7% at comps get AAB

[Judy1234]

Just looking at today's FT schools tables/reports. Only 7% of comprehensives get pupils with grades AAB at A level. 62% of pupils get that at the best 50 independent schools (about 70 such pupils a year per school) and about 31 from selective grammar schools.

However the top 10 comps have 31% getting AAB which isn't too bad and the bottom 50 comps have 1% of pupils getting AAB.

The best comperhensive - Watford Grammar gets 8 Oxbridge offers a year.

But then surely you'd expect that. If the school isn't selective, whether it's fee paying or not, you can't expect to get lots of high a level grades so why does the Government want more children proportionately from comprehensives and (new rule) whose parents didn't get to university? It's like saying I want people who aren't right for this given preference over those that are. That these really bright pupils from the state grammar school whose parents both went to univesrity will not be allowed in but these rather thick children who have left it too late to be brought up to an Oxbridge standard age 19 will get preference.
www.ft.com/cms/s/4037c7f2-ceae-11db-b5c8-000b5df10621.html

Any statistics there for 6th form colleges?

Haven't had chance to look at my copy of the Saturday FT yet but think this is in there as well as online?

Could the Govt be worried that people whose parents didn't go to Uni are not likely to be encouraged by these parents to go themselves, so perhaps need more encouragement from elsewhere?

I don't necessarily think that encouraging more & more people to go to Uni is particularly rewarding. I think more vocational qualifications should be encouraged in some instances - some people are rubbish at academic subjects but then make fantastic carpenters/builders/plumbers/mechanics whatever & do really well.

Sorry have gone off subject a bit.

To some extent it is the child rather than the school ... I don't think my results would have been any different if I'd gone to private school, just in the same was as being somewhere with a varied range of results didn't affect the teaching I received.

I think there's always going to be comps in areas which pull less academic children so the results are going to be varied in terms of comparing all the schools with each other.

WATFORD Grammar boys and watford grammar girls

Are NOT really comp they have 10% on music and 10 % on academic MAths and VR papers

out of 180 pupils along with most of the other schools in watford

The same exams are done for lots of the schools in watford and ricky and bushey

The top 1000 schools tables there strip out subjects like needlework and general studies and take the A levels that the good universities want so therefore they are league tables that actually mean something compared to the Government's skewed ones. They also point out that some schools have been making children take ridiculously non academic subjects just to get the schools higher in the tables (as it's easier to get better grades).

Unhelpfully the 1000 best schools (private and state) on the survey can only be accessed on line if you subscribe to the FT. Yes, it has sixth form colleges on. I can see one local to us here, no. 345 in the country and my daughter's old school 7th and Watford grammar boys is 157.

cut and paste it

it's just statistics innit

looking at the stats, they come up with the fact that children at state schools whose parents didn't go to university don't do as well as those who did (so they want to skew the university intake to reflect this)

I hate all this meddling (I mean, where do you stop?) but you can't pretend that children who go to private/grammar school aren't at an academic advantage to your average state school (and yes, I know there are some very good ones!).

I don't subscribe either. I think you can sign up to a free 2 week sub on their site. It would be too long too as it's 1000 schools by county. I preferred their older tables which gave a 5 year average. Lots of schools have good and bad years. A position over 5 years is more accurate.

The Government skewing the tables isn't fair on parents without the knowledge to know that particular kinds of A levels are needed for Oxbridge and the like and who then think X is a good school because it's high up a league table that ranks woodwork A level or whatever with maths.

I got AAB at a pretty crap comprehensive. Didn't want to go to Oxbridge though, there's more to life than academic success.

Top 100 here .

One of our possibles for DD is listed in those.

I'm surprised marlborough and rugby aren't in the top 100.
Just assumed these top £££ ones would be top of the league aswell

Just goes to show that money's not everything...

I doubt the bit on the UCAS form that asks you to state whether or not your parents attended higher education gives you room to say something along the lines of "Yes, they did both go university and got good degrees but none of my grandparents did, as people of their class didn't in those days which made them all the more determined to make sacrifices so that their children could get a good education little knowing that this might be used against their grandchildren in the dim and distant future..." At least in my day uni entry was based purely on merit! (sorry - rant over!)

A lot of the boarding schools take quite thick children. A lot of those in that top 100 list (thanks for posting it) are day schools. 3 of the schools ours went to North London, Haberdashers and Merchant Taylors are on it and they are all day schools and all in the SE.

