Would you send your child to this school?

[Vodkascoke]

These are some of the results: it’s a secondary school: I have no idea whether this is considered good. It is better than a few others in the area.

Overall performance at end of key stage 4 in 2024 - all pupils - 0.24

Achieving English & maths GCSEs at end of key stage 4 in 2024 - all pupils - 59.1

Progress 8 scores at end of key stage 4 in 2024 - all pupils - above average 0.24

Where is this information? I couldn’t see on compare.gov.

That’s basically what the Progress 8 score shows.

A score of 0 would mean that a student does exactly as expected in their GCSEs given their ability when they started year 7.

Anything above that means they do better than expected.

yesterday due to another thread i was prompted to look at my dgd's school gcse results.
the school has published their cumulative %
9-4 98.3%
9-7 77.2
yes it's academically selective and no published progress 8.
is there a way for you to look at the cumulative % of grades? the small % of "pass" certainly isn't encouraging.
poor behavior drags everyone down
in theory it sounds like you are going to give your child a 59% chance of passing (same as everyone else) personally i fully expect 100% pass and nothing else for core subjects.

Unfortunately GCSEs are designed so a certain percentage fail. So a non selective school will never achieve 100%.

If you dig deeper into the data on gov.uk, can you find the progress for low/middle and high attainment pupils?
If you are realistic about your child's ability, you can see what the school will do for them.
So, if you have a middle ability child, and middle attainers get 0.4 progress, the school does well with them. If middle attained get a progress of 0, they meet national average. I can't believe the number will be negative from those stats.

If that school was my local, yes, I'd use it. There is very little choice round here tho, and nearly everyone goes to their catchment school - so basically, I wouldn't make life difficult and end up doing 5 years of school rund because of those results.

https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/find-a-school-in-england

Which I think is what you were looking at?

Open up the extra detail under ‘results by pupil characteristics’ on the compare schools website.

Thus will give you lots of info about numbers of high/low/middle attainers and the results and progress of each; also % SEN; %Disadvantaged etc

Thank you!

Southwark, non-selective, 30% FSM. So no, not really.

edited to add 17% SEN support, 6% EHCP, 6% English not first language.

Scroll down the school’s data page to below the bar charts: you will see this:

Under ‘Results by pupil characteristics’ you get these options:

Thank you, this is what I found: does it look any good?

88% is incredible. I’m assuming somewhere leafy with little SEN or EAL as if not that is even more exceptional.

My dcs school EAL dc have a progress score way above 1 & 95% get grade 5 or above in English & Maths.

@Vodkascoke I would say those results aren't bad at all, I look at the middle cohort as most dc fall into that bracket. High attainers tend to do well whatever school they are in. Do you know what level your dc is at?

I would say it looks entirely fine. As a rule of thumb, it has a positive Progress 8 for all abilities - ie it is doing better than the average nationally in terms of moving children on from what is predicted given their starting points.

It isn’t stellar - many MN parents will be able to cite individual schools with stronger results - but it is respectable.

What are your other realistic choices? In general, it’s not as if parents have a choice of hundreds of schools - is it in line with / better / worse than the other schools you have a realistic chance of gaining a place in?

Looks perfectly Ok on the data and presuming its intake is more disadvantaged than the national average (going on English and maths scores).

Progress 8 is the meaningful bit. Percent getting 9-4 Eng/ maths depends on ability of cohort coming in, which usually correlates closely with disadvantage.

Go get a feel for the school, meet the head teacher and other senior leaders. School tours are never an accurate representation - they always pick the good kids to show you round 😂

i would say she is mid possibly even mid-high. It’s difficult to say really as she’s very good at maths but slightly less at English

This is another possibility, I’m surprised looking at these results as this school is oversubscribed whereas other one is not

I wouldn't be happy with that second school.
A lot of people are swayed by historical reputations not current facts.

your first school has very reasonable "grade 4 and above for english and math" results for the middle and high attainers. that's more reassuring for your child.

I wouldn't be happy with that second school. A lot of people are swayed by historical reputations not current facts.

Agree

I don't know, i never looked at the academic results when looking at schools. I was more focussed on the pastoral care and whether the staff and students were happy there.