Another Path to Greatness - Part II

[BigWoollyJumpers]

Here we are.

My local school is on that list, I'm not sure how, it's a wealthy area with good results that ships it's troublesome students to another school in it's academy chain and at sixth form to the local college!

Anyway, my DD has had 3 offers, waiting for her fourth and preferred choice. If she gets that then it's a waiting game (and possible fight) for the grades.

"If she gets that then it's a waiting game (and possible fight) for the grades."

Echo the feeling but I really shouldn't be worried. DS is a good student and works hard and achieves well. He just needs to be more consistent over the next months

Some of the schools are on the Bristol list by virtue of the fact the school sees low participation in Higher Education v GCSE results. This does not take into account a school with good gcse results, and has a sixth form, but where many students move to a local well known and highly regarded sixth form in a slightly different postcode which then makes it seem like they get fewer participants in HE than they should.

Still doesn’t explain Bristols lower offer to DS’s friend.

The school is a v high achieving state school - often cited as ‘best’ in borough & not on the list.

Parents both went to Uni & have v high earning jobs.

Area of residence v expensive suburb not a postcode that would be considered under contextual consideration.

It’s a puzzle.

Contextual offers should be a helping hand for those kids whose life chances are affected, through no fault of their own. Too many stories coming out at the moment that just don’t make sense.

Without outing my DS, he attend what is often referred to as the top performing grammar in the country, yet some students have received contextual offers due to home postcode. The school doesn’t have a catchment. I’m just not sure how I feel about it!!

The school I'm talking about was in the top 10% nationally for A-level results among non-selectives.

It's a very, very good school. It has a large SEN department, though, so perhaps that skews its numbers.

@Applepieco do you know these students home circumstances?

@chopc

Yes, on a scale running from underprivileged/deprived to incredibly privileged, I doubt that we would fall in the deprived category, even as a single parent household.

The Bristol aspiring schools list is interesting. It contains a school that I'm familiar with which is situated in a deprived area. The school forms part of a MAT. In recent years, A Level STEM subject pupils have been bussed daily from the "aspiring" school across to the Ofsted outstanding school within the MAT. Such pupils are mixed in to classes with others who have been there since year 7. They are also guided in their UCAS applications by the advisers at the Outstanding rated school. So they qualify as being at the "failing school" but are taught at the "Outstanding" rated school as far as A Levels are concerned (and they have to meet the minimum GCSE grades for studying those subjects to A Level at the Outstanding rated school).
Whilst it's good to see resources being shared across the schools under the MAT umbrella it has started to result in STEM classes of 30+ for some pupils so it dilutes the "outstanding" nature of the school with a knock on effect for those who will be judged as having had full benefit of an Outstanding school education but actually things weren't quite like that in recent years. Results are climbing at the aspiring school and declining at the Outstanding school

There is still however the matter of the deprived catchment area in which most of them presumably live although it's not possible to any individual's home circumstances.

I agree chopc, we should be confident when our DC work hard and achieve well. However there is one subject for my DD where she could lose a grade and that is what I am worried about. I would prefer if students were given an assessed grade and also given the opportunity to sit the exam because if the assessed grade wasn't high enough they could prove they can do it in an exam. However that isn't going to happen so she just needs to keep on working.

My view on contextual grades is that they should be helping the children who are most disadvantaged however it's clear that they are also giving a leg up to the mc children. I wonder if some of the universities, especially RG, don't really care about this they can recruit the type of children they want from a pool that is purpoted to be widening access which ticks their boxes and makes them look good but the reality is something entirely different.

I think it has gone too far and ends up being unfair on too many children. The old system even 20 years ago where a univesity could see someone was doing very well comapred to what that particular school usually did or if the head wrote on the UCAS form the teenager was in a orphanage etc was pretty but all this formal contextualising ends up unfair on too many. My son was at Bristol with someone with a contextualised offer who owns a £3m house! they are so rich compared to us but I paid school fees so my son has to get much higher grades. I only found out when he asked me to deliver something to their house which is not too far from me. I doubt they picked the school they went to for the purpose of the lower offers but some will be gaming the system as ever.