Another thing the FT found was that the schools getting better A levels were in the more prosperoius areas. Now why is that if IQ is consistent around the country - do we fail state school children so badly that there is such an impact on their A level results depending on how wealthy the area they are born in and did they not have better chances when the brightest got to go to grammar school?

But I would have thought Rugby might have been there. I think they should go back to their 5 year average. Habs girls is down at 37 here and usually in the top 20 If you look at a 5 year average you get a slightly better picture. Not Henrietta Barnet, (state) on that list doing well too. If 10 clever children compete for a place at a state grammar but in the private sector fewer because in London there are so many good ones you might be trying for 5 schools in the top 100 for example then you should presumbaly get cleverer children getting into the state school as more are competing for fewer places and therefore better results in the state grammars than the private selective schools.

Xenia do you really have to use the term 'thick'? Just because a child is less academic iit in no way makes them thick.

I was surprised Wolverhampton Girls' High School wasn't on there - aren't their results usually pretty spectacular? Their website says A' LEVEL A/B at A? Level ? 73.1% (excluding General Studies) and the school appears to be very strong on academic subjects. Oh to have that for nothing!

Rugby is at no 65

When I read things like this I'm glad to be outside the system. I had no idea the UCAS form now asks whether your parents had been to university. Inverted discrimination, which I am violently opposed to. OF COURSE who parents are, and how educated and how much money they have to give their children opportunities in life, confers advantages. The human race only got where it is today through survival of the fittest. The road to degeneration and decline of civilisation is to discriminate against the fittest.

It doesn't say that yet. They are considering it. At the moment the better universities do look at whether a child is the only person at a particularly bad comp who got AAA when everyone else was lucky to get EEE and probably rightly realise that candidate is probably better than AAA from Manchester Grammar or a state grammar and I think that works okay although it is an element of positive discrimination. But there have been some academic schools worried their children will be discriminated against and some parents allegedly in places like Cambridge which has a good state sixth form place which gets good Oxbridge entrance results I think switching at 16 to the state sector to improve the child's chances. However it's not a major problem at the moment. I know my daughters' schools have not noticed a reduction in their Oxbridge entrance rates. The univesrities still want the best candidates and it's very hard at age 18 suddenly to reverse for a child 13 years of bad education and take on clever children who can't read or spell properly. It's too late. You need to remedy that by about 11 really.

Good, Rugby should be on there. It went mixed so the results improved. Lots of schools have done that as girls are so much cleverer etc.

Sue, there are 1000 schools on the FT main table though not there.

Just checked Wolverhampton Girsl HS is 126 which is a really good position. Kind edward VI HS (private) is 24. Queen Mary's grammar walsall 53

Xenia You are thinking of Hills Road Sixth Form College Cambridge. 77% at A or B in 2006. It has quite a large intake from independent schools in area (notably Perse Girls, which is often in the top 10 for A Level results in the country)- but that is mainly because the students want to change to a college rather than the parents worrying about their sons/daughters not getting into Oxford/Cambridge. The Perse (the boys' school), down the road from Hills Road has received Oxbridge offers for almost 25% of its U6 this year. Hills Road however, has had a very poor year for Oxbridge offers (only 4 offers from Cambridge in an U6 of over 700).

Xenia why did you send your children to 3 different schools?

Yes, that's true. My sister's boys are trying for the Perse next year (fingers' crossed). Hills Rd is 175 on the list and Perse girsl 14 (and boys 47 although I think 47 is a bit low, a fluke which is why I prefer 5 year averages).

3 difference schools? Second girl didn't get into her sister's, although those schools are so similar that was a nuisance; it wasn't like one girl was cleverer than the otehr. Their A level grades were virtually the same in the end and actually ulitmately they enjoyed being in different schools - no sibling rivalry etc but it was annoying at the time. And the boy at a different school because he's a boy and didn't get into Habs boys. But all 3 schools had their own private coach service which picked up from near our house so it worked out fine.

Oh ok?

One of our friends' sons is wanting to go there next year and is going to be taking 13+ exams {for merchant tailors}

He is at prep school in northwood atm

Did your son do well at merchant tailors? Did he like it? Did he go onto a good uni? Or Oxbridge?

He's not at Oxbridge but that's not the school's fault, but MTs is a good school. Habs Boys tends to get better results (and produced Borat's creator) and Westminster/St Paul's are other options too but MTs has done a lot better than it used to in the last 10 years so a perfectly good choice.