In areas (such as Kent) where there are grammars, are the overall results better than comprehensive areas?

[Greythorne]

Do more kids get better results in grammar areas?

No, I sorted by FSM to pick up counties with comparable demographics.
I was working on a set of accounts at the time, otherwise would have also moderated for LEA size.
Proximity is a poor indicator in comparability.

Are those four counties really comparable to Kent though, even if the numbers of FSM are the same? None of them are within the commuter belt for London which much of Kent is. Does this lead to a difference in mindset? I see this in my own extended family, where the ones who live in Cumbria/Northumbria have a quite different outlook than the ones who live in London. (Basically the ones who are going to work on the family farm don't see the same need for exam results as the Londoners.)

I'd be interested to see how the comparisons for Derbyshire/Lincolnshire and Northampton/Bucks compare.

download the data from the guardian link and play with it : I copied and pasted the whole lot into an open office sheet and then played with the sort function ....

Worcestershire, btw, also has a 3-tier structure in many areas, which makes comparability with areas with a 2-tier structure tricky.

So if you say that Kent is doing better than Worcestershire [or whatever] then you cannot eliminate the possibility that this is due to 2 tier (selective or non-selective) being better than 3 tier, rather than anything to do with grammar schools.

How do you mean 3 tier?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/education/school_tables/secondary/12/html/885.stm
no sign of state selectives here?
Or do you mean the split between lower, middle and upper schools.

friend's dd got 5 A's and 5 A*'s at Hampshire comp - easily asgood as esults from my dd's Medway grammar.

Hampshire & Kent are often compared becaurse similar demographic

Also I am in awe of the genius statistical analysis on here
you are v. intelligent, you lot

F.S.M Take up is not the be all and end all regarding who is deprived or not therefore,it is not as simple as comparing F.S.M take up in non selective and selective areas and then coming out and saying that kids with F.S.M in non selective areas perform better than kids with F.S.M in selective areas you would need to have figures up to say 50k pa family income that would take it up to the goverment declaration for single earners to lose child benefit, so could be assumed to be a sensible amount to declare relative affluence, and until you could do that the statistics will not tell the whole story.

beatback
numbers of families earning over £50 k = pretty irrelevant when you recognise that the median family income in the UK is £26k
therefore less than 25% of families are affected by it

as I said up thread, I'm in the middle of trying to get stuff ready for my deadline at the end of the month : otherwise I'd have sorted by numbers of pupils as well
FSM being the only deprivation factor in the data set

BUT
all things being equal, the bright child of a recidivist pauper should be given the same academic chances as that of a duke.

I have to admit, I knew that the selective system did not benefit the whole of Kent but did not expect my data trawl to find that the penalty on the 11+ failures was less than I thought (seeker take heart)

"I have to admit, I knew that the selective system did not benefit the whole of Kent but did not expect my data trawl to find that the penalty on the 11+ failures was less than I thought (seeker take heart)"

Does this not just mean that the gap between comps and secondary moderns is closing (if it was ever there in the first place)?

Talkinpeace. Are you saying then that in the uk the average family income is the same as the average uk wage ,you are therefore saying in the average uk family only 1 person works. Because the average uk wage is about 26kpa, so is it stretching credibilty to suggest 2 working parents on average wages would by about 50k pa. So if you had two parents on average wages they would be well above average in terms of family income.

No,
its to do with the possible levels of education at Sec Mods because the calibre of curriculum and teaching will be limited by the lack of top 25% students
clearly what is happening is a serious dose of "we'll show them"
but within the reources available

the grammars would never let the gap close ....
and the gap is HUGE
www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/education/school_tables/secondary/12/html/bacc_886.stm?compare=

Beatback
Wage statistics .....

the average (mean) wage is around £26,000 - because the minimum is £0 and the maximum is (hedgefund / football / royalty) multimulti millions
and the "mean" is affected by every number within it, the skew caused by one or two outliers - and they will always be high, not low - is significant.

The median (half the population earns more, half less) income for an individual in the UK is around £18,000

the "median" household income is around £26,000 : ie half the country has less than that, half has more
some have a very great deal more, skewing the "mean"
but the least income a family can have is xero

:-) Statistics

Havering doesn't - it just has almost identical FSM to Kent.

I do wish people would read the statistical protocol I posted before jumping to the "answers"

Thank you Talkinpeace. You are probably right about income in familys. That is a real eye opener to me i would have thought average family income would have been about ,35 to 40k pa. It just goes to show that a lot of these working familys who dont get F.S.M or other benefits really are struggling then. Regarding High Schools in Selective areas as i have said on other threads, in some areas the High Schools out perform Comprehensives, in nearby non selective areas but i have been told because kids from other areas can access these Grammar Schools the effect is not has bad as say kent, to me this sounds like "DOUBLE SPEAK" . Maybe the High Schools in kent need to reach higher but realistic targets and your report would suggest they have started to do this.

:-)
those sort of stats are very much my "thing" - demographics
and skewed data sets are often very hard to grasp.
Gove certainly does not understand the difference between 'mean' 'median' and 'mode'
and many of the exam result sets are capped skewed sets which are even more fun.

sad numbers geek? moi?

the net effect of grammar schools is to disadvantage poor children and help the rich but that may be an artefact of the few counties where grammars remain in any number being affluent ones? As well as requiring certain test scores, as far as I know most grammars also have a geographical component to their admissions, so being able to buy a house in the right area definitely helps. The truly rich send their kids to independents anyway...politicians excepted.

As regards the FT data, a large percentage of students get A/A at GCSE nowadays (many more than when I took GCSEs back in the 80s) so it is difficult for grammars to show much 'value added' in their GCSE results e.g. you can't distinguish a student with 80% (A) from one with 89% (A) and likewise for A. A comparison of sixth form data and university admissions would be more enlightening. I haven't looked at the site yet. Maybe it does look at that, although I doubt it because then you get into the complication of different qualifications and so on.

I expect a detailed analysis would also show more grammars offering I-GCSE, single sciences etc, so there may be some apples and oranges comparison going on. In other words, the results & value added may be similar but the subjects and therefore progression to what the Russell Group describe as 'facilitating subjects' at A level may be different.

In the light of the discussion this week in the press about school standards I'd be really interested to see research into how students in grammar counties actually feel about their education e.g. do the more gifted or academic feel more encouraged to achieve (or not) in a grammar, do they get more chance to make friends with similar interests (or not), do they get the right amount of pressure, too much, too little...I would like to know that as well as exam statistics.

but there are only three fully grammar counties, one of which is miniscule
and the difference between East (of Stone street) and West Kent is far, far greater than between the average of Kent and that of Surrey

beatback it's not doublespeak in the town where I teach (at a grammar school). Some of the students attending the grammars travel up to 60 miles round trip from their homes (obviously not all of them, some are local) while the students at the high schools mostly come from the town and surrounding areas. The high schools are good as far as I know, too - the nearest one to my school is heavily oversubscribed.

Phineyj. I are you netural or pro Selective Education.

3 tier - first, muddle, upper. So in comparing stats for worcestershire, differences have 2 possible explanations:

• the fact that there are no selectives
• the fact that there is a 3-tier system

You could argue, for exaple, that having 2 transitions is a disadvantage that those in Kent or, say Herefordshire, do not have.

Talkin, do you have any familiarity with Suffolk schools?

Apologies for Friday Night spelling.