DS has an attainment offer from Birmingham and it's certainly not contextual. We played with the online offer calculator and with his GCSEs (8s &9s) we worked out he needed to be predicted 1 A at A level to receive the CCC offer. He's predicted all As so he was fine on that front. I don't think they offer it for all subjects though.

DS did have a surprise contextual from Exeter, BBB instead of A*AA, both DH and I went to Uni and live in a decent area. We think he qualified under this, 'All applicants from state schools with more than 60% or at least 450 pupils who live in areas of deprivation (IMD Q1/Q2)'. DS travels 20 miles to go this selective state sixth form which is on the edge of a city, so when you have 2000 pupils it's probably not too difficult to have at least 450 living in areas of deprivation. To be honest he shouldn't really be qualifying for a contextual but he is favouring Exeter and this does take the pressure off.

I did look at the Bristol school list but his college isn't on that.

@chopc

Yes. The three boys concerned (that I know about) are very good friends of my DS, and have been for 7 years. Their parents are friends of ours. They initiated the conversations regarding their DS’s contextual grades & their surprise at finding out it was based on their postcode & not personal circumstances or school provision.

Not sure how to feel about that @Applepieco . Hopefully there are the exceptions when it comes to contextual offers and not the norm

Can we please stop referring to the schools on the Bristol list as "failing" schools? They are not failing. Some are there because they have low uptake for Higher Education.

Applepie - if I were them I would perhaps stay quiet. Alternatively having said what their offer was and you having commented it was contextual they may have realised that they have outed perhaps a FSM, being in care at some point and don't wish to disclose this so are now playing dumb.

Yes and access to UNIQ for Oxbridge is also merely by home post code too/state educated but doesn't necessarily take into account which state 6th form.

@SeasonFinale

They commented it was contextual as they received a letter referencing it. They brought it up as they were so surprised. They are not FSM nor have their children have never been in care. The letter clearly stated their offer was based on the contextual postcode criteria. They raised it as they were quite puzzled and asked me if I thought this could be a mistake as they were concerned it might be rectified at a later date. I work as an Exams officer, so I suppose they thought I might be able to provide further info, which I could not, as it’s not particularly my field!

Ds has a contextual offer from Durham and it must be because of the POLAR postcode.

Dh and I both went to uni, locally his outstanding secondary school out performs the others, all rated good, the progress 8 score and attainment 8 is higher than local area and England also the 5 GCSEs including English and Maths, EBacc etc. Ds was in the top 5 of his school for GCSE results, he got more 9s than 8s and is predicted A A A* A for A level.

I am just going to state facts on the POLAR map, we live on a what I would consider affluent estate, originally a brown field site some 30 years ago. The polar map takes in this estate plus a lovely council estate, a not so great council estate and also an area with some pockets of that are a bit run down. The whole area is about 2.3 miles. I understand it has to go off something but the net is wide. POLAR 3 and 4 are Quintile 2.

[quote Applepieco]@SeasonFinale

They commented it was contextual as they received a letter referencing it. They brought it up as they were so surprised. They are not FSM nor have their children have never been in care. The letter clearly stated their offer was based on the contextual postcode criteria. They raised it as they were quite puzzled and asked me if I thought this could be a mistake as they were concerned it might be rectified at a later date. I work as an Exams officer, so I suppose they thought I might be able to provide further info, which I could not, as it’s not particularly my field![/quote]
In that case they have been told the reason - ie. postcode so I am unsure why they feel they don't know the reason. Have they used the POLAR information and decided they are not actually POLAR4?

wideningparticipation.wordpress.com/2019/07/10/polar4-for-russell-group/

In any event I think the offer is there now and would be honoured.

@Applepieco have you put their postcode in the map?

www.officeforstudents.org.uk/data-and-analysis/young-participation-by-area/search-by-postcode/

My sister's house is the last street on her POLAR map.

