What Happened to Sevenoaks School's exam performance?

[NoYouJustDidnt]

From top 10 nationally in independent school league tables to 29th in 2024 results. Can you imagine paying £65k a year for that 😵 https://atomlearning.com/blog/top-private-schools-in-uk?srsltid=AfmBOor3hRTV8RHF6d7cULc2EVha24qv2VmPtbjETw2pyAqGxFqNGaVR

Quick, sharp replies like this often reflect personal frustration. I wish you all the best, but if you’re not interested in engaging with the data thoughtfully, it might be best to step back from the discussion. Let’s keep this space for constructive conversation.

Honestly, you are talking about maybe one or two kids slipping with those kind of numbers.

One of my A level classes... only 3 of us in the class... 2 got A grades, 1 got an 'N' and pulled the average right down to something like a D for A level for that subject. But you wouldn't know from the raw data that it wasn't an issue with the teaching, but more some very serious non-school related trauma for that student during the exam period.

2022 figures skewed from Covid. I woul have a look 2017-2020 then compare.

The results go up and down by genuinely marginal fractions on that scale. It can be affected by subject spread for harder subjects as a cohort were particuarly toward those subjects.

I wouldn't call it a slide, I would call it the natural breathing of a school. If it really started to drop I would be concerned.

I think even if the "shine" has dulled, I dont think there's a more attractive offering in the UK for IB. The very few I know from Sevenoaks are capable and very at ease in the globalised world, far more than other schools. I think it is great (but again my evidence in based on a handful I know).

2022 was still covid adjusted. A better comparison would be to 2019

2019 and 2020 were 39.3 and 39.2 respectively. So apart from the aberration that was the COVID years, all starting with a 39 or 3 A* at ALevel.

There have been a number of odd threads about Sevenoaks recently all written with a similar style of prose and sounding like they are written by someone in marketing.

Thanks for mentioning 2019. That’s a really useful year to look at, given it is before Covid, the scholarship and leadership changes. Do you have any more data?

I’d also be interested to see the threads you mentioned, if you’re able to share the links?

It does seem odd that the OP is asking questions like this targeted around a specific school and then asking for more data. If they were genuinely interested in the school they'd surely just research it themselves/make enquiries with admissions.

I remember visiting Sevenoaks for an open day with DD and the then Head talked about the numbers of students who had got 45 points at IB. Knowing DD was something of a perfectionist I decided at that point it was not the school for her: Did not want her to come away with 40+ points at IB and somehow feel she had not been a top achiever.

Some strange threads on Sevenoaks lately! Who can possibly think going from 39.x to 39.x points and eleven 45/45 scores is 'standards slipping'? I was also on another thread this week where the OP basically said the school only targets Asians and is not academic enough (simply not true). I have DC at Sevenoaks so I do watch these threads but the amount of made-up negative stories seems to be so high this year! Maybe OP is trying to put off other parents from applying?

I think this is also the OP's only thread? Sounds like they created a throwaway account with the specific intention of criticising Sevenoaks.

OP - what's your rationale for posting this?

Are you from another school and trying to undermine Sevenoaks?
Are you're applying to the school and hoping to put other parents off?
Have you had a bad experience as a parent/ teacher?

It's a very odd thing to post unless you have a link to the school and it's the second post I've seen of late that seems to have been put here simply to undermine Sevenoaks.

Can you explain?

Do you belief parents can just pay for good A level results? and they are entitled to get them?

Since we've narrowed in on the IB, here’s a comparison of the 2025 IB results (subject to adjustment):

https://www.britannia-study.com/en/ib-results-rankings/
Interestingly, unlike Sevenoaks, the top 5 all offer monetary scholarships.

The top three schools are in a similar-ish area and have incredibly high scores.

Could it be that the level of monetary scholarships has a big impact on overall cohort performance, and that nothing has really changed at Sevenoaks beyond the standard of students joining?

Worth noting how another Mumsnetter seems to be influenced by scholarships, and NCLS has restarted their monetary scholarship offering in this post:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/5274852-clsg-vs-nlcs-vs-latymer-grammar-school

A couple of other observations:
Royal High School has jumped up the table. What changed? Might be worth starting a new thread on that.

Since some of you have mentioned the overall cohort performance, consider this IB comparison for 2025, using info from the net - subject to errors. Ardingly was chosen as its located closest to Sevenoaks and is also a co-ed.

Ardingly
Scholarships up to 25%
Fees: £53k/year
Avg IB: 40.1 (according to their website)
2 students scored 45 points
67% got 40+ points

Sevenoaks
Scholarships: £0
Fees: £65k/year
Avg IB: 39.1
11 students scored 45 points
50% got 40+ points

Thoughts?

