For anyone who still thinks that access to selective state education is a level playing field.....

[curlew]

I have just read the latest OfSTED for my dd's grammar school.

There are no children in Year 7 who are eligible for FSM. None. Not one.

And also stop behaving as if somehow grammar school types only exist in grammar school areas. What on earth do people think happens to thm if they don't happen to live in one of the 12 wholly selective LEAs and the I can't remember how many partially selective LEAs? They don't melt away, or catch yob and die- they do well in the top set of their comprehensive schools. As evidenced by the fact that the selective LEAs don't do any better over all than non selective ones.

I think, curlew that people think that:

1. Those children find their way into Amazing Leafy Comps and do fine, lucky them etc etc
2. Those children do ok but not as well as they would have at a grammar school
3. Those children do ok but get bullied and emerge blinking and miserable from the top set whenever it's PE time
4. Those children change to fit it because it isn't cool to be clever (?) at comprehensives, so they go all thick oik.

And sadly no amount of saying so seems to convince anyone that there's any other alternative to various combinations of those possibilities.

If we want to improve educational outcomes we need to stop looking at schools, the vast majority of them can be left to get on with their job, and start looking at parenting.

The attitude that school is the solution to all of society's problems doesn't help all that much when children spend a lot more time at home than they ever will at school.

Yep. You can - and a number of us do - repeat on an endless loop that no we don't live in posh neighbourhoods and no our children's schools are not Leafy and no they are not battered senseless for betraying a spot of literacy and no they have not formed some kind of mini-enclave of poshitude and literacy to shelter them from the feral thugs surrounding them...but that doesn't count, you see. The lived reality of having happy, achieving kids in schools which contain a reassuring mix of socioeconomic and ethnic diversity, along with educational diversity, is discounted. Repeatedly. And/or treated gingerly as evidence of the exceptional.

I wish my DD / school / area was exceptional
she's bright, the school is OK, )))the area((((
but hey
I'll have shipped both kids off to Uni in a couple more years

I see Dover Grammar has a value added score of 978 and is therefore failing its students, as are a total of 4 Kent academically selective schools.

Of the top 15 schools ranked in Value added order, only 4 are selective, and none are on the top 2.

On the graph which shows it's GCSE performance against schools with a similar demography, it is much lower than Harris Academy Crystal palace, one of the comps nearish to me, In fact looking at all its stats there isn't a school on my local radar that I would choose it over for a high achieving child. It does however, unlike the OP's dd's grammar have 12% of students on FSM.

(My DC's comp has more than double that and does better by it's high and middle performing children in meeting expected targets in Eng and Maths).

Most of the Kent grammars hover in the middle of the league for Value Added - so therefore supporting children to achieve more less exactly what they are capable of, maybe a little more.

After all this, it makes me wonder what exactly the children are missing out on.
And what it is that people chase.

The coastal areas of Kent (and parts of Lincolnshire) suffer from a low population and struggle to fill their grammars with as many high attainers as they would like; Dover Grammar for Boys for example takes 30% middle attainers and so not a typical grammar school (it also has 6.8 % on fsm). In contrast, the comprehensive school I think I recognise that Talkinpeace sends her DC to (apologies if I'm wrong) has only 6.6 % fsm with 50% high attainers (9% low attainers) and so not a typical comprehensive school.

Clavinova - yes, but shouldn't the value added be better?

Caro
I used to live in Dover.
The Grammar reflects the area quite well.
and as the alternative is joyous places like the Marsh Academy ....

East Kent is an interesting place.
Thanet especially.

I'm not sure value added scores are always useful; the value added score for Pates Grammar in Cheltenham for example is only 980 but it's certainly one of the best state schools in the country and I'd love to send my DCs there.

Value added is important but how much value added score can you increase to for those who are predicted all A* by CAT or whatever test at entry to certain selective schools or top set of a comprehensive?

I also though it was just an academic measure and did n't reflect what else a school offered in enrichment.

Talkinpeace. The Marsh Academy looks like a good school to me :OFSTED said Good in all areas May 2013.
They play"Rugby" and all pupils in yr7 have to join in extended days to 16.30

The school achieves rather well 50% A* to C Maths/English on a 22/69/9 Split and 17.8% FSM. I think it doing quite well.

But if it is under 1000 that means that not all the potential A* candidates achieved that, doesn't it? Because anything under 1000 means the achievement is under what it could be.

There may be some statistical jiggery pokery that means that the correlation between value added and what is actually measured at the top end means that high achieving schools can never score top potential, but if that were the case I feel sure the influential heads of such schools would have had a word with the man at the ministry

And certainly there is more to a school than it's GCSE results and it's academic scores of all kinds. But I have always thought that the value added score was the strongest statistical indication of the effectiveness of the education on offer.

soul
you've not driven past in then .....

