Why are London schools better than others

[daftpumpkin]

Newsnight had a remarkably short piece on this. They weren't exactly clear why they thought London did better but it seemed to be to do with teachers being married to other highly educated professionals. And there are more jobs for these people in London. Why that in itself matters I don't know. They did mention that Leeds is struggling to fill vacancies at the moment. Reading between the lines the suggestion would appear to be that the lack of graduate jobs in other parts of Britain makes it harder to attract teachers. Does this mean that those places can't be as choosy about the teachers they take on? Is it harder to get a teaching job in London? It wasn't entirely clear.

"(and those private schools St Paul's, North London Collegiate etc get way way way better results than then inner London comps by the way)"

Fuck's sake, I should hope so!! It would be a bit of a scandal if a school charged parents £30,000 a year to educate their kids and they couldn't prove superiority in their exam results over a bunch of schools that charges £0.

It would be a bit of a scandal if state schools in London received several thousand pounds a year more per child than schools outside of London and didn't do better, too.... so it's lucky they apparently are doing better, isn't it?!

When I was visiting schools in inner London the SLT were very knowledgable re: playing the exam system to maximise results for the league tables. At every school there was a team dedicated to help the D/C border students and of course that costs money together with entry for early entries, resist and sitting the same subject with multiple examining boards

So basically thanks to the huge unfair funding gap those of us with kids in other parts of the country are screwed.

Gove wants all the best teachers in the poor areas allegedly without supportive parents.So those of us elsewhere who aren't in a London or the poorer areas will just get the lesser quality teachers.

Fair,hmm I don't think so.

Resits!

According to my DH who works in this field (education stats and policy) it's mainly about money. Schools in London were very poor - there was lots of attention paid to them and lots of money poured in and now they are much better.

As a London parent I don't think its the case that more posh parents go state in London (or round here anyway). Something like 30% of kids go private. The most noticeable demographic feature of central London at least is the missing middle classes. There are a handful of super posh families at state schools round here, a tiny number of professional middle income families (teachers, civil servants) then the bulk are lower income mainly in social housing but also people who live in cheap grotty privately rented housing. At our school white working class are a minority as some said above, but not completely absent. Our school is mainiy black British with quite a few southern and eastern European.

I imagine its a completely different picture in some posh suburbs (Dulwich, Wandsworth etc) but round here the demographics don't provide a simple explanation for the results.

For what its worth I love my kids inner London primary school. They have amazing stuff on the doorstep and the school make huge use of it.

I thought it was because back in the day they were doing appallingly so got loads of funding to improve, especially under Labour (and of course most of the most deprived boroughs of London have Labour councils who throw money at things like this - my borough (Labour for ever) has free school meals for all primary school children throughout primary school, not just KS1.

Plus yes, migrants who come to live here will be very ambitious for their children - I mean, you've got to be pretty go-getting to uproot yourself from your country and family and move miles away, haven't you?

Just anecdotally, friend of mine did her teacher training in London (well, Ilford!) and said the school/ parents had much higher aspirations for the children than where she is now in Essex. Parents and kids seem to think a 'C' is the top mark they need to aim for whereas 1 hour further South the expectations are far higher.

I don't buy the bilingualism being a major contributing factor in attainment argument. Not enough research on this. Are similar resources going into supporting White British, by the way? Since the recession, I haven't seen huge resources being focused anywhere, except the Olympics, of course - there isn't that much money floating around.

Oh, and guess where the Olympics were held?

Anecdotal evidence: ds's undersubscribed school in a diverse suburb of London has loads of kids with parents with little education and/or little English, 65% FSM, but practically no parents who aren't supportive of getting education - loads come to the Reading and Maths Cafe events to learn more about how their kids are taught. There are more cultural trips and activities than same-age dn gets in a London private school (less green space, admittedly), and loads of applicants to teach.

