Picking secondary school - gcse results?

[MadameLeBean]

I'm probably able to get my dd into local state secondary which is ofsted "outstanding" and most popular school in area but their gcse results were:

Students gaining five A*-C grades - 87%
Students gaining five A*C grades in Maths and English - 75%

This not much better than most other schools in the borough.

The school I went to (okay it was grammar) got 100% 5 A-C including maths and English. In fact 81% of all GCSE results were at grade A or A. 15% of pupils got 10 or more A* grades.

I know I am being PFB but I'm concerned : 25% of pupils not getting above a D in English and maths is a lot!

Wwyd? Private is an option but I'm not wealthy enough that it wouldn't have a big impact on our ability to do other things eg family holidays, have a baby (would need ft childcare), etc. So if I'm not going private we need to move out of London to grammar area???!

Looking for some perspective on those gcse results really- sorry for the waffle

In a mixed ability intake those are actually pretty good, a selective should get near on 100% or their system isn't working. Bear in mind by the time your dd takes GCSE exams or by then their replacements the whole benchmark will have changed and how they report results. You are misreading the stats by the way in the 75% a higher % will have got Maths and English but perhaps not 3 others. How old is your dd , things can change in a relatively short space of time with new Head , less good/better inspection, abolition of 11+/grammars etc so you would still take a risk moving.

She is in year 4 so have about 18 months to decide

Those are good results. Have you checked the good school guide online?

They look like good results for a comprehensive, there will be such a mix of abilities that it's really not realistic to expect all to get C or above.

Try looking at the break down in more detail and see how the high attainers faired, that is more relevant to compare to grammar.

Try looking at the break down in more detail and see how the high attainers fared, that is more relevant to compare to grammar.

I agree with that. The figures OP quotes are a school-wide average. Your DD is not an average, she is an individual. You probably know by now if she is a high / medium / low attainer - see how the Secondary copes with that particular cohort.

Don't forget that parental involvement adds to attainment, it boosts scores by 15% IIRC. Just don't be a Tiger Parent.

If a grammar school doesn't get near enough 100%, then the is something very wrong.

If a comprehensive school gets 75% there is something very right.

I know where you are coming from op. Our local primary school has 74 percent meetibg minimum standard in the three r's. Its supposed to quite a good school. But then i think but 1 in 4 arent meeting minimum standard? That doesnt sound too great. I am in similar predicament to you. Miving to different area or private.

75% eng and maths is good, 62-68 round here for reasonably mixed intake schools.

(Very variable upto 94% 5 A-C, total dependent on what courses the schools offer and wether they are still getting away with equivalents.)

Remember this school is not the grammar you attended; in other words, it is not a selection of only those pupils who are both able and interested.

This secondary will contain a cross section of the local population: including pupils from very disadvantaged backgrounds, pupils of naturally low ability, pupils with fairly severe Special Needs, pupils who have no interest in education, pupils who are only just learning English and pupils whose lives have been disrupted by longterm illness.

Merely being in the same school as some of these pupils won't turn your dd into them: she won't automatically become someone like e.g. my dd whose education was disrupted by illness and disability.

If she is bright and has no other difficulties, she probably won't even be in the same sets as the ones who are struggling.

But the fact that they get such good results out of such a mixed intake suggests that they are in fact a very good school who manage to transmit a good work ethos even to pupils who may not have learnt it at home or who may struggle to maintain momentum in the midst of difficult circumstances.

I like the sound of this school. The only thing I'd check is that they have a pastoral support system to match- you never know what needs your dd may develop in years to come.

And remember- your dd is going to grow during these years into a person who takes responsibility for her own work. This can be very difficult in an environment where nobody cares about working. But absolutely no excuse in an environment where the majority care but some find it difficult.

Nationally about 58% get 5 A*-C inc English and maths so 75% is well above average.

Whether this is good or not depends on the intake of the school. You need to go to the DfE page on the school and see what % of each group of pupils are making the expected progress.

They really are fantastic results.

I have 2 high schools to choose from.

My closest one 50% passed 5 GCSE's and of that 50% only 63% got grade A-C in english and maths.

The other school 57% pased 5 GCSE's and of those 65% got A-C in english and maths.

