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

What would you say then was better at merchant tailors?

ie what is the reason for going there rather than habs?

Did your son get AAB or higher?

I know you said your son didn't get into Habs but if he had would he prefer to go to Habs or Merchant Tailors?

What has Merchant Tailors got that Habs doesn't?

Xenia. Perse entrance isn't as difficult as many of the London schools and an able boy should have no difficulty getting in. DS1 was very happy there and did well enough, without any obvious effort, to get into a good university to do a popular subject.

"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"

But they can't know that from just the grades - because you can't get more than AAA on 3 A levels- the person from the state grammar could still be better.
Why can't they look at the actual marks - they are available after all.

RB, never understood why they don't look at the marks. Why do we need these new university tests for law and medicine for example for all the AAA ers when you could just look at the marks?

On MTs, he didn't get in at 7 and wouldn't have got in at 13 so we weren't choosing between that and Habs and Habs would have been easier as it's right next door to his sister's school.

1st, there is not necessarily the kind of correlation that Xenia and co are assuming to exist between getting A grades at A Level and being the most intellectually gifted student. I've said on previous threads that A Level grades do not correlate to class of degree in any way which makes it statistically indicative the way that SATS are used to measure performance at GCSE or GCSE to measure performance at A Level. We all know students who got As at A Level and went on to get 3rds at Oxbridge or anywhere (I certainly do). But equally an A grade at A Level doesn't necessarily mean the most intelligent anyway. At a 6th form college I have taught students who have never got less than an A grade but had a rogue examiner, off day, illness, panic whatever and missed out on Oxbridge application cos they got B at AS even though in many cases they went on to get A at A2 (by which time it's too late) and in the last case I'm thinking of 100% in at least one A2 paper.

Also, private schools have the resources and the intake and the parental and student motivation which means they can push in ways the state couldn't or wouldn't. Again, I teach students from independent schools who have got A or A* at GCSE who get C or B at A Level. It's not that we are failing them, it's that the C or B is a more accurate reflection of their ability whereas the GCSE results were the consequence of pressure and excessive help with coursework etc.

Also, Xenia, you assume that it's state schools taht are 'failing' kids without taking into account the importance of parental influence, generations of poverty, effects of peer pressure in an 'anti-boff' culture etc etc that may be at play. People often assume that schools getting the 'worst' results are the worst schools and in my experience this is rarely the case. OFten the opposite.

I think A levels are a very good indicator of ability. You get briliant children from poor backgrounds who still get AAA at comprehensives and get to Oxbridge. I know several. If you get As in A level you are more likely to get an upper second at a good/Russell Group university.

Parents want clear raw charts without the value adding which this one is. Okay some people might find the complex charts the Government has come up with reasonably helpful but they don't help you decide what is the most academic school which is usually what most parents want to know. Obviously if your child has special needs like Kelly's or a very low IQ then you shop around for the best private or state school for that child but for most reasonably intelligent children I think tables like this are very helpful.

I agree with a lot of what you say though. Take a really well brought up nice middle class hardworking family with a loving home and a child with an IQ of 100 and child born with same IQ into an appalling environment with parents on drugs or hardly ever there, neglect, no books at home etc then clearly the child with the luck to born into the famliy it was is likely to do better in life. I was just reading about the 160m hindu untouchables in india - magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0306/feature1/index.html. At least we don't have castes here, just a fairly fluid class structure that people can move between.

what did your 5 children get for their A levels?

Did they get 3 x A ?

I don't think it's fair on them to say. Mostly As. The youngest two though are still only 8. The oldest got exactly what I got in my A levels in 1979 AAB - debate about whether that's of the same value. I still have my A level English paper. She did almost the same subjects too.

but surely that means that your arguement doesn't work does it?

If your children who went to top schools with all that gives

And with supportive parents one of who is a lawyer and the other a teacher

shouldn't they have got AAA ?

The maths A level have really devalued over the last 20 years. Oxford has had to change its maths syllabus to now be a 4 year course as even requiring Further Maths A level isn't ensuring that enough students have the basic competency for an undergraduate course. However apparently the changes in primary schools maths may see that change in the future - the current primary syllabus is apparently the best it has been for 30 years.