Dn2 is same age, parent is a teacher in Leeds, similar income area but not diverse at all, and they have difficulty getting any applicants for some posts, and shedloads of kids with families who really couldn't give a toss about learning and think there ought to be manual-labour jobs for them and their kids to do. I can understand the parents being reluctant to consider more education and seeking different types of work, but no idea why they don't push their children to achieve in the new non-manual economy.

It's all down to political will. Politicians are not interested in improving the lives of children in places like Rhyl and Hunslet. They barely know that these places exist so why would they make any real effort to improve standards in schools there?

Minty actually the fees are about half what you quote! £30k would be for a boarding school - where you pay to get worse exam results than in day private schools and psychologically damage your children I would say on the whole. Private senior schools are more like £15k a year. Many of us moved to London to get better jobs to help our children advance in life whether we came from India or other parts of the UK so perhaps there is just a bit more push there.

What is just as fascinating as the London Challenge issue is why most of the schools with the best exam results are in the SE. Why isn't IQ distributed evenly in the genes of people away from the SE? Is it just that the hard workers move to London and egg their children on? This applies in the State and private schools too. There may be the odd good schools out of London - eg Manchester Grammar (private) but even the state schools with the best exam results are in the SE. Perhaps it is higher expectations - if you work and live amongst people who might well work in Canary Wharf even if just to clean the loos there then you might aspire to be the leading banker. If everyone instead in your village is on the dole or on a minimum wage job and you simply never see anything else does that have an impact and how can it if children are bright and watch films and use the internet where in an instant you can see people who come from nothing and do well?

How about because London being a Very Large Place, their 5% top intake is likely to be a lot less wide than the top 5% of a place like, say Exeter, with 300,000 people?

Its actually because they used to be so crap!

20 years ago all of the London Boroughs/Local Education Authorities were at the bottom of the league table. I lived in Hackney, it was third from the bottom.

Then finally, just over ten years ago, the government forcefully took over a number of London education authorities, either by failing them or just by taking over completely. Hackney had some kind of special NGO set up to deal with the mess that was state education in Hackney (particuarly secondary, primary seemed to be pretty good weirdly).

It was talked about v little. Firstly because the chattering classes had sent their children to schools crapper than they would like to admit and secondly because its rare for London to be looked at negatively in the media, in some ways.

Then all of the pilots for things like free schools and academies got centred on those failing areas in London, which meant they had a huge amount of money coming into them. This improved them at a faster rate than the rest of the country.

I also think teaching has always been very good in London. I moved out of London at 16 and was shocked at the general don't care attitude of many teachers across the board. Teachers outside of London were lazy in a way that would have been unthinkable in any of the secondary schools I experienced/friends and family experienced. As I said, I was shocked by that when I moved!

Not sure why. Maybe teachers in London are more idealistic and move their for a challenge? But it can't be that simple can it?

Jane the state schools with the best exam results are not all in the SE.

People who live in big cities are more ambitious than others. If you want a quiet life with fewer challenges you move somewhere slower-moving. Children and schools reflect the values of parents.

People who live in big cities are more ambitious than others.

Utter tosh.

The list I last saw I saw very few in the top 20,perhaps somebody could link to the official link.

Tom Bennett of the TES blogpost on this worth a read:

"London has defied national trends, exposed its buttocks and slapped them with abandon in the face of national grade determinism. Between 2003 and 2011 London moved from being the lowest performer of England's nine regions, to being the best. There is a far lower correlation between pupil deprivation and low GCSE results than any other region. Nearly a quarter of London pupils quality for Free School Meals, but London students stil achieved a 2.7% increase in those achieving 5 A*-Cs. Chris Husbands of the Institute of Education (London) says that this makes it the 'international educational success story of the past ten years'. "

community.tes.co.uk/tom_bennett/b/weblog/archive/2014/06/28/grrr-baby-why-london-39-s-schools-are-swinging-harder-than-ever.aspx#

What a ridiculous comment bonsoir