Shocked only 35% of kids in town get grade 5 English & maths GCSEs [Title edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

[Monvelo]

What the title says!

We are making secondary choices at the moment and there is no local school option that gets even as much as 40% of kids gaining grade 5 or above in English and maths. My understanding is that's a grade C. Why are the results so low?! Would welcome thoughts.

This is a market town. The 2 schools in question are rated Ofsted good. The progress 8 scores are not currently provided. Some kids do go off to grammar, but my old school is closer to grammars and has a much higher pass rate.

I thought a grade 5 was a high c low b.

Those are not great results. You're not being unreasonable. I would be uncomfortable choosing a school with those results.

This. A 4 is a low C and counts as a pass.

A frightening proportion don't even achieve 4s.

A grade 4 is a C. Grade 5 is high C/low B

some children are not capable of that. Some would be more suited to taking functional skills. It all depends on the intake of the school.

the figure you need to see is their progress figure. This can be broken down also by ability group.

eg a school who gets kids who scored low in their sats to a Grade 4 GCSE has a good progress figure.
a school who gets kids who have scored high in their sats to a Grade 5 is not fulfilling their potential.

work out what group your child is in & see how those children do.

I assume there are no recent progress figures due to the fact that Sats were cancelled due to covid. In which case you need to look at previous years figures. The kids who took their GCSEs the last year or so were massively affected by covid in their education.

The national rate was 45% last year of gaining grade 5 in both English and Maths, so this is below average.

They don't give a progress figure currently. I think they can't calculate it for the Covid impacted years. But it was negative before.

National average for that Statistic is about 45%. There should also be statistics for percentage getting 4+ for English and Maths.

You can see the Progress scores for previous years still.
What are the local Primary school numbers like?

I am an English teacher, and have taught GCSE English resits too. A lot of kids fall behind early - and don't master the basics of writing and reading at Primary. It then just builds and builds and builds and they get more and more confused as the years roll on. I managed to get 40 percent (sounds low but it's actually above average) of my re-sitters to pass - but many resit year after year and are stuck in a loop. The main issue I find is that none of them read.

None of them read? Like this is the issue?

As if it isn’t the fact the school system is set up in such a way that kids who don’t grasp something in reception at age 4 are then ‘left behind’ and are essentially just trailing along until the exams they inevitably fail at 15?

but no. The issue is they don’t read. If they would read frigging lord of the rings perhaps they’d magically understand the stuff they get tested on despite not having been taught it.

and yes I say they haven’t been taught it because just because you explain something to someone, doesn’t mean they actually get it. And if you move on before they get it, you haven’t actually taught them. And that’s a school system failure.

I'm sorry but reading this leaves me feeling utterly aghast.

Just last week there was a thread ripping apart home education with many posters stating the only way to get a full and comprehensive education is state school. And we're seeing evidence that despite full time school from the age of 4/5, a lot of children are not reading let alone achieving maths and English GCSEs?

It's not rocket science to come to the conclusion that state education is not even up to the basic standard all children deserve. School takes up a significant part of their childhood, what a waste of time for some children. Of course no overhaul of the system will ever happen and children will continue to fail.

DS took his GCSEs last summer. His was the Year 6 who had their SATs cancelled, who didn’t finish primary school, started secondary school with social distancing and were locked down again a term later. Then in year 8 a lot of schools clissd again because of RAAC. Bearing this is mind, you can see that some kids may not have fulfilled their potential, particularly where they may also have had a difficult home life, no support out of school or parents that were ill (or even died) or unable to help them for other reasons.

Hopefully the poor results you’re seeing for recent years will be an anomaly. One of the episodes of the recent series of Educating Yorkshire (Episode 3 or 4) focusses on Y11 mocks. In that episode, the Headteacher Mr Burton has a lot to say about how badly the GCSE class of 2025 were affected by the lockdowns.

GCSEs are designed so that, across the whole country, only around 60% will pass English and Maths at Grade 4. (The level 2 qualification)

A Grade 1-3 is a Level 1 qualification.

In secondary schools, with the increase in teacher accountability and workload, rigorous attention to methodology, knowledge of data, interventions to support vulnerable and disadvantaged students, loads of great online resources, and expectations that lessons be more engaging and accessible than ever, you'd think that pass rates would be increasing.

The fact that they are not increasing is down to a complex variety of societal factors which schools cannot solve, plus chronic underfunding, a massive crisis in teacher recruitment and retention and a reduction in support staff.

Plus the fact that this kind of GCSE pass rate is a feature, not a bug. A significant number of students are always going to fail.

Arguably we should ditch GCSEs altogether. Lots of countries do not have high-stakes external exams until A Level age.

That's interesting, thanks. So the local schools are sub par.

Do you know the 4+ pass rates for English and Maths separately?

I've put the thread title the wrong way round, ONLY 35 percent get the English and maths grades.

Yes but you've only stated the grade 5 rate. Not grade 4 which is what the pp is talking about OP.

Because we refuse to accept that some kids, particularly around that age are not suited to the classroom and need to be out doing functional and practical skills and then take those exams later

We're wedded to the one size fits all and look with disdain at the idea of grammars, technical colleges etc of the 60s and think its beneath us because it separates children out from each other. Well yes, because we are all different.

This is the result of that. Some kids need to be out working and training.

Looking at my kids primary, average score reading is 107 and maths 104 - so they go from slightly above average to only 35% getting English and maths 5.

I can't find this info.

Ah ha, found that 60% get grades 4+ English and maths combined

Pass rates won’t increase, by design. There is no set skills criteria that = a grade at GCSE. A percentage of students will get below a 4 and that will be relatively constant every year.

So, OP, that's about national average then.