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.

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.

Yes. Sometimes it feels like trying to do an office job, but being unable to get your work done because you have to spend 4 or 5 hours a day in a room with 30 kids! I hate the fact that lessons sometimes feel like they are getting in the way of me getting my work done, when really it's the other way around. It was not like this early in my career (I've been a teacher for 30 years). The amount of admin is ridiculous.

Our local comp it's 35.3% which is below local average and national average 42%.
That's why we send one kid to independent school and another to state boarding grammar. One of our friends at the local comp has had no science teacher for 3 years just worksheets. No one likes the headmaster (previous head was fab). And sport is dire..

There is a state comp 30mins away in the next county that scores 44% with similar demographics so it can be done.. just not at our local school..

There are no P8 scores for last year or this year.
They didn't sit Y6 sats.

My dd, too.
Her confidence in her abilities was totally shot.
We got her a tutor for English language and - against the wishes of the school - she sat the Foundation maths paper (she needed a 4 for her post 16 course)
She got a 6 and a 5 respectively.
It's hard enough going onto post 16 courses - which are a big jump up from gcses - without sitting resits at the same time.
I'm aware that dd is lucky we could afford the tutor and that, as a parent, I fought the school wrt which maths paper she sat. At one point, I told them I'd pay for her to sit the lower paper!
It's so tough for these kids, and all some schools seem to care about is their progress data with the ever present spectre of ofsted in the wings

Is this to me? That's not what I think. I'm just looking at which school to apply for and was surprised that there's not really a difference between the two, based on grades, and both sounded poor to me. I couldn't think of a reason for this as one is in a decent market town and one is in a Cotswold town. I would expect the influence of grammar to be bigger in other towns closer to them. That was my starting position. Kind of, I can't work out why the two schools here are both poor performing and both as bad as each other! Based on grades.

You’re basically right when you say it’s economic status as in Broadoak the parents are 3rd generation unemployed and many of the kids come in with no aspirations and appalling behaviour. However, it’s a school that has outstanding SEN provision and excellent provision for the top sets do actually, if you are capable of 7-9 you will get it. It’s not quite as straightforward as it seems, though. Whilst technically it is in Trafford, it’s actually a good distance away from the grammars and has no public transport. It’s effectively in a self-contained very small town. That means the more affluent families know nothing about it other than the reputation it had 20 years ago and the reputation the town has now (as being very rough). They don’t want to take the risk with their kids because they can’t get there independently so they send them to other state schools, some of which are far worse than Broadoak. My point, I suppose, is that you can’t judge all the problems on paper- you need to know the area and the school.

OP, are you in Kent or Bucks? Because you talk about grammar schools. The grammar schools are unusual option afaik.

my understanding is that the divide between avg achievement at comps & grammar schools in Kent is stark but also widely known, I wouldn't expect OP to be surprised if she's lived in a Kent market town for a long time.

I lived almost 20 yrs in a market town with underachieving comp (not Kent or Bucks, no grammars here). Every year the comp had some very high achievers. The statistics are averages not about what will happen to an individual child's results.

Slightly O/T but I 5hink the next couple of years with no P8 scores will either completely undermine SATs as Secondary schools can be judged without the data... or reinforce the need for them. They are far fro. Perfect (or more accurately the way Primary Schools obsess with them to the detriment of pupils) but overall we do all want to know the teaching at Secondary is effective

My children went to a comprehensive in a non grammar school area. Considered Cinderella school in area. Has very high PP and avoided by many. Headline maths / English bit higher than ops but similar and doesn't tell the full story. Pupils do tend to get what they need for next steps. School does functional skills maths/ English alongside gcse for some children. My children got high level gcses and effort put into all children whatever their starting points. PP money benefited all children at the school concerning enrichment. PP so high absolutely no stigma.
Those who avoided the school look surprised at how happy my children were there and how well they did. They both look back fondly (one at sixth-form and other at University).
Look beyond Headline figures...

I feel at a loss with all this.

DD is year 5 and we have done the rounds of local secondary schools. We have 4 grammar schools and one religious secondary school near by. So they take the top students.
DD is not grammar school material and we wouldn't ever force that on her as we know it would not be the place for her.
However the surrounding secondary schools are not great result wise ... progress 8s are all below average. I feel like I need a degree to be able to interpret the results! And I work in a secondary school!!! (Non teaching)

DD will need support in secondary as she needs it now in primary and is still behind. And totally agree with previous poster who said about teachers moving on without students fully grasping something!!!