Ardingly also offer A-levels so it’s not a good comparison as only their top students do the IB. Sevenoaks is 100% IB.

Also, you’ve quoted boarding fees for 6th form, day fees are significantly lower.

When Sevenoaks offered monetary scholarships they were peanuts so I don’t believe that’s had any impact.

They still offer full bursaries.

It looks like your point is really about scholarships and money. Why are you disappointed that they’ve taken away the financial element?

This https://www.ib-schools.com/league-tables/uk-top-ib-schools offers information on cohort size for IB. Ardingly was 26 vs 245 at Sevenoaks.

Personally, I approve of funds being targeted at bursaries rather than scholarships. It’s interesting to see that your actual gripe was about money.

An old school friend has children attending there. Bratty cohort with a penchant for drugs and bullying teachers is what I heard from her.

I appreciate your points about adding cohort size, bursary and curriculum offerings into the mix as I also noted that King’s Wimbledon offers both A levels and IB.

Maybe it could be argued that Sevenoaks is doing itself a diservice - results wise, by only offering IB if pupils are better suited to Alevel?

Less useful is your gripe reference. I'm simply commenting on the data at hand. Let's keep it that way.

I appreciate your points about boarding fees vs day fees. I feel more important is having a common data point for comparison point across schools.

Your comment about Ardingly is also valid- see my previous post.

Less useful are your personal accusations. Once again, this has always been about looking at the data - let's keep it that way.

Offering the IB is expensive and offering it extremely well plus co curricular plus some international uni focus is what this school has chosen to do. It does what it says very well on the tin.
It is in a grammar school area so those high achievers from middle class families locally who do not want to pay up go there instead. There are excellent grammars in Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and now also Sevenoaks.
This will likely have been a specific strategy decision.
Sevenoaks is not a huge endowment school like Eton/Harrow/Winchester so they cannot just magic up scholarships without affecting bursaries. So if they want to offer bursaries and excellent education to those willing to pay a price for it, that is what they are going to do.

If a student is better suited to A levels, why would you pick an IB school?? We had several offers from London day schools and boarding schools that offer A levels but picked Sevenoaks specifically for the IB. Why would they give up on such a strong offering? And they are brilliant at preparing all levels/types of students (in a large cohort!) to get a very very decent average score without kicking out any students after GCSEs (which is what most schools at the top of the leagues tend to do). I really can't see your point. I would also rather they put the scholarship money into the bursary fund than pay it out. I know students there who have given up 50% scholarship offers and those who have given up grammar places, so they must all be picking Sevenoaks for a reason and I honestly don't see any standards slipping.

I've noticed an increasing number of defensive posts, some with personal digs or conjecture about my personal circumstances and reasoning, that lack any reference to actual data.

Just to be clear: if a comment doesn’t contribute constructively to the discussion or engage with the data, I won’t be responding.

It might be worth taking a step back and considering the wider audience reading this thread, such as prospective parents. Or people like me who are simply curious and like to look at real numbers and not go by polished collateral, hearsay, thoughts or feelings.

The tone and content of your replies might shape how they perceive those with actual links to the area or school.

With that in mind, I’m going to step away from this thread for a couple of weeks and may return around GCSE results day to pick things up again.

In the meantime, I’m also interested in the recent exam results from Royal High School and Brighton College and plan to start similar threads on those. For the data-minded among us, I’d love to hear if any other schools are worth a look.

Enjoy the sun everyone!

Data driven analysis is always useful - the key is you have to look at all of it and make sure that you are actually comparing like with like and not just the bits that suit your proposition, otherwise your analysis is biased.

OP, if you do want a facts-based analysis on the IB, you need to look at schools that offer the IB to a large cohort (200+). There are none in the UK and that's why a lot of us have said your data analysis is flawed. Maybe you should look at Asian and American schools for the data?

Hopefully this list can help: https://ib-schools.com/league-tables/global-top-ib-schools

But as you can see the second largest cohort in there is 150+ students after Sevenoaks school. Wouldn't you say that the hard numbers (average IB score against cohort numbers) is actually pretty impressive?

That is quite interesting @Serventip that they do not kick anyone out after GCSE. That is quite something. Even the grammars have minimum grade requirements for GCSE. I suppose that also adds to the picture of a progressive international type school.

This. My school, not far from Sevenoaks, was regularly in the top 10 state schools in the country. As are most of the grammars around there. In a 'bad' year one might drop to the horrors of only being in the top 20 in the country.
In practical terms though that might have meant that one person had a heavy period, or hay fever or something, on that one exam day and didn't perform quite as well as expected. All those schools, all those kids are performing at such a ridiculously high level that the marginal gains or losses one might make really are marginal.