eBay and then shared that during our a levels.

My little sister went through the school too and she is a self taught accountant. She missed 2 years of school due to ill health and started with book keeping courses and went from there until she qualified. Grit and determination are very valuable skills!

I wonder if I'm being sexist here, but I would especially worry about the effect of school culture for a boy. I went to a school where there was an anti-learning culture and hung out with a group of nerdy girls in a forgotten corner of the school and we had a great time and most of us ended up going to uni.

I think the penalty for nerdier boys who wanted to learn was worse, the idea of what a man was, was someone who was good at sport or who did loads of drugs and partied a lot (it was the 90s... hopefully less of that now). I would consider moving for a better school.

England average is 45% so you're being unrealistic in terms of expectations. That's a completely average school you have there.

As others have said, the average across the country is 45%.

A previous poster provided a link to the compare school performance service gov.uk website. This is a great resource to compare schools in a local area.

The average across all schools for the Local Authority where I live is 36%. This ranges generally from 17% to 50% with one school at 79%.

The school that has the very high figure is a Church of England secondary school that has around 10% of places awarded based on passing an entrance exam or on musical ability.

The rest of the places are given to children of worshipping members of the Church of England or Methodist church. After that it goes to children of other Christian denominations and Other Major Faiths.

Only if there aren't enough pupils in any of the above categories will other local children be considered on a nearest to the school basis.

And they expect the parents to have been active, regular, worshippers for a number of years. You get points depending on how often you attend and for how many years. You are then ranked and those with the most points get offered places first. You can't fake it either, you have to get written confirmation from your vicar, priest, rabbi, pandit or imam.

The school is wildly oversubscribed and parents (unless they physically live very close to the school) plan several years in advance if they're planning for their children to attend this school.

If you look at the breakdown of the figures for this school on the gov.uk website (look for the school and then click on Secondary, Results by pupil characteristics, prior attainment) it gives figures for different groups of pupils based on how they did at Key Stage 2 - they are referred to as "Low Prior Attainers", "Middle Prior Attainers" and "High Prior Attainers".

For example, this school in particular had 5% low attainers, 45% middle attainers and 50% high attainers.

So they had a lot of very bright kids going to that school anyway to start with. But it also did great when it came to teaching those children and the Progress8 score was also very good as well for all groups. Also, they only had a very small number of disadvantaged pupils (8%) but they did well with a 46% pass rate.
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Contrast that to the school that came out bottom (excluding special schools etc).

This school had a 17% pass rate. But look at the type of children at the school. 48% disadvantaged. When it came attainment there were 45% low attainers, 45% middle attainers and only 5% high attainers.

But despite the overall low scores at that school those high attainers still managed to get an 85% pass rate (the pass rate for high attainers at the top school was 93%).

Having said that, their Progress 8 score was definitely down at the bottom end so there is definitely room for improvement.
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So, find out where your DC are in terms of Key Stage 2. Are they low, middle or high attainers? Are your DC disadvantaged or have English as an additional language?

Then have a look to see how each secondary school is doing for the relevant group for your DC rather than trying to compare an overall figure that may be very different simply because there are more high prior attainers at one school than at another.

I went to a comp that had a 41% 'five A-C pass rate'.

There was definitely a culture of 'too cool for school' and kids that were clever/motivated were targeted and dragged down. The school wasn't big enough for effective streaming and there were kids in the top set who should have been in lower sets. They caused disruption in every lesson, every day.

If your child is academic, I'd seriously consider moving if you can afford to or applying for a local selective school if they exist in your area - e.g. 12+ or 13+ exam.

The secondary school my DC went to sat around that level. My kids both got nothing lower than a B/6 and a swathe of 7,8 and 9 for the majority of their grades. Our town is very m8xed, with some leafy bits and some very deprived bits, but a student who wanted to work hard and succeed would do well.