You are very lucky to be in the catchment for such a good school. Have a good look round and compare all the schools within a reasonable distance to you and see how it compares and then decide.

They get fab results - better than our fantastic Secondary.... but I am very happy with my kids progress despite it having figures of 65% where yours are 75%.....

Ours releases a lot of figures every year and the ones that impressed me were that around 55% of the Maths A level cohort were girls.... 3 out of 7 of the Physics A level were girls... etc etc - this tells me that girls are encouraged to do the sciences/maths throughout the years - unlike our other local school where 3 out of 25 doing maths A level were girls and no girls did Physics OR chemistry A level last year...

Fab results doesn't mean good school. My school got the best state results in the county and got slammed by Ofsted. We should have been doing better with our intake and were actually failing to challenge the brightest.

My ds's school gets 51% with English and maths. But it is a non selective school in a selective area. So those results are actually pretty good.

And my ds will be one of them!

As others have said those are fantastic results (no school near us gets anywhere near them, so I had to read your post twice to understand what the problem was).
A secondary school's results will depend primarily on its intake. A grammar school only takes top performers, so it's not really surprising that they get top results.

IF you look that the DfE breakdowns they will tell you the number of top, middle and bottom performers in the cohort, and split out the results per cohort. Then you can make a judgement as to whether the results are in line with the profile of the cohort. IF the school it attracting all top achievers and only getting 75% A*-C GCSEs, I agree it is not doing particularly well! But chances are it has a much more mixed profile.

GCSE results are as much a reflection of the intake as the school : selective schools get high grades because they segregate out those who will not get them.

A comp school takes in all abilities including SEN
and a lot of fantastic sports people are not "academic" but greatly enrich the school life.

Broaden your perspective on the school

• music
• arts
• trips
• sports
• pastoral

As redskyatnight said, log onto the DfE website. You get a load more information about schools than you used to. The website breaks down GCSE results by attainment at 11. As a rule of thumb, high achievers are those with L5 at the end of Y6, middle achievers had level 4 and low achievers finished primary school below L4.

The high achieving bracket is fairly wide. Lots of children get L5 across the board but do not get into grammar schools, so results of these children are not directly comparable to a grammar cohort. Most grammar intakes are skewed to those who were secure L5 at the end of Y5, not Y6. But it will still show the attainment of above average children in a comprehensive school.

Thanks everyone for your comments. I will check out the DfE site. And yes very good point about % of science / maths a level takers who are girls - that matters to me a lot.

No-one has mentioned the value added figures. These measure how well a school improves the child. Do they get better results than predicted or lower? If it is outstanding they probably improve the children. My gut reaction is that for a comprehensive these results are good but I like to look at the top end results too. How many As and A*s and in what subjects?

In grammar schools in Buckinghamshire children are definitely not level 5 in year 5! No way! The grammars would be half empty!

You definitely need to look at value added.

I teach English at a good comprehensive with similar results, slightly lower than this on 5A*-C inc Eng & Maths last year, as we got clobbered with the boundaries being moved (another thing to consider when evaluating the school's recent performance, OP).

If you really want to compare against your own grammar school results, look at the top set(s), which will be the equivalent - you'd need to compare your results against the top 25% or so of the comp.

Of my set 2 (out of 8 sets) last year, there were 3 disappointing Bs & the rest at A/A. Set 1 had all but 2 students at A/A.

So that's 55/60 = 92% 'grammar school' level students at A/A* in English; Maths results were similar.

I'd bite the bullet, make the sacrifice and pay.

Why, with a good free school available?

I can't imagine a school bad enough that a child would be better off with no siblings and no after school activities and no holidays than going there...........

OP - I used to think the same as you but it really does take a change if mindset to move from the grammar system to the comp system.

Like you I went to a grammar, and by chance the years I took my exams it was ranked third or fourth in the country for results. So top end of grammar.

Where we live now is all comprehensive and initially I thought well 70% a-c is rubbish etc, but then you realise that it includes all the lower ability kids that frankly never came under our radar growing up as we were all with the top 10-20% or whatever it was.

If you remember it is all inclusive, and realise that bright kids can also do very well then hopefully you'll see that those results are good.