Financial Times Top 1000 Schools

[Xenia]

398 of the top 1000 are independent
Of the top 100 schools 80 are private and 19 grammar. Only one is a comp but it is a partially selective comprehensive.

(England only)
My older children's schools are 5th, 24th and 35th, not too bad.
www.ft.com/schoolmap-2011
The % ho get A or A* is proper subjects is a good measure and the fact they give the position in 2009 and 2008 too so you can see if a school has just had a bizarre year.

All in all, I think we can surely agree that if you send your DC to a school in the Top 1000 you can be pretty sure they will be taught by a reasonably good teacher, with reasonably good resources and with reaonably good control and discipline in the classroom and your child will have a reasonable chance of coming out having achieved their potential.

Our children only get one chance at having a good education so he way I feel about it is that picking a school in the top 1000 is basically an insurance policy. It reduces the risk of getting it badly wrong. I dont think you can criticise a parent for wanting that even if you hate the idea of private schools or grammar schools.

Poverty of ambition is a very sad thing,children should be encouraged to aim for the top,what a sad world it would be if people with the views of notirednow held sway.
What a blinkered view of the world,what a non enriching and non nourishing enviroment,Im a governor at a primary with a very "mixed" intake,attitudes like that are sadly not that uncommon,dont get ideas above your station etc etc..shocking.

Quite.

I mean, of course, it would be absurd to think everyone would want to go to Oxbridge and work in politics or whatever (though if you have any notion of being a Labour MP, you really will need to ).

But the thought that DC don't at least have the option, that they're put off before they have any idea what they want to do, is excruciating.

I do think teachers get a lot of defensive attitude from parents. Ds's teacher recently talked to me about ds having an iep as he struggles with spelling and writing. She really tiptoed around it and was clearly expecting me to be cross, whereas I was very happy that his problems were being addressed.

Whilst this thread had been going around in circles it has made me think about what we should do if ds doesn't get into the local excellent grammar. I'm now very sure that we'll go private, it's been niggling me even though he's only in year three. Suppose I'll have to get a job, but that's a whole different contentious issue .

A job? Noooooooooooooooooooo

An example ,at the school where Im a community Governor I wanted to put up a couple of photos with details of a couple of well known people that had gone to the school,one a well known olympian,another a well known actor,to show the children what could be done etc,boy did that upset people,elitist,not relevant etc etc,in the end the Head backed me and some of the comments from the kids have been great,they are amazed that people theyve heard of went to their school and got to the top,yes its unlikely theyll hit those hights but at least they know its possible,I dont want them to know their place,i want them to aim as high as they can,if someone would try and deny them that they..well, I better not say...

Hi - if you struggle to access the interactive chart, the rankings table is available at

rankings.ft.com/secondary-schools/secondary-schools-2011

This is available for all to view.

Anthony Hitchings
FT.com product manager

nottirednow - I think you are quite mistaken about people not making their children's education a family priority. If you lived in a grammar school catchment, you would meet plenty of families who had moved into the area from far afield, early in the education game, in order to maximise their chances of getting a great state education for their children.

And grammar school areas have a strong positive effect on private schools: by drawing in aspirational, educationally-focused families, private preps and senior schools benefit from an increased customer base too. The more competition the better, for educational standards as for all the rest. Even the "local comps-that-aren't" benefit.

Bonsoir - yes that is true and also private schools have to try an awful lot harder in areas where there are good free grammar schools in order to justify the fees they charge. It keeps the fees down and the quality up.

anthony - thanks for the link.

By the way, I notice that quite a few school rankings bounce around a lot from year to year.

Any comment or explanation on why that is?

Phew-local non selective comp within top 500.

My children are not destined to be low lifes and may, one day, be free to mingle with the creme de la creme of southern Englands finest young (independently educated) minds at a proper university.

