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)

[middleclassonbursary]

As an ex resident of one of the poorest parts of London we have found that the difference in exam results in many rural middle class communities to poor parts of London is staggering. Even the best performing non selective London school in areas like Hackney Peckham have only slightly better results than many schools in rural areas which are not generally considered very desirable.

[middleclassonbursary]

Again I hasten to mention exam results aren't everything!

[KitKatGirl1]

teacher I don't think I ever tried to say that private schools have to deal with all the problems you mentioned. Of course they (almost never) don't. Except the attainment on entry one. Low attainer means the same as it does anywhere else academically and can include not just those au level 3 but anywhere up to it including non readers.

[KitKatGirl1]

Of course teacher there will be next to no children at a fee paying school who fulfil the descriptions you make - except the very low academic ability one - low attainer means up to and including level 3. and they will indeed take children at ds's school who have left primary school unable to read. I don't think I ever tried to say that there was an even playing field, just to disagree with the suggestion that there were no real bottom sets in a private school and to clarify for seeker that they are using the same definition of low attainer as a state school.
The profile of attainment on entry at some private schools may match or even be lower than the national average and can often be significantly lower than grammars and some (selection by the back door) comps. Their particular results show very good value added. That is all. As they very well should, as I already said.

[weegiemum]

I know the received wisdom is that children do better at fee-paying schools.

I'm an exam marker for the SQA and I can tell you truly there are a lot of parents wasting their money!

[KitKatGirl1]

Whoops, didn't realise that first post had worked - on phone; kept having to answer it, etc.

But I stand more by my earlier post.

For most people 'good' schools mean 'good results'.

For most schools those good results are achieved by dint of their intake.

Many schools 'cheat' the league tables to some extent; some schools don't let 'non-guaranteed Cs' sit GCSEs including comprehensives; some schools have really good management and others don't; some schools in really deprived area have better discipline than others; some schools in more affluent areas have better discipline than others; some schools have lower or higher aspiration for their children than others in whatever sector/level of selection; some schools deal well with bullying and pastoral concerns and some don't; some schools deal well with SEN and some don't - again in all sectors. I suppose I should say some LEAs are better than others but they're starting to not exist any more.

For all these reasons and more you can't go by results alone. Obviously. And yet people (me included) continue to discuss what is a 'good' school by arguing about results and statistics. I stand by my point that it would be nonsensical to think that any one area has schools which consistently get it right better than and other area (or sector) all of the time.

[KitKatGirl1]

I get your point, weegie, I really do. Of course some fee-paying schools are not worth the money. But I assume you're not seriously suggesting that you can tell by marking an exam script whether an individual child isn't doing the very best that they can do and they would have done better or equally well anywhere else?

[seeker]

You can't tell marking an exam whether a child would have done better somewhere else, but you can often tell whether they have been well taught, and whether they have done their absolute best.

[orangeberries]

I agree with the posters who said that indeed there are top ranking state schools, but very often the catchment areas are extremely small and very expensive housing.

We looked at moving in an area with a top rated comprehensive, this would mean and additional 300-400k to get an equivalent house, then there is the cost of moving, interest rates for a mortgage, etc and this is why private is a cheaper option, even with 4 children!

Also the problem with moving to a grammar school area is that competition is now so fierce there is no guarantee your children will get in, so then there is the not so comprehensive schools your child will have to go to. None of the options seems that ideal.

The real issue is that the few state schools (grammar and comprehensive) that do a very good job, often better than private are too few and far between and competition to get in is so fierce that they become as unaccessible as their private counterparts option - the real issue is that there should be more good schools around...

[duchesse]

Re the "no bottom set" thing. Having taught in both the state and the private sector, my impressions are that most state bottom set pupils are there not through lack of ability but through lack of motivation, for whatever reason anywhere on Maslow's hierarchy of needs that may be. Low ability motivated kids tend to be in lower middle sets. Those are precisely the children one tends not to see at all in private school, or in such small quantities that their presence has no noticeable effect. Also as has been pointed out below, they can be asked to leave private school, which system keeps them either compliant or shows them the door pdq.

[duchesse]

oops, dodgy editing: I mean the unmotivated children are the ones one tends not to find in private school, not the low ability ones.

[muminlondon]

I found it interesting to read KitKatGirl's post about 20% low attainers in a private school because information about prior attainment is missing from the DfE league tables along with a host of other data. I've just discovered the 'Average point score (qualifications)' section of the 'KS4 exam results' tab. The top school for low attainers (e.g. average B-) is the BRIT school. Given that the Ebacc score is zero even for high attainers, they will be concentrating a lot on performance subjects so must be very motivated. For performing arts, that's definitely an example of a state school better than private school equivalents but there aren't too many that specialist.

