Nearest Primary is crappy

[WobblyPig]

We are really stuck. Our nearest primary is truely appalling and we have no chance of getting into any other. We can't move at the moment and I have to work 3 days a week so home ed could be difficult.
Private would be a very big stretch for us. Are there any ideas I haven't explored?

Which school is it? . Are you in the Battle roads? I have friends at The P which is doing OK and you'd get into from Battle.

I thought that titchy - but the P is an ok school so thats why I thought it must be MA - [another nosey emoticon].

High proportion of non-speaking English children is NOT a sign of a bad school. This is why league tables are so fucking wrong!

Indeed MrsMattie - my ds prep school class has 10/15 as English as a second language and noone worries about it there...

grumpyyoungfogey, yes, it was pretty crappy actually!

i don't think the OP, or myself, are being racist just because we are concerned for our children's education

if they are in a class where the vast majority do not speak English then surely that means the teacher has got to spend a lot more time with those children, and thus our children may lose out?

I don't give a toss where the other kids in my child's class come from, but I do worry if he is being left out because the teacher can only focus on those children who need so much extra support.

In fact, I think it beggars belief that people bring their children up without teaching them to speak the language of whatever country they live in- for their own sake as much as anything else
If I moved to another country that's one of the first things I would do!

My DS's state primary has an Outstanding Ofsted, a dynamic and fabulous headteacher and, if you are going to pay attention to the dreaded leagfye tables, it's 'Valuw Added' rating is very high, mainly because it takes children wity little English at reception and turns out 11 yr olds with standards much higher than the national average. It's called good teaching!

I appreciate your local school may be crap, WobblyPig, but it just makes me mad qwhen people cite 'loads of ESOL kids' as a reason for a school being rubbish.

domesticextremist is right- nobody complains about the Saudi diplomats kids at the posh prep school, but the Bangladeshi kids from the council estate make a school crap....Grrrrrr!

and there is a big difference between having english as a second language, and not even speaking a word of it when you start school!

As a teacher I'd say that sometimes the so-called 'crappy' schools actually offer a better experience than the complacent 'good' ones in an area.

It doesn't matter that a high proportion of children don't speak English on entry to the school, what matters is whether or not that is the cae X years later and how the teachers take account of this in their planning and teaching. I've always had lots of non-English speakers join my classes (Y5/6 inner London 'crappy' school) and apart from occasional home language support offered by a teaching/billingual assistant I've not done anything very different to what I would have done were my whole class fluent in English. Children do pick up the language very quickly when they're immersed in it unless they have underlying special needs which they would also have in their home language. One year I had 7 children from non-English-speaking countries join my Y5 class. They represented a quarter of the class in terms of numbers and, one year later when they took the NC tests (aka SATs) they all gained a level 4 in reading and writing which is the national expectation for 11 year olds. As I don't speak Tamil, Twi, Yoruba, French, Polish, Latvian or anything other than English I'm not much use in other languages so I get on with what I'm there to do which is to teach a whole class, not to teach a handful of children to speak English.

If your son is going into Reception then I think it's unlikely that having lots of non-English-speaking children will be a problem. The teacher will be teaching the whole class to read and write using phonics so there will be plenty of opportunities for the other children to pick up the language without it taking attention away from your son.

I would advise against looking at KS2 results when choosing a school as they don't tell you what you need to know, by their very nature they provide a snapshot of the performance of a particular cohort on a particular day in May on a particular year. OFSTED reports aren't much use either as they are data-based and whilst schools with a 'good' intake need to do very little to impress OFSTED those schools with a more challenging intake have to jump through all sorts of hoops to ensure their achievements are given the credit they deserve e.g. if you live in an area of high mobility and pupils are not in the UK education system at the end of Y2 then even if they get a level 4 at the end of KS2 (Y6) it will not count in the value added score. Fair? No. A good way to help parents judge a school? Almost certainly not.

Go and see the 'crappy' school and ask them about the things that worry you. Meet with the head of foundation stage and ask how they ensure that all children are catered for. Ask the Head if you can see the school action plan, contact some governors, talk to some parents of current Reception children, speak to the Y6 pupils and ask what they think about their school.