I am reet grateful and will make sure I teach them to talk proper and not say serviette or toilet.

just wanted to say propatria - well done you - and to all those teachers on here who do their best for the children in their care - again well done you

to reiterate what many others have said - our problem is not the existence of the top 1000 but the lack of aspiration among too many families. not necessarily to go to oxbridge and work in the city/whatever but to get the most out of life - because we only get one shot at it.

personally, and this is very subjective, i cannot understand people who do not want to learn (again not assuming academic excellence) - the world and its people are fascinating! and i can't fathom why some families have such a dismissive attitude to free education - it's a luxury many children around the world simply cannot access.

i came from a working class family where there were generations (literally) of people who were top of their class at school but there was no money or community support for them to stay on at school beyond the minimum so they left and went into the workforce with minimal qualifications. because of my parents' support, i got to grammar school and was the first in my family to attend uni. that family history means it IRKS me that we are not doing all we can to maximise the potential of all our children - and imho we are paying an economic price for it even now that will only get worse.

again i'm not saying everyone should be an a-grade student but if children are engaged in learning and giving effort to something that is an attitude that will help them to be independent - and contribute economically - through the rest of their lives.

apologies for the essay - am sure some of this will be ripped apart...

(Thank you, ft.com product manager.)

I agree with this post by BeenBeta " All in all, I think we can surely agree that if you send your DC to a school in the Top 1000 you can be pretty sure they will be taught by a reasonably good teacher, with reasonably good resources and with reaonably good control and discipline in the classroom and your child will have a reasonable chance of coming out having achieved their potential. Our children only get one chance at having a good education so he way I feel about it is that picking a school in the top 1000 is basically an insurance policy. It reduces the risk of getting it badly wrong. I dont think you can criticise a parent for wanting that even if you hate the idea of private schools or grammar schools."

As said above sadly a lot of parents don't bother at all about their children's education. Of course some simply have very different views on what a good education is. Plenty educate at home and I am glad we are allowed that in the UK. Some choose schools without much formal learning and I was delighted Summer Hill (boarding school) won its court case a few years ago (children don't have to attend lessons etc if they do not want although most do).

The parental freedom within reason to pick a school they choose is one of the nice things about the UK. The question is where you draw the line. Parents have the right to send girls back to Pakistani villages at 14 or 15 to marry although chidlren now under English law can seek a protective order. There is a boy in Kenya or Nigeria at the moment who has applied for an order for their return. If his mother who is in the UK does not say where he is she is going to be jailed and I hope he is found and brought back to the UK as he's old enough to make his own choices. So what is my point? That it's good if parents within reason have some choices but that children and their parents should make informed choices about all kind of issues concerning children and education and that the information is available to them. Having the league tables was never going to be needed by people like I am as we already know which are the best 100 schools etc. The league tables have helped those without that information as has the "Bacc" list too albeit it with its faults - doesn't cover subjects done early or iGCSEs etc

But how do we make those parents care?
How do we get them to value education?

wordfactory - i am sure there are much more qualified people to comment on that than me! it's obvious there are no easy answers.

at the risk of sounding like a vile old fogey - as with propatria's example i think we need to honour people who achieve and kick the zleb culture into touch. in some schools that will be an ex pupil who is an olympian. in another they might be a local councillor, nurse, youth project leader etc. otherwise, if children are surrounded with "don't work, don't learn, this is what we do here" - how do they find out that ISN'T necessarily the norm?

i also think we need to reintroduce respect for teachers as a basic rule - from both parents and children. yesterday DS said something went missing from a hands on session in class. no-one would admit to taking it, so the whole class has breaktime detention until the item turns up. my initial reaction was "ds didn't do it that isn't fair", but that was quickly replaced by the realisation that the teacher needs to let the children know he is not to be messed with, so good on him.

We cant make parents care. My sister worked for a while in some really poor London Primary schools. She said the same thing as many on this thread. Some parents never read to their children or listen to them read and openly say that they regard education of their children as nothing to do with them. She has had it said to her face 'its your job to teach my children not mine'.

I know people object strongly to selection but frankly there are probably 10% of children who cannot be educated in mainstream school because their parents dont care and they are too disruptive. They have to be excluded and put in special schools. There are another 10% who need some level of SEN support and the remaining 80% should be streamed so they can be taught at an appropriate level.

In effect, this is what private schools and grammar schools do already. Spread that across the whole state secor and the whole standard would rise sharply.

beenbeta i really agree with streaming as a means of helping every child reach their individual potential - as long as teachers keep on top of whether the child is in the right stream for them and mobility is assured.

we also need to take away any focus on one stream being "better" than another - i know children can be horrid but if the central message is that streams are about what meets that child's needs best at that point in time then it becomes more about individualised education and less about who's "top dog".