As an employer I'm afraid that I tend to discount A levels quite a bit now.

In terms of comps results though, aren't they still to a certain extent academically selective for A level - ie you would need at least 5 strong GCSEs and decent results in your chosen subjects in order to be accepted?

so Xenia if yours took certian subjects like

Maths Physics CHemisty

do you think they are brighter than if they took

English Geog Art?

'At least we don't have castes here, just a fairly fluid class structure that people can move between.'

Not fluid at all. And, if the stats are to be believed, less social mobility than 50 years ago. Hence, presumably, the idea of positive discrimination for university entrance.

And, if as you say, you agree that x student from a supportive, middle class background whose parents have been to university is more likely to do better at A Level than y student who comes from a poor background whose parents haven't given the same 'intellectual ability' (whatever that means) then why do you think it's wrong that a university takes these factors into consideration when giving university places? Stands to reason to me. And if you don't agree then you're just supporting the status quo which means private school and then Oxbridge graduates select private school and then Oxbridge graduates. Although fortunatley not everyone has the same narrow definition as success as you seem to Xenia and it is certainly not one of my goals to get my kids 5As at A Level and then Oxbridge entry.

And, no as I say, A Level grades are not an easy judge of intellecual ability especially when a student has come from private school given the factors I spoke of earleir.

And especially when many A Levels are inherently culturally biased. Esp English which I teach. If you don't come from a book reading, middle-class background I would say it's almost impossible to get an A at A Level Literature regardless of your intellectual ability. Esp if you're doing an unseen paper. My students, who by and large are not from middle-class, book-reading backgrounds but may well be the intellectual rivals of the private school down the road, really struggle with the vocabulary, literary awareness and class nuances which they are expected to pick up on the OCR combined English Language and Literature paper for example. A couple of years ago they were given an unseen extract which required them not only to understand the word 'Bohemian' but also to understand that the character using this word was using it ironically to undermine her daughter's choice of husband. They didn't. There really isn't a huge amount of teaching I could have done in 9 months to have prepared them for this particular example and it's just one of the 1000s of examples I come across each year which show that English and there must be other subjects like it does not really offer equality of opportunity for kids regardless of their background. I've not seen a General Studies paper for a while but I know that they used to be incredibly middle-class and ethnocentric. At GCSE you can still get clever kids A*s regardless of their background to a certain extent but not at A Level where 'flair' and 'independence' are assessed but fairly impossible to teach in 9 months. Although having said that, it's always interesting teaching the AQA 'poems from different cultures and traditions' to a class where there's only 1 white student so these poems defined as being from 'differnt' cultures are actually sometimes the cultures from which my students originate. Hmmm...

In the full list of 1,000 could someone please check for me where

Ockbrook
Trent College
Repton
Hollygirt

are placed, if at all?

I appreciate that a subject like maths might be a more accurate reflection of a student's raw ability than English but just as you appear to be arguing that the worst state schools don't allow students to reach high grades at A Level so I would argue that the 'best' private schools inflate grades so you get examples like Prince William's art teacher doing his cwk for him allegedly but also you get children being pushed from aged 4 by being forced to take homework home nightly etc. There's been loads of fuss about students 'peaking at A Level' then bombing at university which might be partly explained by private schools and grammars and pushy state schools over-pressuring their 6th formers who then find it very hard to work independently or they over-achieved at school and their universirtyt performance is a more accuate reflection of what tehy're capable of.

I would like to ask Xenia exactly what is "Needlework"? I don't know any school that teaches needlework

I teach Textile Technology, and the textile industry is one of the biggest employers in the UK. Unless she walks around naked of course.

If someone is creative, outstanding at problem solving, able to analyse and assess customer requirements, does this make them less bright? I think not.

