What's a value added score of 1028 considered to be, out of interest? Is that good or rubbish? I'd not taken much notice of them but that what my DC's 'socially exclusive, leafy MC' (or so I'm repeatedly told here!) comp gets.
"If all poor children are "low ability" then it isn't surprising that they didn't achieve as good results as wealthier children of "high ability". That's not really the problem. The problem is that, actually, with the right support many of these disadvantaged children are perfectly able and can go on to achieve."
- I think many thousands of £ and much heartache and effort has been thrown at this- and guess what? In real terms, DC from poor families continue to under-perform. What is 'the right support'? Can it be wrought by the same 'magic' that apparently makes my DC's comp 'excellent'? I think not. As I have said about 20 times so far, the reason my DC's school succeeds is because its intake is entirely school ready. There are few debilitating social problems, the DC are relatively easy to teach and the parents are on-side and are what I call 'MC valued' even though some live in £600 pcm 2 bedroom flats. They believe in education and expect their DC to perform. The teachers are teaching, not fire-fighting.
If one were to introduce 'fair banding', firstly DC would have to start travelling bigger distances; and if we assume that 'disadvantage' breeds less good educational outcomes, guess what? In 3 or 4 years, Th would become another 'bog standard comp'. The wealthier parents will have fled to the privates (of which there are surprisingly few around here as most of the the wealthier DC go to the good local comps). Sure the one or two 'poor schools' locally might improve a bit, but the injection of a certain number of MC DC won't miraculously turn a feral chair-fight of a lesson into a well-disciplined, productive one.
So yes, you say "The difficulty is trying to address this without screwing the system up completely so that it actually makes things worse for everyone". Indeed it is.
And I agree that "I don't think we should assume that disadvantaged children will automatically do better at these socially selective oversubscribed schools either". As "FSM children typically did much worse at the most exclusive schools than they did at less popular ones".
Anecdotally, there was a TV show in Oz a few years ago where a disruptive, difficult, endlessly expelled (Aboriginal) boy from a chaotic family was admitted to one of the best private boys schools in Oz to demonstrate that 'the savage can be tamed' by being surrounded by hard-working, focused disciplined boys (NO racism intended here, I should add! The 'savage' reference is to the indiscipline of the boy, not his race!). He was asked to leave after less than a term. He simply had too many issues and the school, like ours, wasn't 'set up' to deal with such.
Which leads me to a seminal point: IMO, most NS DC who under-achieve at school do so due to the chaos or neglect of their home lives.
And I chose Th for my DCs because yes, it obviously does well by its clever DC, but also by its less-clever DC. The middle 'sets', such as they are (they pride themselves on minimal setting)- are full of the less able being appropriately taught, not, as in many schools, the able-enough but can't be arsed. They are the shame of our education system, but I don't think 5 odd hours of contact time in school, 5 days a week 40 weeks a year turns around years of poor or absent parenting.
I'm still relieved that there are ways for me to avoid having to help my DC cope with these DC as they wreck everyone's education..