Not one pupil in Knowsley went to Oxbridge last year and only 2% went to RG universities.

[thebestisyettocome]

In adjoining areas, Sefton and Halton, admission to Oxbridge was also 0%.

I'm really angry about this. No wonder people who can afford to send their children to private school.

TakinPeace2. I'm not enough of an expert on education to have really meaningful debate with you on the likely effect that academies will have on LEAs. I'm just a mum living in the area who is appalled and disgusted and angry and no amount of excuses are, in my opinion, good enough.
campergirls. I grew up in one of the ex-industrial areas that were ravaged in the 80s. Inspirational teachers who were very good at their job were very thin on the ground. I wish there had been more. And contrary to what you may believe a lot of white w-c are very ambitios for their children. They may lack some of the tools and a lot of the knowledge that m-c parents have but that is where teachers could and should step into the breach.

Marking my place; no time to read thread now but the contraction in social mobility over the last 15 years or so really makes me cross!

I'll be back for a read and a rant later.

gelatinous. Not all children from the Knowsley LEA travel out of the area to do their A levels. You may think they can be written off on this basis but I think the facts speak for themselves and these children deserve a lot more than they are being given

But if only about 420 are doing A levels or equivalents in a typical year, out of a population of 150,000, then the majority of pupils have either left education or are taking KS5 somewhere else.

I think the liklihood is they'll have left education CecilyP.

Lurking to read later

I didn't mean to be offensive or patronising thebestisyettocome. I meant that given the cost of higher education and the current unemployment statistics, the vocational degrees provided by the many local non-RG universities are likely to be a popular option as they offer greater access to professional qualifications and a future career.

I mentioned Merseyside because the boroughs being discussed are in Merseyside, but, yes SerialKipper, it probably would apply anywhere.

Cecily
There may be a population of 150,000 but as I said up thread, extracted from the tables, there were only 1600 children in the GCSE cohort.
Which implies either that shed loads of kids are crossing the boundaries to go to better LEAs - which is where thebest your and my hopes the dire LEAs will implode come in - OR the area has a very odd demographic with lots of very old and very young people, and families with school kids moving out to other areas.

The boundary thing is interesting
Southampton is a city of 260,000 and rapidly climbing, but its KS5 cohort consists of the grand total of 980 children - because most of us send our kids to 6th form in Hampshire ....

I doubt if the area has an odd demographic, so, if 1,600/150,000 is particularly low, it means that many children are going elsewhere for secondary education.

Regarding cost, these stats are based on the old system. The one before they tripled the fees so it's hard to tell what affect this will have in the future. UCAS applications where down by 10%, I suspect the 10% was from working class aplicants.

I think it will take a few years, maybe 3 or more, for the stats to come out. Headlines such as 'So and so cannot get a job in McD's and is 50k in debt, with a useless degree' which will put even more potential students off applying to uni.

CecilyP. Do you honestly believe that it is more likely that shedloads of kids with parents who are likely to be on middle to low incomes are travelling out of the area to do their A levels rather than the plain fact being that the LEA is sub-standard and has piss-poor expectations for the children therein?

If the answer is the former, have you ever actually lived in the real world

thebest
Where I live there are lots and lots of FSM parents who ship their kids across the boundaries to get away from dire schools - the buses are FULL of them.
Hence why my catchment school has 62 in its year 7 and my kids school has 305!

What are FSM parents?

Free School Meals - poor working class, reliant on benefits
but not too thick to see that a 4 mile drive may save their children from the spiral

And incidentally, I'm not sure where all the Knowsley, Sefton, Halton kids would be bussed to? The adjacent boroughs are central Liverpool, St. Helens and the like which are not well known for being densely populated with amazing schools.

thebest
looking at the data, Liverpool has 2640 A level students of whom 390 got into Russell Group - not to be sniffed at and likely to include the brightest from smaller neighbouring LEAs

No, thebest, I believe that many kids from more aspirational families from Knowsley are travelling out of the borough, (though in many cases they may not be travelling very far) in order to do A levels in Liverpool. You seem to have more local knowledge than I have, so presume you must know some who do that.

thebest you are making the mistake of trying to fit the figures to your assumptions about the LEA. It may well be sub-standard, but I'm afraid you need to prove that. These figures don't.

If there is an even demographic (which there may well not be) then 400-500 children are missing from the GCSE cohort. I don't know the area, but it's not inconceivable there's a school just on the boundary of the LEA (but outside it) that is an easy journey (walking distance even) from much of the LEA where these children go, it's not at all unusual for children in some places to attend school in a different LEA. Upthread, people have said commuting to other parts of the city would be plausible. My opinion is that this data can be used to flag areas where it looks as though there may be a problem, but those areas will need further detailed analysis to determine what the problem actually is, if any.

Statistics are funny things, there can be all sorts of anomalies, use them with caution. All schools should try to improve outcomes for their children, regardless of statistics in any case.

I'm sorry but I do know the area and I see no real evidence (anecdotal I accept but still) of loads of kids travelling out of the area to do their A levels. I am looking at the bald figures but looking at the wider picture as well (which I have intimate knowledge of) I don't accept there is any legitimate excuse or explanation for this obvious failing.
TalkiPeace2. My DP was on free school meals. He says there is no way on earth his parents could've afforded to do an eight mile round trip to school every day. I think that still probably applies to a lot of children with families on very low incomes. That being the case, why should these children have to travel out of their area to get decently educated and why do so many people on here seem to think that's perfectly acceptable ?

thebest, I'm the product of just the kind of educationally-ambitious white working-class family you refer to: I grew up in the South Wales valleys in the 80s, and I did have some really inspiring teachers at my comp. I know that there are families like mine in Knowsley; and I'm sure that there are inspiring teachers there too.

But I also know that it's an environment where those inspirational teachers are, sometimes, working flat-out not to get students into RG universities, but to help them acquire basic literacy and numeracy and even more basic life-skills. I taught at a school in Knowsley in the early 90s where not all year 7s were securely toilet-trained - not because of innate 'special needs', but because of neglect. It's a long road up from there to Oxbridge, and teachers can only do so much.

I'm sorry campergirl but your post has made me really angry. Are you saying that no child you taught had the aptitide to go to Oxbridge or at least an RG univeristy?

cross-posted with you there - it's not to say I disagree with you about the right of smart, ambitious children to get a good education in their local school. But I think your view that if they aren't getting one now, it's entirely because of the inadequacy of the LEA/teachers is an over-simplification of a complex reality.

Did you go to a RG uni thebestisyettocome?

aargh cross-posted again! I'm saying that I didn't discern that aptitude. Whether those students would have had it if they'd had an easier start in life, with attentive parents who cared about them and their education, is not a question I can answer tbh.

The old over-simplication of a complex probelm argument.

Vageceratops.
Sadly no. An English teacher said I was Oxbridge material but I didn't have a clue about how to apply.
Hth.