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 agree, those results are very poor. My DS did his GCSEs in the summer just gone, outstanding all boys non-selective state school with varied catchment. 78% got English at grade 5+ and similar for maths.

78% is fairly high for a comp though. What is your LA average %? Thats the key. It’s likely one school gathers all the best performing dc. I doubt any LA average is 78%. It’s presumably an outlier.

Absence was a big issue in the re-sit classes and even when some of them came the effort levels were low and there was a kind of "I can't" attitude. Don't know how that would compare to a school, but certainly there was a lot of negativity among students. As regards non native speakers I only had 2-3, and one in particular had terrible English, and still managed to pass! So for me the bar is set pretty low, and it's very worrying that pupils are barely scraping through.