Very depressed about local secondary school

[RosaLuxembourg]

We live in a smallish town - there is one huge comprehensive that serves our town and many of the neighbouring villages. DD1 will be starting there next year. It has a good recent Ofsted and gets reasonable (slightly above average) GCSE results.
HOWEVER; the behaviour of the pupils leaves a lot to be desired. Geeks (among whom DD1 will certainly be numbered) are looked down on and bullied. There is a huge problem with truancy (one neighbour saw two of the kids having sex in the park last week while still in uniform!) The language and behaviour that we see in the street every day is appalling. Children swear constantly in the school corridors and are not reprimanded. Worst of all, last week DD's friend who has been bullied by a group of boys since she started there last year was attacked in the classroom by one of the bullies who grabbed her round the neck and held a knife to her throat. He got a 3-day exclusion and that's it.
I don't want DD to go there but she has no choice. What can I do to prepare her for it, or make it easier to survive?

Rosa, sorry to hear of your plight. The only comfort I can offer is that it does get better.
KS3 is horrible but, when the trouble-makers go off to do vocational stuff instead of GCSE at KS4, it does get better. Initially, you only hear about the trouble-makers but one day you will wake up to find that your DD has managed to find a nice friendship group of like-minds who support each other.

Just keep reminding yourself that this is the Comprehensive dream where your child gets the opportunity to mix with people from all sorts of different backgrounds.

It seems like a glib comment, but it does hold some truth.

If you force all kids to do 'accademic' studies, this will suit some, but will not suit others. Those who don't like that kids of work will swiftly become dissafected (think if you like about being told you have to study your worst subject at school for two years starting now....hold that thought.....how do you feel? I'd be pissed off and I'm an adult, that is how these kids feel)

If you don't like the courses you have to study, and you are not that good at them, you can swiftly get on a downward spiral. And if you are going to 'fail' isn't it more face saving to 'fail' because you are 'hard' than if you are 'thick'. This is the root of much poor behaviour in lessons.

We take kids of 14, hormonally charged and immature and make them so stuff they don't like and are crap at, and see no reason for. And then we are surprised when they bugger about in classes!

Put these kids on good, valid, well designed vocational studies and 9/10 are different kids! Trust me I've seen it happen.

Rosa - just read your original post and the first thought that struck me was that the comprehensive system hasn't improved in the 30years since I went to a very similar school (except that the results at ours were probably worse). The only difference is that there were no knives back then but then 2 of the bully brigade thought it enormous fun to set fire to the school managing to destroy the science and art block along with loads of pupil's course work.It's a disgrace that the bullies still seem to rule and that if you are a clever child you are likely to be picked on unless you happen to be a star on the sports field.

My friend is waiting to find out what they are going to do about their broken promise to move her daughter out of this bully's class. She has left several messages and noone has yet responded. I am that the school cannot get it together to make a simple phone call. Apparently, in the 10 days since this incident happened not one member of staff has spoken to friend's DD to find out how she is coping. Martianbishop is this normal or is this school particularly rubbish?

Homeschool.

My friend's DD has actually suggested this to her mum Expat, but my friend doesn't feel it would be a good option for her. She is now talking seriously about moving 100 miles away to an area where there are good grammar schools.

It sounds a lot like the school I went to, RosaLuxembourg, which was survivable but I did have to adopt protective colouring. I did pretty well academically in the end but that may not be much consolation.

"It sounds a lot like the school I went to, RosaLuxembourg, which was survivable but I did have to adopt protective colouring. I did pretty well academically in the end but that may not be much consolation."

Yes, but why the hell should ordinary, well-behaved kids in so-called good schools HAVE to feel this way? Makes me

I didn't know any better, Lambchop! I thought all schools were like that.

No one saying it right Lamchop but i do honestly believe that behaviour is disintegrating in Secondary schools and as others have said even when a headteacher does exclude when it goes to appeal they often get overturned and the pupil comes back as in a case at our school when they attacked a teacher !

I teach in a bog standard comp. But we have a better than average dicpline policy.

Our schools isn't as bad as the one in the OP. If children swear at a teacher they get a 3 day exclusion. The knife thing would be much longer/ permanent exclusion depending on the situation. Truenting happens but isn't endemic.

Most of the kids are fab, I'd say 90-95% are great. 4-9% are silly 'followers' and 1% are hard core trouble makers. In general I would say that standrads of behaviour are considerably lower then they were when I was in school. Teachers do not command automatic repect and you spend your first few years having to carve out your 'repuatation' as a teacher who will not accept poor behaviour which is a PITA and a waste of time.

