Latest OECD report - Uk behind in fairness rankings

[TotallyBS]

I don't know how to link from my phone but the report is featured on the BBC News website.

Basically, the poor and disadvantaged/well off divide, academically speaking, is greater compared to Hong Kong, Japan, Finland and a few others..

No doubt the usual suspects will use this report to bash the 11+ GS system. and/or the private system. These schools account for a relatively small proportion of the UK school population so one can hardly blame our problems on selective education. So what else? Are the UK poor not as clever as the poor in other countries or are they less aspirational or is there some other reason for our low ranking?

Not just 11+ and private, but expensive catchment areas, religious schools, and so on.

That is another thing. According to MN posters, religious schools perform better than non faith state schools. Assuming that is a fact, why is that? Are religious parents suppose to have smarter kids? :)

Report here

The positive thing to take from the report is that, although the UK ranked below average, 'there has been an improvement'.

It uses data from 2009 though - so, four years later, and three years into a new government, I wonder whether things are continuing to improve (given pupil premium etc)?

tiggytape The difference in social make up of two schools next to each other is not just hypothetical, in Richmond London St James's Catholic Primary has the lowest FSM percentage in the country at 1% and the inclusive state primary whose playing ground is adjacent has 10%. Devout members of the congregation report that the social make up of those attending church and the school has changed out of all recognition in the last fifteen years.

I would take these figures in context. China has gone from the most equal society in the world to one of the least equal in the last forty or so years as a result of the rapid development of a market driven economy. That development is very unequal, concentrated in the coastal belt and way ahead of other cities are Hong Kong and Shanghai. In addition to there being huge opportunity migrant workers are not regarded as part of the city in terms of social provision, their children are not entitled to schools in the city, so they stay in the rural hinterland cared for by relatives. So you are talking about the children of an urban elite. And still you have a burgeoning private school sector (see the International Schools opened by Harrow, Dulwich College etc. and the fact that China is the largest and still growing overseas market for UK boarding schools. There is a lot of criticism of a local school system that relies too heavily on rote learning and is not seen as fostering creativity and thinking skills. (Singapore too)

By way of balance the FT has published these statistics that show London schools have in the past ten years achieved huge improvements in even the greatest areas of social deprivation, markedly shifting the chances of the poorest children www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e2c19bbe-7093-11e2-85d0-00144feab49a.html#axzz2KmaeTnCx

'Good' schools are 100% about good parents. Not good teachers, or good facilities.

One of the worst schools in the area has a ski slope! So why is it one of the worst? Because it's in the middle of a housing estate.

Simple as.

No magic or mystery about this.

If you filter out the scumbag parents, you get good results - guaranteed. If you don't, well it's still possible, but much less certain.

London schools do quite well because of ambitious immigrants IMO. The worst schools tend to be in white low-income areas.

@monkeysea So we write off the children into scumbag schools. If only it was as simple as it appears in your opinion. Of course parental attitudes count for a lot but that doesn't mean that for the good of society as a whole schools should not attempt to compensate for the disadvantage of poor parenting.

At the poorly performing school on a big estate, that my cousins children attend, actually not in London, they have turned things around by realising they have to differentiate between different groups of pupils. OFSTED have congratulated them on the success they have had in developing learning approaches that work with poor white boys, the worst performing group as well as making sure they have something to offer top sets including the issue that those ambitious immigrant groups take their children out for months at a time to travel home.

However the London experience proves that whatever the social mix of an area good leadership and effective management of processes can transform a school and there is n excuse for failing schools to be four times as likely to be in an area of disadvantage. However as we know locally bad management can also lead a school to fail even in a leafy suburb with an affluent population.

There is a vowel missing from your penultimate sentence.

Did you mean 'an excuse' or 'no excuse'? I would say that there is a very good excuse, namely that performance differs hugely between groups, from middle class white to white travellers, you can be five times more likely to pass GCSEs, so if you have a school of mainly white middle class, then it's almost certainly going to perform well, and if you have a school with mainly (or many) travellers, then it will almost certainly perform badly.

As you say, good management has overcome demographics in some cases, however it's clearly not simple to do so, otherwise it would have been done more universally.

My guess is that, despite criticism, all of these stats that they keep now are having an effect on results. I think there is a certain lag in these measures, and I guess in time we will see the true impact.

Sorry about loss of vowel, not very dextrous with iPad key pad. I meant no excuse, if a school can be OFSTED outstanding in an area of social deprivation, which of course means it is enabling pupils to fulfil their potential rather than having best absolute league table scores, OFSTEDs focus is on the quality of teaching and learning, then it can be done. OFSTED highlighted in this year's report viewer.zmags.com/publication/e950d3f9#/e950d3f9/7 that the biggest worry is for poor pupils in the schools where they form less than 20% of the pupil population. The biggest successes in narrowing the attainment gap are in schools where they form a bigger group.

No one, not even Gove, is saying every pupil in the country can and should get 5 good GCSEs, just that the ones that are capable of it should be enabled to do so. And of course there should be alternative qualifications for those who cannot, to demonstrate their levels of attainment in their areas of strength to future employers.