But it also makes me wonder how much private schools encourage pupils to take subjects they like and find easy. A private selective in my area enters more pupils for PE GCSE than most state schools, for example. Nothing wrong with that - but there are double standards here and state comps are damned if they do (cater for the less academic in this way), damned if they don't (by having a high entry rate for Ebacc pupils and more failures).

[seeker]

The EBacc thing is a bit of a red herring too- dd's school shows up badly on this measure because quite a lot of the girls do RE as a GCSE with the intention of doing A level philosophy. Which means that quite a few haven't got the EBacc, even though they have "good" GCSEs.

[Yellowtip]

orangeberries is competition really, really that fierce? Lots of myths put about about the 11+. Plenty can be discarded as rubbish.

Clearly the best option for hedging one's bets on the state front is to live in an area with a single superselective but which is 'affluent' (or affluentish). That's bad and sad of course, but for the moment it seems to be how it is. With very rare exceptions of course, requiring quite extraordinary leadership which surpasses outstanding I think (bit semantic I know).

[mrspumpkinpatch]

East Renfrewshire in Scotland regularly has the best schools in the country.

[muminlondon]

RE is compulsory anyway - is it usually just a short course but full GCSE takes up an option?

The Ebacc was an interesting move because it has, in effect, imposed a national curriculum on independent state and private schools alike. Having one exam board will be the ultimate power grab!

[seeker]

Doing RE is compulsory Taking the exam isn't. Dd had a very nice time for a lesson a week watching a meaningful film and talking about it. And then took a different humanities subject for GSCE and has the EBacc. The ones who took GCSE RE mostly didn't. Unfair. IMHO.

[PlaySchool]

Well said talkinpeace. How can anyone compare an independent with a comp? Grammars and independents are not inclusive so of course they wil get better academic results. Comps have to make the best out of what lands on their doorstep.

[muminlondon]

As much as I loathe am wary of Gove I can't help admiring his coup with the Ebacc (GCSEs not the future Gove levels). Entries for History and MFL were getting very low. But the syllabus does get very crowded for GCSE and it's hard to be good at all those subjects.

[Xenia]

I am sure there will be some areas like that where no parents earn much at all so few can afford to pay fees, there is only one private school, it is not academically selective and where most children go to state school and where thus the state school results will be better but not most areas.

I'#e searched Hull (which gets GCSEs 2 grades worse than inner London comps) but even that got me 2 independents first around the 200 place in the country and then comps below places 624th.


You can do regional searches on the FT A level tables to check your county. It won't be major cities, Manchester/Cheshire, Newcastle, Leeds, all have good private schools (the SE is a different area and most people with good exam results come from there amazingly yet surely our genes are all the same).



(The Ebacc is simply the GCSEs all children at good private schools do, what I did, what even my mother in a state grammar did in the 1940s. Obviously it is harder to get good grades in all of english lit, english l,ang, maths, geog, history, a language or two, 2 or 3 sciences - which are the core subjects most good children do than the travel and tourism subjects my local comp 34% A- C at GCSE does here)

[teacherwith2kids]

Xenia, I assure you that I live in an area where many parents can afford to pay fees - but with the local comp (let alone the grammars) outperforming the best private school available for boys, the sensible ones don't bother.

[Lancelottie]

Oh sod history and geography, I say. I didn't want to do history or geography (my geog teacher described my work once as 'entertainingly creative'. I wanted to do every language and every science my school had to offer (including the Latin). Got me into Oxbridge, as it did for several of my classmates. I've found an interest in history later in life.

still can't navigate my way out of a paper bag though

[muminlondon]

That is the biggest drawback about the Ebacc, it's true - where schools used to offer two MFL and/or two humanities, they're now more rigid and are only offering one of each. Similar with drama, music, art, or DT, etc. (or RE) from which you only get one choice. Sucking the soul out of school.

[Lancelottie]

Mmm. DS1's school fairly strongly suggested he should cover the Ebacc subjects, DS2's said 'all being equal' they might want to think about it, but didn't in fact jib at DS2 doing music and drama.

DS1's school has far better results on paper but is, yes, a little soulless. DS2's seems to be a madly enthusiastic eccentric place that encourages the kids to find out what they love and go for it.

[middleclassonbursary]

teacher I'm sure this point has been made by many others in the past its not just results (although the school my DC attended has results better than any state boys school) that Im paying for or for that matter the oft quoted segregation from "undesirable children" who ever they are. Education is so much more complex than that.