Once upon time when there were no NC tests, league tables or OFSTED reports parents had to use different criteria for choosing a school... I'd go back to those methods if I were you. In fact I did just that when it came to applying for my own DD to start Reception which she has just done - she's at the local 'crappy' school and it's brilliant; she's learnt to read and write in sentences since September and because of the school's intake she gets a lot more attention that she would at the more middle class school that I now work at because at her school she stands out and is being pushed, at my school she'd just be another bright 5-year-old.

Agree with SE13Mummy.
By far the most able kids in my ds yr1 class are those with ESOL, honestly there are three amazing children who are streaks ahead of everyone else in reading. Rather than looking at children as "not speaking English", why not admire them as bilingual?
Also things change very quickly. Our local school was "crappy" and people said to me "oh nobody goes there" (despite the fact that I'd see hundreds of kids going in and out). We looked round it, liked it and decided to put our faith in our judgment rather than sats. It's now "good with outstanding features", the head is mentoring other schools as it's such a beacon and it's got exception value added scores. This is all in 5 years. More importantly, it's lovely and ds v happy.

I think it is great that you have positive experiences but if I don't like a school ; it has received criticism on which it has apparently been slow to act and does not appear to have good results I think I am reasonable to be concerned. What other criteria could I use? That is a serious question. I am aware of the limitations of ofsted and the relevance of intake on results but this school appears to get fails chiildren as they progress through the school or so it appears.
We are 500m from this school and not within any of the 'quoted previous catchments of the other schools.

By the way for people who know the area I would very happy either P or HT or G but concerned as year on year quoted catchments appear to exclude us.

Whilst I appreciate that you can teach a lot a home it seems unfair on a child to go to school 5 days a week and then be subjected to more at home.

WP, arrange an appointment with the Head and ask him/her why the school has been so slow to act on advice. The current KS2 results are not worth looking at as the school will change enormously over the next 6 years - the progress made in the Foundation Stage (nursery & Reception) would be more interesting to prospective parents as this will give you an idea of how the school is addressing things at the lower end of the school.

As I said in my previous post, "Go and see the 'crappy' school and ask them about the things that worry you. Meet with the head of foundation stage and ask how they ensure that all children are catered for. Ask the Head if you can see the school action plan, contact some governors, talk to some parents of current Reception children, speak to the Y6 pupils and ask what they think about their school."

I think visiting more than once, hanging around at the beginning/end of day, having a peek at lunchtime etc. will give you an idea of how the school is being run. When I visited our local crappy school I deliberately turned up just before lunchtime because I wanted to see how children moved around the school, the state the rooms were left in at lunchtime and whether or not they were taught right up to lunchtime.

Thanks that is very good advice ; done some of the hanging around things already. I was thinking about that last night re: the head.Iwould love to be reassured .

Go for it WP, the Heads and teachers I know in the 'crappy' schools would often love to have the opportunity to reassure prospective parents that their school is not the nightmare that local gossip suggests. Take a list of questions/concerns with you and go through them but I'd also ask for the Head's e-mail address so you can seek clarification later if you need it.

Wobbly, if you have put HT, P & G down as your choices, I wouldn't rule out getting a place at one of those. If you'd applied last year, you would have got into both HT & G. G went up to 3.5km away so surely you would have got a place. And HT in second round went up to 2k away.

Wo9bblyPig- are you sure you're not panicking unnecessarily? MA school does not sound crappy AT ALL from reading the ofsted report. In fact it sounds like it has got a lot right in terms of caring for its pupils, good behaviour, being welcoming and friendly, engaging with parents and the wider community. It may not be the most academic school on the block yet but it is at least satsfactory in every respect and described in the report as a "haven" for every pupil, with an effective development plan for improving academically and a new senior management team. In short, it sounds like a lovely caring school that could well be on the up academically. While I can totally understand that other schools in the area are better in terms of results and that people prefer to go with the schools they have heard are great from friends etc, I honestly don't understand at all why this would be an over my dead body school, particularly if you went for a "suck it and see" approach, with a view to moving your child if there were problems.

