Is there a league table that compares state and independent schools for GCSE results?

[MrPickles73]

We are beginning to question the value of private education (other than for the sport etc). We are moving 1 child to state sector from private to avoid VAT.

Is there a league table somewhere that compares state and independent? For A levels and / or GCSEs please?

Thankyou

https://www.thetimes.com/schools-league-table

If you just want GCSE and A Level results then the government league tables are here: https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/

Hopefully this is obvious, but there is a heavy correlation between intake and results, with selective schools (and private schools are selective by ability of parents to pay even if not academically selective) inevitably being higher than comprehensive ones.

there is one for Greater London here:
https://www.londonpreprep.com/2023/08/london-gcse-ranking-2023/
private schools dominate but grammar schools are up there as well. I'd say they reflect intake. you could create one yourself for the schools in your area by checking individual results.

Some schools opt out of this though, IIRC

Yes, there's a local grammar to us not on there - you can see on their own websites where they measure up nationally if you look though. It's a simple way to get a comparison then in depth you can look at the exam results and subjects available on the school you like's website.

I don't think such comparisons really help much as they often just show a pretty slight uplift in private/grammar schools compared with state comps.

However, that's average and total numbers. It doesn't (and can't) show the effect on a specific child.

My brother went to a private school. Not because he was bright - he was pretty average really, but because he was very "easily led" as my parents put it, and they worried there was every chance he'd be led down the "bad" path in the crap comp that he was allocated. They sent him to a local private school (nowhere near one of the "top" schools), and he ended up doing OK - no more, no less. Who knows how he'd have ended up in the crap comp! In fact, once he left school, he went off the rails and ended up with the "bad crowd" anyway!

A client of mine had a teenager at a comp who was in the wrong crowd and starting to get a name with the police for anti social behaviour and was starting to get into gangs, knives and drugs. His parents had a number of "heart to heart" conversations with him, and he admitted he didn't want that lifestyle and just felt he had to go along with the crowd as he spent so much time in school with them and didn't want to be odd one out. Parents found a local boarding school and he agreed to go there. Never looked back - school results improved overnight and he went on to good GCSEs, good A levels, a Uni degree and now in a good profession. So changing schools radically changed his outcome. Maybe the same result had he changed to a different comp, who knows, but the general thought was that it was the boarding element that helped most because he was "out" of the local area so away from the "problem" kids living near his home! So maybe it was boarding rather than a private school that made the difference.

Yes, schooling and it's affects are subjective.
I posted on another thread just this morning on of my dd's was in a school with a high incidence of self harming in their Y7 cohort. She begged to stay but I moved her and now she is really thankful because she is out of that stress and trauma situation and can be herself again. Thankfully she never started and has just moved on. Each year group is different in each school as well.

Any results aren’t directly comparable as children and their environments aren’t!
Decide what’s important for you and your child.

Ask friends who have children at local schools. Results often depend on the merits of individual teachers, when they leave results can go down. This happened at a school near us who had 2 excellent language teachers, who left and the results changed.

I cannot see how comparing selective private and state schools with non-selective schools is in any way informative or helpful?

Completely. And even more so for A level. It’s so strange but - if you only let kids in who gets 7,8, and 9s in their subjects at GCSEs, the results are astonishingly good

Don't move them unless your state is excellent. And smallish and has a 6th form.

If you look at the gov.uk website linked to upthread, you can see outcomes by the characteristics of the intake by prior attainment etc.

So the highly academically selective school with the hotshot headline % 7 - 9 grades may actually be doing no better by that hotshot intake than the non-selective school does with the most able proportion of its own intake. However, its headline results will, surprise surprise, be brought down by the results of the less able members of the cohort (who may even be doing slightly better than their stats on entry would have suggested).

Sorry for the late response, go to locrating, it compares both state schools and independent school league table as you requested. Link below.
https://www.locrating.com/league_tables.aspx

Still only quotes the 'headline' A8 figure...

Schools opt into the Times league rather than out of it. Very few state schools take part.

@MrPickles73 as others may have said, jt makes no sense to compare overall results from selective schools with non-selective schools. You need to use to the Government's Compare Schools website and filter the results to isolate just the attainment for students who were working above average at the end of primary school.

Even then, it doesn't tell you how your child will do - only how some children several years older than them did in 2023 (the 2024 results will be published soon).

@MrPickles73 also, when moving to the state sector it is as important to think about what you can do for your child's school as what it can do for your child. How will you help that school to be even better? e.g. donate to its voluntary school fund, volunteer yourself for fundraising events or careers talks, send the occasional 'thankyou' email to the teachers so they know when they are appreciated, be helpful to other parents on school Whatsapp groups and make positive comments about the school rather than griping.

When enough parents do some of these things it can help to turn a good school into a great school.

,

I also use this website. It's good as a starting point to shortlist then look at government.uk for further data.

State schools locally do better than private as private now taking special needs and wealthy catchment area. I would look at Ofsted and ask about extra curricular clubs.
Also see if can join sports dance music clubs or scouts guides cadets outside school so can get to know local children who are less likely to be going down wrong path

I agree.
Doesnt it depend on the demographic of most of the pupils that go to that school?

DD went to a leafy comprehensive in a good area. Unsurprisingly, the school has the best GCSE results in our local authority. The 6th form is pretty selective and therefore is in the top 10% for A level results.

The opposite - schools have to opt into it. Most don't.

They just scrape the results from the Government's website here: https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/

@MrPickles73 bear in mind that many private schools do iGCSEs, not GCSEs. Their results won't be in the Government's performance tables as they are not standard UK exams and are not comparable to GCSEs.