No i have not T.P.

Looking at the Newsletter :The 2013 Results have taken a kicking, due to Goves reforms down to 40% A*to C Maths and English

There are some odd A level choices as well. One girl got 2A* at A Level in Health And Social care, but a B in Psychology and C in English Lit. Me thinks she may
have been better dropping one of the Health and Social care A Levels, to concentrate on her English Literature A Level.

Aah I went to Dover Grammar School for Girls. They used to let miners's children in in my day I am totally from a working class background and several of my friends had FSM. No-one gave a shit about all this stuff back then. I spent weekends at friend's houses - lawyers, doctors, single mothers on benefits, miners, teachers etc. No one was ever tutored for the Kent Test. I know it has all changed now.

Caro,

Value add is, for school within 'normal' ranges, a really good indication of what a school actually does.

HOWEVER, it is less reliable for supersuperselectives, because of 'ceiling effects' in the data. One of these effects works FOR a superselective school, the other works AGAINST, and as a combination they make value add for schools with exceptional intakes [I'm not talking 'normal' grammars, but those that take children from the top couple of %] unreliable.

The factor working 'for' these supersuperselectives is that the highest 'test' level at the end of KS2 was, until recently, a Level 5 - and this was used as the baseline for value add. For supersuperselectives, many of their intake will actually have been working - or have the potential to have been working - at L6 in Year 6, but until recently (certainly not for current GCSE / A level cohorts) this was rarely captured. So the grammar school 'gained' by children actually being assessed a level too low at the end of primary - they did not have to do anything to gain a Y7 full of L6 children, which would appear in the stats as a 1 level gain by the grammar school for those pupils.

The factor working against is that the highest GCSE mark is A. For a child in a school with a more normal distribution of ability, it is possible for that child to over-perform as well as under-perform - so given 100 pupils with the same level on entry, their levels at exit will have a spread, which crucially extends 'above expected' as well as 'below expected'. For a superselective only taking the top 1 or 2%, then expected grades on exit for the majority of children might well be A - none of those children can over-perform. Thus they get the 'downside' of children not getting their expected grades, but can't get the 'upside' of some exceeding expectations.

As i say, one positive and one negative - it would need a much better statistician than I am to work out which one has the more significant effect on the value add of a superselective in the Pates mould.

Dover Grammar for Boys for example takes 30% middle attainers and so not a typical grammar school

But also 69% high attainers.

I filtered all the London non-selective community and sponsored academy schools (so not church schools). There were 186 of them. Not a single one had a percentage of high attainers as elevated as 69%. None of them had as few disadvantaged children. Not leafy comps then. Over a third had better Ebacc results than Dover Boys. Taking out the sponsored academies, half the community schools (comps, still not leafy but representative of their localities and fully inclusive) did better.

I'm still gobsmacked that the nearest grammar to France did so badly at languages in 2012. Did no parent notice what was happening? I'd guess that parents get so anxious over the 11plus, it peaks there and they start to relax and get complacent. Comprehensives have more ambition, higher standards, more dynamism.

Um why should living close to France mean that you are better at speaking French than anyone else? You don't languages by osmosis, nor does living in Dover mean you pop over the channel every weekend. That is a totally ridiculous argument.

straggle
People who live in Dover are not the type who go to France.
Its a very very insular town. The area's economy was clobbered when the mines shut. There were good jobs at Pfizer for a few years but the port is the main employer and its a strange place (many happy memories of wild times working there)

I would point out that a school like Dover Grammar for Boys, if it has a higher than normal number of middle attainers, has a HUGE opportunity to have a brilliant value add, if grammar schools really are the best way of educating able children.

If a grammar school, as many assert, gains by having 'low attainers' removed, then Dover Boys should be absolutely storming ahead. It has virtually no lower attainers, has a really hefty block of high attainers to set the overall tone for the school, and should be really stretching the middle attainers through their high academic aspirations...

If it isn't, it certainly is no advert for the assertion that grammars are 'good schools' (which, in any sensible definition, are surely schools where children make most progress), and perhaps shows much more clearly that most grammars rely on their high ability intakes to achieve good results....

learn languages by osmosis I meant of course. Well you do if you are living in the country where every one is speaking it of course. But French language vibes don't fly over the channel. The MFL dept depends on its teachers surely? It's proximity to abroad has nothing to do with it.

Well yes, but then it's one school.

They can practise on very cheap school trips. Many families probably take in foreign language students. They will see and hear French speakers everywhere. They could hire French teachers based in France who could commute. They can buy magazines, videos, etc. They could go to see theatre and still be home for tea. Unlike the north of England.

And there are more employment opportunities using languages which you'd think would be motivating. Even if it just involves making announcements on the train.

I meant in reply to teacher - Dover Grammar is one school, so hardly something to base such generalisations on.