We do try and do stuff with DD but it's a massive battle (she has suspected adhd) we have just about got her to do spellings of an evening. DH wants her to have a tutor but there is no way we will get her to one and one coming to us will just be a waste of money. She will fight it.

It's all so frustrating. Schools just don't seem to work for a lot of kids these days yet nothing ever changes!

@Monvelo Because they don’t have enough dc who are high achieving. You need to look at prior achievement. How many are low, middle and high achievers? I’m in a grammar County and dc in the secondaries still are around 30% high achieving in the secondary schools! Of course these dc do well and aren’t much different to 1/4 of the grammar dc. However a few secondary schools here aren’t great but they still get dc because dc can walk to them! They do serve their community, but not as well as they should. Other areas have grammars too.

So when looking at schools, headline figures tell you little. The catchment families, staff retention, quality of teaching, interest in learning by pupils, suitable curriculum, ambition, and prior attainment all make a huge difference.

For anyone whose dc are struggling academically, look at the progress and attainment of lower achievers and SEN numbers. This tells you how well, or otherwise, dc might do. Ofsted usually comment on Sen provision too.

@leakycauldron you are in a really similar situation to us! I worry for dyslexic dd, she loves school and loves learning but is behind, particularly on maths. She could be lost in a big school, fall in with low achieving or be impacted by disruptive behaviour. Getting her to do 'extra' to support at home is a massive battle and she's not willing to go to a tutor regularly.

@lljkk no a different county

There are apparently 1000 grammar school places in the county but say 50% are filled by out of country children. Was trying to work out what percentage from here go to grammar but can't.

Schools have lists of 'daily readers', who are often managed by diverting LSAs from their 1:1s as practically, finding time to listen to children read is tricky (my Y3 class had about 10-12).

As a 6th former I volunteered as part of General Studies to help at my old school, and always read regularly with a boy in Year 6; beginning of the term he'd get stuck on words like 'the' and read two or three, 6 to 8-word pages in a session. By end of half term he'd read half the book, mostly fluently. Holidays happened, he was back to (almost) square one.

Teachers can not do everything! We teach and re-teach phonics but unless they are embedded by regularly reading, the knowledge will fade. Parent involvement is critical and that is why children from families that value education will always do better.

I was thinking the same thing.....

Would it be ok for people on this thread to suggest that you home educate your child instead as we're concerned about an impending "avalanche of illiterate school children" ?
( not sure if avalanche was the word used on the other thread, but it was something like that).

You can’t look at the progress by prior attainment on the current set of results as they didn’t sit SATs so no prior attainment was recorded.

@Devonshiregal I agree with the poster who said not reading is an issue. Children need to read regularly throughout primary as it really is the key to success. What's more, it's free (if you have a local library). Parents and children just don't anymore. Often parents don't model reading at home either. Reading is so much more than decoding.

That’s very poor for the school. I know the local state secondary here is considered academically well above average but I’ve just googled it to compare and 76% of students received a grade 5 or above in both English and Maths.

There's just no value placed on education by many kids and their parents. There's always an excuse for why the child is performing poorly. No personal responsibility either by child or parents.

I was taught to read before I went to school by my mum. That gave me such a head start I think. She also used to buy me those workbooks from Smiths and make me do them. I hated it at the time but now I look back and I am so bloody grateful for her efforts. I got into a good school (grammar type school but not) and thrived. I grew up on a rough council estate in Bradford so all my peers at the time just didn't achieve anything. My mum worked all hours as a nurse as well so she wasn't a sahm with time on her hands, she made time. My education was important to her.

When I see schools on television, it doesn't surprise me that nobody learns anything.

@noblegiraffe There’s previous info. It’s getting a feel for the pupil make up. Info for 22/23 and 23/24 is there. It’s not going to markedly change.

Why not? You're looking at before Covid and before Brexit, before the explosion in the cost of living and before the harshest changes to the benefits system. The Admissions Code has changed since then, entire demographics in many schools have changed dramatically with population movements, every school will have at least consulted on their Admissions policies and changed them in that time, the staff, facilities, structure, income, everything has changed - a 16-18 year old leaving school before all of that is a completely different child living in a completely different place to one now.

Kent and Bucks are not the only counties with grammar schools. There are some grammar schools in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Essex, Devon and a few others I think.

@MagicLoop Derailing a bit but Bucks operates the 11 plus test for all dc unless dc are withdrawn. The grammars are 13 in number and are county wide. Devon has a handful of grammars and there’s no county test for all dc. Some grammars usually means super selective grammars like Colyton in Devon. So not the same.