I think their point was, though delighted by the reduced offer, they were surprised that having completed 7 years at a v high achieving grammar school & not feeling ‘disadvantaged’ in any way, they questioned if the contextual offer process was cutting through in the way it was intended.

@Applepieco

I think their point was, though delighted by the reduced offer, they were surprised that having completed 7 years at a v high achieving grammar school & not feeling ‘disadvantaged’ in any way, they questioned if the contextual offer process was cutting through in the way it was intended.

I have absolutely no doubt that it is very much a blunt tool and there are kids who fall precisely in your friends' child's category (or even better) who receive a postcode advantage without them necessarily being the group the widening participation process is trying to help. Unfortunately, I guess the alternative of coupling that with, for example, a means tested process is too wieldly or perhaps offputting for the groups it seeks to help.

Agree re blunt tool aspect of contextual offers. Our postcode was Quintile 1 in POLAR 3 and now Quintile 5 in POLAR 4. The postcode has been shifted from the edge of a deprived area to the edge of a wealthier area. However I don't think this reflects a huge increase in University uptake in our specific postcode.

However, better perhaps to have blunt tools than ether no tools, or reliance on individual schools/colleges setting out specific circumstances for students.

Copied and pasted an earlier post I made about issues with POLAR/quintiles

"The POLAR postcodes thing is a pain. DD was ineligible for a couple of opportunities along the way in her school career to date as a result of bloody quintiles

I'm separated from dh, who is not Uni educated. We live in a high density housing area but come out a quintile 5 (High level of education etc etc.) due to an anomaly with our rather large area.

One of DD's friends lives in a gorgeous 5 bedroom house out in a very pleasant village. Both parents are Uni educated professionals and the software defines them as living in a quintile 1 area. It's rural and due to the demographic mix of people in the village plenty being involved in rural trades, classed as an area with very few Uni educated people.

So single parented DD in a high density housing area ranks as being more advantaged than her friend who benefits from being in a 2 Uni educated parent family living in a far more desirable house/location than DD.

When DD found this out at school it was a real education in not placing too much reliance on computer manipulated (aka mangled) data. Algorithms anyone ?"

I recognise that there needs to be a way of levelling the playing field but when there is no way of amending/appealing the data and what it means for your children by comparison, it's frustrating.

The girl in question (known as a genuinely lovely, nicely spoken person btw) now holds an Oxford offer so wasn't direct competition for DD (who tried for Cambridge). Oxford will presumably be able to count her as part of their widening access stats of some sort even though in reality she is nothing of the sort. As the saying goes "There's three types of lies; Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics"

@SATSmadness we love that saying in our house, both my sons chose statistics GCSE and the teacher quotes that to them.

The widening participation using POLAR is a shitty blunt tool. I feel awful that Ds got a contextual on one hand, on the other Durham was always a firm favourite. All his other offers are non-contextual. So it must be a box ticking exercise because only one thing applies to Ds and quite frankly he benefits from a very nice lifestyle at a very nice school. So why Durham and not Warwick, or Manchester? Maybe they need more boxes ticked. I think Cambridge wanted 3 things to consider you eligible.

Ds also couldn't participate in lots of schemes aimed at those who would benefit from widening but none of them worked on the postcode aspect, but the care/carer/FSM aspects. I am massively in favour of these and the poor performing school but high achiever ones.

I suppose my mother's advice that life isn't fair which I pass on to my children, and you just have to get on with it remains good now and as ever. My 5 children didn't try Oxbridge and didn't think they would have got in anyway but three got their first choice university so it's all worked out okay in the end.

Dd has a Durham contextual based on area we live in and the school where she took her gcses ( nearest secondary) which has an attainment 8 of less than 40.. I am happy that she got a contextual- I think they got it right.

@Beetlesand it definitely works correctly for some, but not for others. I am pleased that your DD got her offer because of it.

@Xenia completely agree, life is not fair and we too tell our children that because they have seen in first hand in prize givings with star of the week because Billy didn't punch anybody today

Also some very kind person pointed out that there is a postcode in the POLAR link above, it isn't my postcode but the default one in the system. Phew.