Areas where state schools are better than private?

[Narrie]

Does anyone live in an area where the state schools are really better than the private ones? I picked this up elsewhere but am afraid to comment there.

I have lived and worked in the Midlands where there are few private schools to choose but the state schools are not very good. I have lived in Nottingham, where again I felt the state schools were poor.

Even in London there were some awful schools and private was best.

I currently live in Cornwall having got here working in Exeter, Plymouth and Barnstaple. None of the state schools were good there.

Just wondered where the good state provision is. Is it just odd schools within a mass of poor provision or are there really whole areas where state schools are better?

Thanks.

(PS I have my own DC in a boarding school partly because of the state schooling and partly because we move around so much)

Your Merchant Taylors includes names Xenia.

Names aren't needed if you're just comparing schools, but are useful if it's your child's former school and you can't remember where Fred went and want to know.

You are right about MTS, that's true. I suppose where they name people they must have had their consent.

Xenia- how do you know so much about your "local comp"? ( oh, how I hate that dismissive "comp")

I pass it every day. It has a website. I've been in it. It publishes the subjects it offers. It is unfair actually because in London the schools system is different from elsewhere and people even go across a county border to find a selective school here and there are many many different religious schools and load of good privates to choose from so presumably it just gets the dregs and doesn't have a sixth form as the state school children here move schools at 16 to large college places.

"dregs"

Xenia, how many pupils were in your DD's 6th form group? I can't find a stat for how big Haberdashers is (how big each crop of 6th formers is, I mean). You must know off top of your head?

DS private school published individual GCSE results, all of 45% pass rate.

Our local comp (58% pass rate) also published exactly how many grades of each mark were received for each GCSE/BTec, from A* right down to U.
They do it to show that in spite of mediocre averages, there are many individual high achievers.

So it doesn't offer Maths and English? Just hairdressing for the dregs?

What does PQA mean on that Habs result? Fine arts or not assessed?

It must offer English and maths, TOSN- 34% of the "dregs" get 5A*-C including English and Maths.

Oh well, next time somebody says that nobody ever says anything remotely negative or unpleasant about state school pupils, I can add "dregs" to my list of examples.

So the Habs results:
20% (25) to Oxbridge or St. Andrews
62% (76) to Russell Group
7% (9) to other Universities
10% (12) PQA, whatever that means.

Can that be right? None to Harvard or the Sorbonne or even the Navy? If anyone knows the size of their leaving class please elucidate. I've see claims that they usually have 125 as y7 intake but implied that they take new pupils for Lower 6th, which suggests that the 122 results would be on the low side for A-levels.

I think PQA means people who are going to apply for something after the results come out- in this case what in less prestigious establishments would be called "destination unknown"

I genuinely cannot remember the numbers as she left a good while ago otherwise I would not be writing about the school. I know they had a 5 form intake at 11+ of about 24 a class and virtually no one left before 18. She went to Bristol. 122 tallies exactly with that. But of course we4 expect this - it is one of the best and most selective schools in the country so it gets good results. Let us see if we can find my other daughter's NLCS but not sure if they publish it.

I am making logical points. My local comprehensive may do very well indeed with its 34% because so many local children will go to private scools, religious schools and out of borough grammars and even non grammars like Watford Grammar which is not a grammar.

Tatler says 40% NLCS go to Oxbridge
www.tatler.com/guides/schools-guide/2012/public/north-london-collegiate-school

So why use words like "dire" and "dregs"?

If you go to page 29 in the Sutton Trust document here it gives the 100 best schools - those that had the most pupils going to top 13 universities.

image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Education/documents/2007/09/20/Strust.pdf

Why use words like "dire" and "dregs"?

Thanks. Not many comprehensives or grammars on that list are there - how depressing.

Benenden and Roedean much higher than I'd imagine - 61.7 and 58.2% to ST universities.

My aunt cuts hair for a living.
She's the main earner in the family, her earnings pay for the mortgage on a hilltop house worth like... £400k?
She's on Chitchat terms with people like Richard Dreyfuss.
Haircutting ain't all bad.

Yes, that's why destinations can be better to look at that raw A level grades because the parents and schools may know better than some parents of children in other types of schools from which universities the better paid employers recruit which is the longer game.

Dregs? Come on, it's just the facts. People write ab out creaming off all the time. If you cream off you are left with what is below that. It doesn't mean they don't deserve to live but it does means they are i ntellectual challenged and will find work hard to come by which might be why the emphasis onf travel and tourism and car mechanic GCSEs is wife. I did not say they did not do well by the intake that they have.

Nonsense.

You are judging the ability of children according to their parents' choices, faith or ability to pay.

A child with low-earning irreligious parents is not necessarily intellectually challenged (or good at car mechanics, sadly).

Hamish it is not depressing that not many state schools on there but it just makes the state school kid who did well look so much better as a potential for employment if they did well against those odds and the figures show even kids from inner city state comps can do it. They will see the benefit in employment. Despite the heralders of doom state school educated bods are not dregs and will continue to do well. If you think your child is doomed because you cannot afford private and are anti-grammar they will but most if the kids I know who have just got into Oxbridge are former inner-city comp kids who have had the benefit of recent schemes to encourage them on. Should this continue and the hard pressed MC doctors and accountants who can no longer afford sending their kids private the landscape will change. The recession if anything will be good for the state school cohort.

For about 25 years I got my hair cut by the Clarke brothers. First by Nicky, before he got famous and then by Michael. Both are hugely intelligent grammar school boys.

I completely agree with seeker: using the term 'dregs' in relation to kids who don't have other options really demeans you Xenia.

Well, as you love to personalise these debates with reference to your own children, you do realise that you are referring to my ds as "dregs" don't you? I'm so pleased you think he has a "right to live"!