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.

There are no progress scores from last year or for this, because there are no KS2 SATS results from the corresponding years to compare GCSE results to. It's just attainment.

This is the wrong statistic for the question you asked. Poster is referring to grade 4 and above. A different poster mentioned national average is 45% for grade 5 and above.
However many excuses/reasons people give relating to Covid/sats/grade boundaries, the fact is (especially if you’ve personally worked with the exam papers) that it’s quite shocking that only 45% of students who have been in the education system full time for 12 years are getting a grade 5 in maths and English.
And this isn’t something new at all, it’s a long standing problem. Sadly the previous government’s solution was to raise targets/introduce more testing, rather than tackle whatever the actual problem is.

I sort of knew, but what if everyone answered 80% of all the maths questions right? How would you bell curves that??

Why can't we have absolute grades in percentage terms? Papers aren't really that variable year on year, so that argument is mute.

Yes this is what confuses me, it's impossible for all children to pass.

I think in the US they have thr HS diploma then SATs are an optional extra for the brighter kids (?), I do think if you can do pythagorus/write a soliloquoy/whatever you should be awarded a pass and then maybe higher grades available for the top %

I'm still unclear why there is such a big difference in Grade 5+ English and maths scores between areas though. I could understand it more if there was way a good school and a bad school in the area, but the schools here are similar attainment to each other. I could understand it if it was the grammar effect, but schools in other towns impacted similarly by kids heading to grammar, the secondary schools have much better attainment. I could also understand it more if the demographic here was different. It feels to me like it's just a random pocket of poor secondary schools with no real explanation and nothing that parents or kids can do about it.

I'm glad I posted though as now know many kids must get grade 4 and that's equivalent to a C. So it's not as bad as my first impression.

Because GCSEs are designed to fail maybe 30% of children. If one year do better, the pass mark is adjusted to make sure they still fail. Then kids are told they haven't reached the required standard to continue education and they must keep resitting the qualification they failed. That was rigged for them to fail.

Why there isn't a basic functional level 2 English/maths qualification at KS4 to sweep up most of those who won't pass GCSE is beyond me.

Sadly, I think it is much more to do with lack of parental involvement. Parents that are engaged in their kids learning from a very young age, who read to them stories every day and night, play games with counting and learning letters, sit with them every evening and help them learn to read until they can read, read in front of them, give and receive books as presents and valued possessions.

Get their kids to use maths in everyday environment such as cooking, shopping and playing. Help with homework.

Don't let them be on screens every day.
Encourage them to watch educational programmes.

This all has much more impact than what a teacher can teach thirty kids in one room.

If parents value education and are engaged with their kid's learning then children are much more likely to do well.

My experience was that yes, now there are a whole layer of "managers" in teaching, who actually actively hinder the work of the classroom teacher. Added to that all admin support has been removed, so a lot of time is spent on that. Then there's the expectation of catering to all the different special needs - again - an extra layer of work. But the biggest issue is behaviour. I found that in FE colleges behavior was appalling. Even though I tried to implement discipline (like no phones for example), the college wouldn't support that, so I had no back up. But when we talk about literacy it comes down to this basic skills somehow not having been acquired at the earlier age of primary school. Most of my students would use poor vocabulary, just words like "big" or "amazing" and that seriously limits the amount of marks you can get, especially if you add to that the lack of critical thinking, which is required to access the 7+ grades.

💯.

I actually was not a strong reader at primary. My primary school also didn't help by focusing almost exclusively on art projects at the expense of numeracy and literacy. For maths I had some tutoring but for English my father sat with me for hours and I read aloud until my reading improved. I recall family holidays where my siblings and cousins were playing and at times I stayed back reading with my father. It paid off and I came to enjoy reading, so I do think if parents can read with their kids it makes a big difference.

I was looking at these scores for a couple of local authorities close to me.

I came across Broadoak in Trafford. Trafford has a grammar school system that takes off all the best students before you start and there's been some issues in recent years from parents who haven't passed the 11+, who have then applied for other schools in Trafford but failed to get a place because, everywhere is so over subscribed, being allocated Broadoak. It's managed to get itself the reputation as the school you REALLY didn't want to allocated in this situation.

It gets 28.3% Grade 5 or above in English and Maths. (Broken down by sex boys do better with 30.4% compared to the girls 26.3%)

This really doesn't tell the whole story though. It has a rate of 27.2% persistent absence, 22.71% needing SEN support, 19.8% whose first language isn't English and 52.38% eligible for school dinners.

And looking further, when you look at just those classified as deprived, only 8.2% get grade 5 or above. Strikingly though when you look at just those with English as an additional language 64.5% get grade 5 or above.

In other words the defining factor was effectively economic status at Broadoak.

You then compare with the top grammar schools in Trafford, Alty Girls and Alty Boys. The girls has 99.5% Grade 5 and above and the boys 98%. Persistent absence - 10.9% and 14.3%, SEN support 5.2% and 7.6%, English as an additional language 25.4% and 48.8% and free school meal provision 6.28% and 5.72% respectively for each for girls and boys schools.

100% of the deprived kids at both the girls and boys grammars get grade 5 and above.

The contrast in the outcomes for those on free school meals in Trafford is absolutely shocking - more so than simply the headline figure that Broadoak seems to show with only 28.3% getting the Grade 5 or above. It's pretty much if you are on free school meals in Trafford if you fail the 11+ what actually is the point in even turning up for school at Broadoak??? It's difficult to argue to the contrary looking at the figures. It is truly appalling.

