All 9s at GCSE….

[CurlewKate]

Less than 1.5% of candidates get all 9s at GCSE. I wonder why so many of them seem to be Mumsnetter’s children! 🤣

Why are you working in a system and perpetuating the inequality that you abhor? Such hypocrisy. Work in the state sector and use that giant chip to help those children.

Well that’s not a concern at my DC’s school as over 90 per cent of the grades are at 7 or above. Very few pupils get a 6, never mind anything lower than that. I’m not talking about your average state school.

I've done both. State and private. As have most private school teachers. It's the best place for developing teaching skills. It isn't the individual students fault we live in a hierarchical, classist system.

The state system is broken. I worked in it for many years, but working 80 hour weeks would have killed me eventually. It isn't sustainable.

Stating a fact, that IGCSEs are easier and score higher, doesn't mean I have a chip on my shoulder. It means that due to experience and training I'm able to see the evidence.

I'd posit that you're the one with the chip because it angers you that experts in this area are pointing it out and you want to think that little Johnny is superior to state school children, when in fact he's just had many different advantages.

We've got a secondary within my area like that. Private school levels of results from a wide ranging socio economic base. I have friends who teach there.

Needless to say, management are starting to fiddle with things, which is shortly going to have a detrimental effect on those results, because SLT are fast-track managers who had very little teaching experience first. A shame, because it was a beacon of hope in the state sector in our area.

My daughter got ten grade 9s and then a 7 for Further Maths which the school made everyone in the top set do. She wasn’t bothered by that one as she wasn’t planning to do maths and it was pretty much her last exam so she took her foot off revision wise (rightly so!). So as far as she’s concerned she got all 9s in her chosen GCSEs but wouldn’t appear in those stats because of that extra one.

This was at a comp.

@Sashya
ah, I thought it was obvious I meant the actual swimming practical element of the overall score, obviously not the theory. It’s 10% of the overall score.

Getting all 9s at a state school that needs improvement is certainly impressive. Especially without extra help from parents/tutors.

Not necessarily more impressive than the kids at a private school, a grammar school or a decent comp who got the same. Those kids might also have achieved all 9s in the failing comp - no way to tell.

They may also have gained other impressive achievements and accomplishments in the better school. And what the students have learned (all of it) is now part of them, and feeds into what they can accomplish next.

Students should certainly not be held back from further education and jobs which they are equally able for due to having gone to a poor school. But it's also wrong to assume that they are automatically more deserving.

The obvious solution is to improve the failing schools...

I totally agree, and get rid of progress 8.

I think this is where a lot of the behaviour problems come from, students who know they will not pass GCSEs so don't see the point of doing the work.

I’m pretty sure uni’s have no view on GCSE taken over three years. It’s hardly the kid’s fault if that’s the way their school runs them.

You should get an extra 9 at GCSE for surviving year 11 if you get straight 9s at a failing school.

It should be recognised as having survival skills/ social skills.

@Tiredalwaystired”in a single sitting” is usually a requirement. But no worries, the takers of 16 GCSEs will have done at least 8 in one sitting.

The obvious solution is to improve the failing schools...

Couldn't agree more. The problem is, teaching is such a combination of factors, any fix needs to be multifaceted. And no one is prepared to face the increase in costs that reduces the teaching workload (because it would massively increase the number of teachers needed, and they can't meet the number needed now, let alone a huge increase).

"Grade 8 in 3 instruments" / "Survival skills when faced with mobs" / "Skill at presenting ideas" / "Running a business in spare time" / "County level sports with high training commitments"

All accomplishments.

I also thought the iGCSEs are well known to be easier, which is the reason why most private schools didn’t adopt the new more rigorous GCSEs when they were developed.

This difference in qualifications is one factor behind attempts to broaden access to top universities. Once admitted, state school students do better at uni (on average) than their private school peers with equivalent GCSE and A level grades.

www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/news/state-school-pupils-do-better-at-university-cambridge-assessment-research-confirms/#:~:text=Research%20by%20Cambridge%20Assessment%20–%20a,with%20similar%20A%20Level%20results.

Further Maths isn't a GCSE, it's a Level 2 Certificate so she can certainly keep making that claim

@givemecoffeeandtv that article is 10 years old, and is based on data which is even older.

The opposite is now true, as shown in the 2019 Cambridge paper 'Analysis of student characteristics and attainment outcomes at the University of Cambridge' here:
https://www.cao.cam.ac.uk/admissions-research/app-research-papers-2020

(4th file down)

In a thread a few months ago, a poster reported that a FOI request showed that the imbalance at Cambridge had become even worse since then.

That's probably why Cambridge has recently removed their quotas for state/private students: they realised that they were excluding better private students in favour of less able state students.

I am very happy for the children that do exceptionally well in the state system - I was state educated and very successful, outperforming many private school educated peers at university. I work with colleagues that studied at St Paul’s etc on an equal footing.

My husband and I are committed to our DC’s education so there is a good chance they would have achieved the same GCSE grades, whichever system they studied in, so a waste of money in some people’s eyes.
However, we want our DC to enjoy their 14 years in education and not just survive it.*

Rather than viewing it as parents trying to do their best for their children due to a “state system [that] is broken” (your words) you speak very bitterly about it as a system that perpetuates inequality. YOU are very much part of that system and you could make a difference by returning to the state system but you have opted out for an easier life for yourself. You clearly hate yourself for it.

I repeat - the biggest inequality is not between state and private but within the state system. I would expect a teacher to know this.

*I think most parents try to do the best for their children and that doesn’t necessarily mean private education.

That thread did get quite heated!

The rights and wrongs of optimising for best university outcomes versus social engineering is a whole other argument.

But we do need to stop bringing up that very old data, which is no longer applicable.

2019 figures below. The next set (2020) were during Covid and artificially inflated (Figures from the government website).
GCSEs Number of students
7 - 78
8 - 93
9 - 240
10 - 293
11 - 123
12 - 10

DS2 got all grade 9s in the 11 GCSE exams from his non selective state school in that 2019 cohort. His school allowed him to take an extra (largely self taught) GCSE over their normal maximum of 10. They were the best results the school had ever had, and yes, he got his photo in the local paper.
When I checked the stats I did point out to him just how unusual his results were.
We avoided telling friends in RL, we just told anyone who asked that they were very good.

DS1s results were much more normal 😁

How do you define a 'failing school'?

I taught a girl who arrived from Poland aged 14, at 16 she passed 10 GCSEs but got a D in English, so that would go as a fail for that school when in reality they did a good job (as did the student).

Also the stupid obsession with GCSE maths and English. Yes I know that they are important but if a student gets a 1 or a 2 then progresses to college they have to resit them at every opportunity. Surely it would be better to actually teach the skills over the 2-3 years most are in college.

Yes but the results for school type are not conclusive in the multi factor model?
The evidence is not strong enough to make the authors’ key findings.

My key point was about the iGCSEs and their content vs GCSEs. Once GCSEs removed coursework around ten years ago and became much more rigorous, most private schools moved to iGCSEs. State schools were not allowed to.

in reply to strawberrybubblegum

And yet you considered a similar imbalance to be conclusive in the old newspaper article you posted.

It must be so hard for you being such a moral person to keep teaching in private schools.