DS was in a single class in infant school and became really miserable. now he's in junior school he's streamed and much, much happier.

@BeenBeta

The ranking of a school can be volitile from one year to the next, mainly due to the closeness of schools in the table. A small change in results can mean a big change in rank.

Perhaps a better indicator to look at is the percentage of A grades at A-level, and see how this has gone up or down over the years.

The link below gives an example for some schools in the Bath area. You can choose your own schools to chart too

rankings.ft.com/secondary-schools/charts?ranking=secondary-schools-2011&field=16626&type=timeseries&entities=189676|191191|188901|189511

Good to see the FT getting involved - thank you

Here are easy links for:

Anthony Hitchings link to the FT Ranking Table

And Michael Jacobs link to the local rankings

Michael - thank you.

I think your answer underlines the point that the actual quality differences between schools in the league table is not as wide as the ranking suggests and once the degree of intensity of selection in say London/South East schools is taken into account then the difference becomes even smaller.

Worrying about whether your school is ranked 250 or 450 is futile. Its the trend that matters over several years in terms of whether it is falling or rising against its peers in the local area and a whole host of other factors.

teej you don't sound like an old fogey at all.

I remember when I was a kid my Mum bought me a book written by children. It was full of poems and stories etc I think their school had to submit them and the winners were published.

I recall being mesmerised by one particular piece and thinking I would love to do something like that. My school would never ever in a million years have entered any pupils.

But somehow it was one of those tiny fragments of a life that spurred me on.

Years later I found that little book, dogeared and yellowed, to show my own children.

To my suprise the author of the piece I so loved was one Helena Bonham Carter.

Volatility in school rankings may also to do with the size of the cohort. It takes only a tiny number of entries to achieve lower grades to knock a school down the list quite a bit and this effect is magnified whe the year group is small as just one or two children might affect rankings.

On the other hand, if a school has a large cohort, although it isn't affected quite so much by a large cohort, it is likely to be very good if it is high in the tables as the greater the number of exam entries in your group, the harder it is to achieve unifomly high grades.

Oh dear, not making sense. I mean a large year group isn't affected quite so much by one or two lower achieving entries

@Medea1

Good point - a school with a small number of pupils taking exams will most probably have more volatile results when one year is compared to another. For this reason, the FT only include schools with 20 or more pupils taking A-levels and/or Pre-U exams.

The total number of candidates at each school is included in the table and charts for information.

Yes, the size can make a difference. My oldest child is 26 (and yougnest 12) so I've been following the FT tables (as I've read the FT for 30 years) from whenever it first came out and always thought it was the best one. I've have always liked the fact you see the previous years' rankings. So school 5 which some of us on the thread have said we have or had girls at is virtually always in the top 10 and sometimes the top 1 or top 3 and probably over the whole of that period. Schools like Manchester Grammar have been consistently good (and Winchester, Eton, Westminster etc).

Some schools suddenly have a good year but that's not so useful to look at. As someone said having a child in one of teh top ones even if not in the top 10 probably doesn't matter too much to the individual child although I still think it's CV enhancing to have a school that everyone "knows" is and always was good (although I do know there is the argument as to whether saying Eton damages or benefits). If you say you went to Manchester Grammar evern 30 years ago people know you must have been pretty bright as most people can't get in. If you went to bog standard comp no one ever heard of you might well do very well but you don't have any advantage on the CV although it is not always as sdimple as that.

When my chidlren are going for interviews (those at university/post university stage) and indeed when I meet people for work in advance you assess who is going to be there. Will they be a different class, will they be fat, will they want to hear about your show jumping successes or will that make them hate you; will you be looking for things in common (always do) in which case what are their interests. I might emphasise my NE connections to one person or dress so I don't look my best for someone who then feels mroe comfortable and I suppose subconsciously change how I speak depending on the person I am with. ALl good fun but important that children of all types know how to play that game and if you've no idea that something as simple as saying "haitch" rather than "aitch" has an impact you are disadvantaged by that lack of knowledge.

The league tables are useful because they give information.

Anyway good to see the FT posting and keep up the good work.