Britain is reknown worldwide for the quality and imagination of it's designers, they are meant to be the best in the world. However they go abroad to work, as they cannot get backing from all those super clever people who go to schools that don't teach "Needlework" It's called the brain drain

Fizzbuzz there are some people who just love hierarchies. There are hierarchies of universities and schools, there are hierarchies of best and worst subjects, then there are the grades hierarchies and then even did you get just an A or and A with knobs on? As if there is any way you can compare textile technology with classics and as if you can compare Oxford with Manchester Metro and as if you can compare a student from Eton with one who went to Bogstand Comp. And as if one is always, always better than the other and you nothin less than the top of the ladder is good enough. I think this just proves how class ridden this country really is and what a horrible, jealous, competitive, snobby attitude so many people have.

Re Xenia's comment: "It doesn't say that yet. They are considering it.", in relation to the requirement for university applicants to state whether or not their parents attended higher education.

This is indeed the case:

See update.ucas.co.uk/cgi-bin/hsrun.hse/Stamford/ucas_reg/ucas_reg.hjx;start=ucas_reg.HspersonalDetails.run (sorry -still can't get my head around how to do links )

Question: Haveeither of your parents/guardians attended a
higher education institution?
Possible answers: one/both/neither

UCAS applications are now only accepted online and you have to register on the site in order to complete the form. The question is part of the personal details collected during registration process - hence the information will be stored and directly linked to your application.

I don't know whether lying on this part of the form would prejudice your application, though!

Most people in the UK make these comparisons. People make comparisons all the time. They look someone up and down to see what she weighs. They check out the brand of his or her shoes. They look at her accent etc etc In an ideal world we'd be naked and unjudged may be but we don't live in that world. Many of the better paid jobs need you not only to have very good A levels and a 2/1 from Oxbridge or similar but also all the other stuff too, ability to talk, good personal skills, interesting CV. The AAB stuff is just the bare minimum for some jobs.

It would be ridiculous if I thought I was buying AAA at those schools. I was very pleased with AAB. I don't have genius children. They have very bright friends some with Aa A* in GCSE and AAAA, some with 5 A levels which you always get at those schools in the top 10 in the UK but mine are not as clever as that and it's not an issue for me at all. I'm very happy with all my children. I buy in private schools not just good teaching but a whole load of other things too.

Oratory 353
I see the school my little niece just got a place at is 148 so that's good.

SueW.. just checking, it's by county so this is testing my geography
Ockbrook 285
Trent College 624
Repton 196
Hollygirt - can't find - may have just missed the right county

I got E, fail, fail for my Alevels and a first class degree!

Clearly Alevels weren't an indication of ability in my case!

my son goes to a state school
he has just done his first gcse assessed essay...

he got 54/54

and 54/54

how did you get on a degree with one e bethbe?

'they look someone up and down to see what she weighs. They check out the brand of his or her shoes. They look at her accent'

Not me on any of these things. And TBH the sort or person who feels the need to make these kinds of comparisons and keep up with the jones' is often masking some terrible insecurities which emerge in the need to compete and show off.

But I've locked horns with you before Xenia and another poster pointed out that it's often quite pointless getting into a discussion with you because you have a completely different set of values from mine.

Money and competing and A grades and winning and Oxbridge and skinniness and designer labels are not how I define success for myself or my kids or anyone really. For me it's about happiness and doing a bit a small bit to help make the world a better place. Sorry it that sounds a bit Miss World. I'd like to see a more egalitarian society not one which sees a student or school failing because it didn't get anyone in to Oxbridge.

NotanOtter: You're right, I was discriminated against for not having good A-Levels. I applied to many but none would accept me so in the end I bought my way onto one!

I got a job and studied with the Open University (still completed it in 3 years though). Bloody hard though - working 35 hours a week and studying approx 24!

I was then discriminated against further when applying for graduate jobs - they still wanted to know what A-Level grades I had and most filtered applicants through online forms so there was never any opportunity to make my case. The Open University was never on the pull-down menus either.

I did eventually get a fantastic job with a company that recognised my determination, and potential!

That's an inspirational story, Bethbe. I'm glad your determination paid off and you got a happy ending! FWIW I could never understand the obsession with A-level grades either. I got a D for one of the subjects I later went on to get a 2:1 in. I conveniently left my A-level grades out on my CV when applying for jobs. (That was in the days when you did everything on paper, and a menu was something you only ever saw in a restaurant...)