48% 5 Gcses A-C... Absolute no?

[SwiftRelease]

Just canvassing opinion re dd2 for next year. Local secondary got 48% through 5 Gcses A-C inc maths & English this year, similar results previous 2 years. V offputting but some local parents v positive about school overall. Thoughts pls?

I think that on Mumsnet, people would argue that grass is not green.

The 48% headline figure is poor. It indicates that there are some problems within the school. What the nature of those problems are, none of us can say because we don't have enough information. But we can certainly say that they do exist. My personal opinion is therefore an absolute no and I stand by it.

The OP asked for opinions and I am giving mine.

I get very suspicious of no selective schools that get results in the 70s and above.

Usually it meSns the tables have been inflated by the use of Btec or gcse equivalents (not good news if you have an academic child who wants to do proper gcses, or its a very high pressure environment which doesn't suit everyone.

I'm really intrigued that there can be such a thing as an 85% A-C comprehensive school. I honestly didn't know such a thing existed!

DD's comprehensive achieved 80% last year, but it might have been a one off.

That was certainly true in the past Pictures, but I don't think they're allowed to do that now. The (super)head of our local school, who had managed to improve the results from 12% - 40(ish)% by using "equivalents" moved on very quickly when that rule came in.

I am always surprised at people scrambling to get their Dc into super selective schools which only get around 97/98%!. They've taken the very best of the crop and 3% didn't even manage Cs!

Is that including English and Maths Bunbaker?

My DS's school got 79% A-C including Maths and English last year. It's not considered a great school locally, there are at least 3 others within 5 mile radius where house prices are higher because the school is more desirable, although the results are broadly similar.

Minty . There are "Modern Schools" that achieve 85% A*-C Maths/English.
Believe it or not....

It would be a no for me, OP.

Results like that might indicate a low ability cohort, or a school which is failing a perfectly able cohort.

Yes it definitely does Mintyy. It is in the top ten high schools in South Yorkshire.

My dd goes to a school with worse figures than that.

She's in year 9 now and working at NC level 8 in most subjects. So I think if gcses were remaining the same (I know they're not) she would be on track for A or B grades.

Her school set in most subjects so she's having lessons set at the right level for her. Teachers seem passionate, very passionate. She mostly enjoys school.

Mintyy, there's a comp in town with 99% 5x gcses inc maths and English. Its meant to be one of the best in the country. State comp with a boarding sixth form, planetarium and a riding stables.....

I feel that the elephant in the room is the assumption that rich kids and poor kids have the same IQ range. Many "comprenhensives" are do not have a true range of ablities. It takes intelligence for Daddy to earn/ make lots of money and intelligence is in part genetic. Conversely someone with learning difficulties is not more likely to be on long term benefits and have children with learning difficulties.

League table information now shows how many high, middle and low achievers a school has. The school on the rich side of town may only have 6% low achievers where as the school in the rough council estate may have 40% low achievers. Some schools cater for low achievers better than others.

Gosh! Its so hard to imagine living somewhere with such a high proportion of academically-inclined children.

You learn something new every day.

RellyTired, I agree to socioeconomic factors affecting a school's intake have a vast bearing on their results, but it's not all about IQ.

For instance DH went to a decent comp in a nice part of town but he wasn't going to pass Maths, so his parents employed a tutor to make sure he did. The school benefited from his results in their league tables though and the same child, receiving the same teaching at school in a poorer area would have failed.

According to the league tables in 2012 dds school got 53% & 66% in 2013 but amongst that are 2 or 3 students with all A/A* (doesn't seem many but each year group has only around 25 students.

Many of the children are not academic but are high achieves in other areas. S

The trouble is, it's self perpetuating. Because results are poor, people go elsewhere if they can and often those that can are the more affluent with more able dc, so the intake remains lower than average academically and the results never improve. It doesn't necessarily mean it's not serving its able pupils well though, so you do need to look at the breakdown of performance by ability. If there is a reasonable number of high ability children and they are all (or very nearly all) getting 5A*-C with maths and english and the average grade is around B+ or higher (actually this measure is the one I'm not really sure what it 'ought' to be for this ability group - some schools seem to get A/A-, but others are a lot lower), then it is probably an OK school for a bright child.

The gap between rich and poor is evident at age 3 and just progressively gets wider and wider. It may be down to nurture as much as nature, especially as it's not evident at birth (though how you measure anything like that at birth I have no idea).

I'd say its below the national average but not rock bottom academically.

It would depend what ofsted and other parents had to says about the place

The headline stat means little. You need to talk to the teachers to understand how they help high attainers achieve their best.

If you feel confident that the teachers can deliver what they say, because they are passionate, have the time and resource and there is evidence and track record, then it isn't an issue.

I suspect that the truth is many mixed intake school doesn't have teachers in that position. Some do, but I suspect that's a lucky minority.

Definitely investigate behind the stats.

You need
www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/

to drill down into the results.

In particular, you need to look at what high, middle and low attainers achieve, and what percentage of the cohort they form.

DS / DD's comp has a 'headline' 5A* to C figure of between 80 and 90% every year. However, it is absolutely clear from the detail that this is because, despite being in an area with residual grammars, it has an unusually high proportion (nearly 50%) of high attainers, almost all of whom reach this benchmnark.

Which is fine for me, because I have 2 high attainers as children.

If I had low attainers, though, I would avoid the shool in favour of other locakl comprehensives - because there are very few low attainers in the school, and only 20% of them mnake the benchmark.

So 48% could be very good indeed: if the school is 80% low attainers and 45% of them make 5A to C that would be brilliant. But if it's 48% with 50% of the school being high attainers, that's terrible. The detail in the link really helps you to dig down and investigate, and helps you to identify what the school might be like for your child. I know a 'failing' comp, for example, with 100% 5A to C in genuine GCSEs for high attainers. the problem for their heradline figures is that they only for 5% of their intake, with midle attainers being anoter 10% and 85% being low attainers.....

I second that post "teacherwith2kids"

In this situation I would not just visit the school but look carefully at OFSTED and behind the headlines of data dashboard. Data Dashboard headlines can be very misleading but you need to look deeper at the sections showing school context. [Can a parent get to see Raisonline or is that just for schools eyes?].
Context is very important as is a visit and chat with staff/ Head.
My child is likely to go to a secondary school traditionally avoided by 'certain' parents. It actually does very well by children of all abilities if you look at progress made from starting points.

Those results are only poor if the school has a high% of high attainers in it's intake.

What are the %ages for high, middle and low attainers?

The currently published figures are wildly out of date.

The key figures to look at are the GCSE results for children who get the KS2 SATs results you think your child will get. The GCSE results are broken down by low, medium and high outcomes at KS2. You can see the numbers of GCSEs entered and passed, and the same figure with the "equivalent" qualifications stripped out. That's a reasonable comparison.

However, the GCSEs taken in June 2014 and awarded in August 2014 won't appear in the DfE performance tables until at least January 2015. The current figures are based on June 2013 exams, which were the result of options decisions taken in April/May 2011. The world has changed radically since then, with a lot of things schools were doing back then (equivalent qualifications, early entry, multiple entry, heavy use of module resits - remember, 2013 was the last time you could do GCSEs with extensive module resitting) now either stopped or heavily penalised. When comparing two schools, unless you know how they were achieving their results, it's very difficult to draw meaningful conclusions.