This pattern is repeated in areas where there aren't grammars schools, albeit it to a slightly less significant degree (though not much better)

GCSEs really are doing nothing for these kids apart from frame them as failures and the insistent on everyone doing them doesn't help these kids and society as a whole. They genuinely would be better not sitting the exams and instead being given practical training from a young age. When people talk about wanting to cut benefits etc if you aren't looking at the figures here, then you aren't doing your fucking job. Arguably we should be looking at a wholesale rethink of the entire educational system. No wonder we have huge rates of depression and stress in young people.

My point being, that not only should you be looking at the headline numbers but you should also really look at some of the other details in the government data.

This.

Thanks for your post @RedToothBrush

Here in my market town the schools stats are, 23% / 22% have free school meals, persistent absence is 33% / 31%, EHCP 2% / 5.5%, Sen support 11% /10%, first language not English 7%/2%.

Parental involvement is the key. I know people who say they have not read a book since leaving school, who are proud that they "can't do maths" when it's simple arithmetic and percentages rather than vector calculus and statistics, this rubs off on the children, so it doesn't matter if they've got brilliant teachers.

GCSE English Language and Maths are both extremely hard as well IMO. Harder than any other subject.

You can have a perfectly acceptable level of maths and English required for almost any administrative or managerial job and still get 4/5 in GCSE. The most relevant maths skills for any non-maths based career are covered by year 8 IMO.

It's possible the schools find it hard to recruit and retain teachers. What are house prices like locally? What's the employment situation like?

It's not all of the kids who get good passes at GCSE - the progress measures don't include those who were new to country, recently moved home, privately educated, home educated or withdrawn from SATs at KS2. Any of those could have got a slew of grade 9s but they wouldn't be shown in P8 because the baseline SATs average scaled score doesn't exist.

Attainment figures would be helpful, along with an indication of how many students were new to English on entry, year of entry, have SEND needs (not just EHCP), etc.

The other thing to bear in mind is that KS2 SATs are run by schools. And because the primaries are judged on the basis of progress measured at KS1 to KS2, some schools can be a little, um, overly helpful in ensuring that all the children get over 100.

As a result, you could be looking at one school that took the majority of their intake from a couple of primaries where they had that additional influence, then another where their secondary school CAT4 assessments more or less match the primary school data instead of being completely different. Add into that whether one uses catchments that take in wealthier. higher attaining, secure families and the other takes in everybody else, whether one has 10% EAL and the other 65% (so their progress is measured on the basis of a smaller number of students, meaning that any issues, such as bereavement, undiagnosed SEND, etc, happening to single students has a greater effect proportionately upon the percentages, etc, etc) - whilst there also happens to be a significant proportion going to a couple of independent schools or gain places out of area at grammars or faithbased schools, taking out potentially higher achievers.

The measures are supposed to enable comparison, but there are so many variables because we are dealing with people, not cardboard cutouts.

@ForCraftyWriter The previous government brought in that “cure all” phonics. Yet still we have reading problems. Of course dc don’t read to gain vocal and spelling skills. They look at video games and on line content. It’s a decent enough primary curriculum but dc would rather do something else that involves minimal reading. They see school as a chore.

I rather agree that some secondary schools aren’t fit for purpose but most are ok. They certainly have high expectations. Yorkshire school is getting its excuses lined up! Covid will be mentioned for another 15 years at least. We just make excuses in this country while other countries move on.

Grade 4 is a pass.
The statistics showing pupils getting a 5 for both English and Maths aren't very helpful.

Around 30% will fail English and 30% will fail maths. Then you get all the kids who get a 4 for at least one even if they get 5 or above for the other.

There will be a big difference to the 'pass both at grade 5+' score and the 'pass both at grade 4+' score. It is actually the latter which is more important. It is also very important you know which one you are looking at.

That said, my 1 of 2 comps in my 'nice' market town in non grammar area got 48% both getting 5+.

Though I think the 4+ rate is more important.

On the gov website you can look at 'results over time' which give you the grade 4+ figures. For my 2 local schools they are in the 70%s, at least 20% higher than the 5+ figures.

Why, why, why is this allowed?
Can anyone explain the reasoning as to why the goal posts must be changed every year to ensure 30% of children fail?

Parents should be out protesting about this.

I have a borderline maths pass son about to take GCSE's in 6 months and I feel hopeless that all the extra work he is doing (for two years now) could just be fruitless. His maths isn't that bad but the rule stated here will mean he is pretty much destined to fail.

That's not quite true. They aren't moving the goalposts because ability/attainment of cohorts doesn't change much year on year.

To check the goalposts (ie pass line) are in a consistent place, they look at y6 sats but also 'national reference tests'. My understanding us that NRT are a set of the same maths&English tests sat in secret by a selection of y11s each year. If a cohort is better performing this is taken into account when setting the pass lines.

They can't just use a fixed score as you can't set exams to be exactly the same difficulty year on year.

It reads like you (incorrectly) believe that schools are the sole influencing factor on what grades are achieved.

What's the historic Progress 8 for the school?

When my dc took GCSEs the pass rate (grade c or above) was 70% at the best state school, typically around 50% at most city schools, it was 35% at dd1’s school and 68% at dd2’s. As grad 5 is higher than c it sounds about right. Many dc are not capable of higher or choose not to apply themselves unfortunately plus actually getting parents to ensure dc attend gets harder too (nothing to do with school refusal, it’s simply they don’t bother installing the need to attend school in their dc and sometimes want them at home to watch younger siblings in personal experience)

100% of the deprived kids at both the girls and boys grammars get grade 5 and above these children are in a selective grammar, so passed the 11+? If from deprived families potentially passed with no paid-for tutoring. The grammar school would be truly failing if those kids did not achieve a 5 unless something major happened.

Are you pro-grammar or pro-comprehensive?