Have ofsted got it really wrong? How do you know? Are you absolutely sure you are not setting too much store by what others say? Local views about a school may easily be outdated or just based on plain old prejudice. This sounds like a school that does well by its pupils, which would be well worth looking round again, if you ask me. Apologies if MA is not the school in question or if you have already seen the school many times and don't recognise the place as the one described by ofsted at all! (I know this can happen from my trek round seconbdaries...)

I cant believe you wouldnt get into G as well - isnt all the CWood action now going to Sgate anyway where it used to go to G?

Tbh though if you're not happy then you just have to move. You're lucky to have the option - all the people on the High Path cant.

My reading of the ofsted is no where near as positive as yours. As someone who went to a very mediocre couple of schools myself I have always made it a priority to send my children to the best I could. Academia is not everything by any means but I cannot see how anyone could feel ' happy' about sending their child there. I am certainly more advantaged than many people on the estate but still moving is financially difficult for me. I do see what comes in and out of the school and I am not happy with it so far.
I have to explore the options including a couple posted here.

Was just re-reading the ofsted. Standards are below that expected ay entry and end of year 2 and year 6 with particular problems in writing and literacy. When reading ofsteds in the area I haven't read one where the pastoral care is poor so this isn't much of a discriminator.
It is an old( er) ofsted so an up-to-date one may be better - or worse.
The ofsted seems to imply that the results are below-standard as a result of the teaching .

Depending on just how old the OFSTED report is it may be more misleading than usual - the inspection focus keeps changing as has the style of inspection. Be wary of using OFSTED reports to compare schools unless they were written during the same term.

Also, if standards are below the national expected level and remain so at Y2 it doesn't actually give that much in the way of useful information. It would be far more worrying for standards to be above average upon entry but below average by Y2.

Ok. Your decision of course. I think it sounds like a school with some real strengths but if you have a gut feeling of no way on earth you are unlikely to change your mind, I think.

I am not immovable, but if the results are below standard throughout the school what can I attribute that to? Is that poor teaching or not? If yes - surely I can't consider it? If not then what should I make of it? This is not rhetoric I am genuinely confused as to why this school appears to perform poorly compared to surrounding schools.

Sorry sister borrowed my mumsnet login but posted under another name and I forget to change back. The FROSTYFIGLEAF was me.

If performance is low at intake and low at Y2 it may be to do with poor teaching but the results won't give the full picture. They won't tell you about the school's mobility or include the children that weren't eligible for the tests so there may well be data missing. It could also be the case that the results have been poor as a result of poor teaching in the past but that there is an upwards trend being noticed in the Foundation Stage. As these results aren't publically reported it won't be easy to find out what's going on unless you speak to the people in the know; the school.

You need to arrange to meet the Head etc. until you've done that you will be going round in circles and be none the wiser.

My dds school has a very similar Ofsted.

Standards on entry being low etc... standards on leaving being low etc.

However pastoral and behaviour good.

However, the bright children in the school do as well as bright children in other schools. Remember that sats results aren't what your child will get; they are the averages of all children.

What you need to do is ask the head what children individually achieve.

Ofsted do judge a lot from results and this isn't entirely fair. A school full of middle class children can get good results without anyone putting in much effort. A much more mixed school has to work much harder. My perception is that middleclass schools aren't targeted so harshly by ofsted.

SE13Mummy is talking a lot of sense. Unless there is actually poor teaching, don't worry about average results.

For the record, my dd in her 'poorer than average school' is doing exceptionally well. This will never be reflected in the results because in addition to children like her (bright with educated parents) there are many transient families. The results even include the results of the children in the attached autistic centre.

One more thing, if the behaviour is judged to be good in a school, the teaching probably is.

Things can also change rather quickly with schools. An acquaintance of mine avoided our school (children considered to rough!) and went to another school further away.

That school is now in special measures! Now, that might not worry her, but it did when she rejected her other local schools.