But I wouldn't say the OP describes behavor that is seen every school

True martianbishop as Rosa says theres a better one fifty miles away !

You see, I grew up in Ireland and don't know the English system that well. I went to a very strict convent school so have no real basis for comparison with secondary schools here while DH went to public school where bullying was called fagging and built into the system. I don't know what my DDs are getting into at all. Apparently 45% of children at this secondary school get 5 decent GCSE's and that is considered perfectly acceptable and indeed rather creditable.

The trouble is, as somebody said earlier, heads are under more and more pressure not to exclude. However, even in our school, which is a pretty tough inner-city school with many pupils with many "problems" they are permanantly excluded if they bring a knife to school, let alone if they do anything with it. They'll be gone, even if all they've done is shown it to somebody and we find out.

It sounds as though your friend needs to take herself down the school and say she's willing to wait all day until somebody speaks to her. Is there a named person like a Head of Year that she can speak to first; otherwise just wait for the head to be available (and he will be before long, once he knows she's there). Perhaps take along a friend who will be able to stay calm and assertive, even if friend finds it hard to? Good luck.

The 45% thing may shoud poor, but to a degree it depends what level the kids come into the school on.

So for example, all kids are supposed to improve 1 grade over the 3 years at ks3 from age 11-13.

If you look at the KS3 sats reults and they are all 4.5 to 5 that might seem grim, but if the kids come in on a average of 3 the resuts would be outstanding.

What you need to ask about are the 'Value added' scores of the school. they take into account what the kids were like when they entered the school IYSWIM

Well you see MB the school is very large so takes from a huge variety of feeder schools. Our primary is not untypical and is sending them 60 pupils a year with probably 20 at least going in with level 5 and fewer than 10 with below level 4. This would amount to about 20% of their intake - and many of the other primaries would have comparable results if not all.

You should have a look at their statistics and see what the actual value added figer works out as.

We have a 5.7% 5 a* to C range, but our value added schores are good, as we take them in below av and send them out above.

Value added KS2 to KS4 is 996.3 if that means anything to you MB?

1000 would mean they made the progess expected.

the figue you quote is below that.

BTW we have a 57% a* to C rate!!!

Reading the statistics is difficult, especially when there are no other local schools to compare it with.

Or school gets 32% A*-C (incl Maths/Eng), and 977.7 VA: which is not very good, but it is actually one of the better schools in the town

The primaries here are fantastic and get brilliant VA scores, but that then leaves a very tall order for the secondaries to match up to that iyswim: and they fail - spectacularly at times

You can't excuse the Secondaries' poor record by blaming the Primaries!
Our local Grammar schools take the best kids (something like the top 5%, not the top 25% as in counties like Kent). Despite having pupils who have excelled in Y6, they manage to get Value Added from KS2 to KS4 of 1040.

No-one is blaming the primaries!

What we are saying is that it is a better measure of how a school does to look at the relative progress that children make.

So you cannot compare school X who gets 100% A* to C grades and school Y who only get 50% if school X has feeder primaries who send out children with level 5s at he end of KS2 and the feeder primaries of school Y send out children with all level 4s!

It is far more sesible to look at the progress that children make, rather than the raw results. And this is what 'Value added' statistics take into account.

And yes, some grammer school , while being selective, can still have excellent value added scores. No-one is sayng anything to the contrary.

I started typing a long response, but couldn't be bothered.

I don't seek to defend the secondary where I work. But it is logical statistical sense that if a primary working in a deprived area does a fantastic job with children who come in at 'below average' on various areas, and gets them all up to 'the standard' through lots of booster sessions, fantastic teaching etc., then the secondaries have to function equally well (which they don't) to get a neutral VA score, and getting a positive VA score is impossible: because the primaries have helped the children achieve every ounce of their potential.

So for example Charlie has come from a superb primary but despite their best efforts and every possible intervention strategy, he didn't get level 4s in his SATs. To get a positive VA score my secondary has to get him up to level 5s in his KS3 SATs. And that just aint gonna happen.

If you syphon off the bright kids it's easy. They can't get higher than a Level 5 at KS2 even if they are working well above Level 5, and many of them are. They progress at faster rate than other children and can easily achieve Level 7&8s at KS3. My school does do this - as all schools do - but we don't have very many of this group of children: certainly very few of the top 5%, as they go elsewhere.