New League Tables - ds' school suddenly got worse

[saadia]

Does anyone have an explanationfor for why a school which previously attained above average results in the league tables would have suddenly plummeted and gone below even the schools which are very badly thought of?

At what level ? Think it can fluctuate according to the particular group of children, and one or two children being absent or not performing well can skew the results if the pupil numbers are smaller. Also aren't some internally marked now ?

Happened to dd - her Y6 were a very weak group and quite a small year so a few children really brought the results down. Ability between year groups varies hugely from year to year. That's one of the main problems with the SATS results. You need to look at what they were like when they joined the school and how much they've improved from that.

I'm looking at the Middle School results released today and am quite shocked at how low ds' school's results are. Previously they have always done really well. It is quite a large school (three classes in each year group) so am baffled at what has happened. I don't think one or two kids could have skewed the results that much. I'm hoping it's a blip rather than a trend.

Thanks swedishmum - xpost - it must be a very weak year group.

bump

I just started a thread similar to this. Our school is on a downward trend since 2002. I was wondering if as a parent we should speak to the school about this or are these league tables not worth the paper they are written on?

Love to hear a teacher's view.

Yes Eaney, it would be interesting to see if teachers give these results any importance.

Saadia, if the school has 3 classes (@90 children) in each group each child is 'worth' just over 1%. In a school where there is 1 class (@30 children) each child is 'worth' 3.5%.

So, the results in smaller schools can be more skewed because if 1 child is ill, away or has SEN needs, this will affect the results more- I actually think smaller schools have a harder time because of this.

As a teacher I don't believe it is right to focus on a few statistics which are based on specific circumstances, e.g. mainly on cohort. I prefer to consider pupils and their results as individuals- did the results show a true percetion of their ability?

Have a look at the Value Added score (VA) which should be next to it, this shows how much the school has moved them on. This still needs to be considered carefully however as children move schools so don't necessarily have the same teaching experience, or have other circumstances which affect their results.

Any school would be very aware of a change in results...believe me they would most likely have known about it before the SATs tests and they would be looking at reasons to why it happened, the LEA and Ofsted ask these questions too. But if you are concerned I would speak to your teacher/head.

Thank you Reindeerpp and Celia2, your insight is very helpful.

The headteacher is usually at the entrance in the morning so I may broach the subject with her. They are quite good at communicating so they might even issue a letter or something as the results are so dramatically different. All the other schools in the area have done pretty well so I wouldn't have though socio-economic factors could be relevant.

To my untrained eye, the immediate reaction is that it must be a reflection of the teaching, and that is worrying. Ds is only in the nursery so that gives us some time to see what happens in the coming years. I will have a look at the value added scores as well though.

I suppose also these results might spur them on to look at where there might be weaknesses and work on them.