A level News Stories

[Aslockton]

metro.co.uk/2022/08/18/a-level-results-london-state-school-sends-85-pupils-to-oxbridge-17204666/

Well done Brampton Manor!

They're great results, but it is a very selective 6th form.

From my local newspaper... the tale of two schools 2 miles apart!

Sixth Form students at School A are celebrating ‘stellar’ A Level results today. A new record was set as a quarter of all grades received being at A star.

HT said: “We are extremely proud of all our students’ successes and it is wonderful to see their excitement today after all their hard work. We are delighted to hear that so many of our students have secured places at their first choice universities, including competitive Russell Group university courses in subjects such as Law, Engineering and Medicine.

"The university and apprenticeship places that our students have gained reflect the holistic education that the School offers, from Humanities to Medicine and Engineering to Languages.”

Our Head Boy, secured a place at Oxford to read History, and our Head Girl secured a place at Cambridge to read Theology, Religion, and Philosophy of Religion; between them they received 6 A stars and 1 A grade.
Girl A secured a place at the University of Warwick to read Classics & English, having recorded 4 A stars

Girl B secured a place at Durham University to read Politics & International Relations, having recorded 2A stars and an A grade. Girl C received 4A stars, and secured her place at Oxford University to read Theology & Religion.

_

School B exam results
There have been some stand-out performances from students at School B.

Girl A who gained 4 A stars, will be studying Psychology with a placement year at Loughborough University. Boy B gained 2 A stars and 2 A's and will study Financial Mathematics at the University of Nottingham.

Girl C achieved 2 A stars and 2 A's and will study Film Production at the University of Portsmouth. Girl D achieved 3 A stars and 1 A and will study veterinary nursing with small animal rehabilitation at Harper Adams University.

Boy E will be studying Physics with Astrophysics at the University of Leeds, having achieved 2 A stars and 2 A grades. Girl F gained 2 A stars and 2 A grades and is studying for a degree in Pharmacy at the University of Bath.

Great results from both schools, but such different destinations for outstanding grades.

Two very different schools is all I will say.

I wish they’d also celebrate the not so gifted kids who worked their socks off and got CCD when their predicted grades were DDE, and the ones who got jobs or training courses that were right for them and contribute to society. Anyone would think from this kind of garbage that high A Level grades and a status university were the only indicators of success.

I'm almost certain these are my local schools

Girl C achieved 2 A stars and 2 A's and will study Film Production at the University of Portsmouth. Girl D achieved 3 A stars and 1 A and will study veterinary nursing with small animal rehabilitation at Harper Adams University.

Both of these sound like well thought out, very personal choices. What courses from the (really quite restrictive) list on offer at at Oxford or Cambridge would you have been happier for these two young people to have been steered towards instead?

Yep - puts me in mind of a girl who practically had a breakdown when she achieved nine 9 grades and one rogue 7 at GCSE. Her mother took her aside and told her to stop being hysterical as many of her classmates worked just as hard and got nothing like those results.
It's a great achievement to get top marks, but it does rather make others, who may have achieved their own very best marks possible, feel dismissed.

@BadGranny you have it spot on. The coverage is nauseating sometimes and misses bigger issues.

To be fair the BBC spotlighted a girl called Praise who had got fairly average results but got onto her chosen course. Seemed like a good "real life story".

This school is ultra highly selective at sixth form, has access to the hospital nearby for prospective medical students, extra tuition for lnat, bmat, ukcat Oxbridge entrance practice interviews and five teachers dedicated to this group on top of subject teaching.
Compare that to comprehensive school c a couple of miles away which has none of this

Girl C achieved 2 A stars and 2 A's and will study Film Production at the University of Portsmouth. Girl D achieved 3 A stars and 1 A and will study veterinary nursing with small animal rehabilitation at Harper Adams University.

Congratulations to these 2 candidates. All subjects are different and require different skill sets. Some are more valued and rightly so. Some are needed to be able to do a specialised job. I do think we need to start to acknowledge that an A star in maths is different to an A* in photography. Unless we see subjects for context it's hard to make a comparison.

OK, you could quibble if you wanted to over Portsmouth (although film production is not offered at many of your favoured unis OP so the field is specialised and smaller ). Taking the highly specialised Harper Adams out, we are left with the top unis of Nottingham, Leeds, Loughborough and Bath - excellent destinations.

Brampton Manor's USP is creaming off the very brightest (mostly not local) children and drilling them for Oxbridge. Not every school can do this , or even wants to. Not every child wants (or needs) to go to Oxbridge - where you can't study , for example, pharmacy or film production.

It also seems like BM pretty much insist on a very narrow choice of unis so they can 'boast' about unsuccessful Oxbridge students by name dropping Warwick and Durham. I wonder how kids feel at BM if they don't achieve this stated aim. Pretty crap, I'd imagine even if they do really well.

Just realised your second post is probably no longer about BM. My point still stands, but now about both those 'amazing' schools.

Be nice if they mentioned where the A level cohort did their GCSEs, as well - DD knew at least one girl at her grammar school who moved back nearer home to go to Brampton Manor for sixth form. As she was at the local girls' grammar school that the 'East London mob' mainly only - grudgingly - put up with because they failed to get into the other one, I suspect that there may be even more from the other one who do the same.

BM may be selective, but over half these young people are in receipt of free school meals and live in one of deprived boroughs in London. Good on them for their achievements and hard work. This school is life-changing for them.

History, theology and religion? Why are youngsters still choosing these as degree courses? So dire

I know I would be excited with veterinary sciences and film production. You learn something practical and you contribute something useful in your working life.

I'm doing religious studies and both my children do History.

I don't disagree that it's great for those kids (if that narrow range is what they want) . But most schools are comprehensive and have a different range, remit and nothing like the same support mechanisms. The results and destinations of the comp you cite as school B above are excellent. I can't see your issue.

I think you are wrong that the BM kids are all from deprived boroughs.

Reason number one- they enjoy the subjects and love learning and thought. Horses for courses.

Cynical reason number two - it's offered at Oxbridge and is one of the (marginally) easier courses to gain a place.

@Piggywaspushed I don't have an issue. I think whatever you achieve or wherever you achieve those grades it should be celebrated.

I just saw these stories and thought they were interesting and worthy of debate. I am immensely proud of School B as BIL went there. A family member works at School A. I had no insight into Brampton Manor but just think it is amazing what they achieve and how they support those young people and widen participation into the most elite universities in the UK.

I think I read last year Cambridge University admitted 128 black undergraduates last year compared to 26 in 2011. This is shockingly low.

No one is not celebrating them, though? You literally harvested the info from the press!!

Totally agree on the black undergrads at Cambridge. Even more interesting when you break that stat down by FSM background. Vanishingly few state educated black students . Hence Stormzy's scholarship.

And?

What's your point?

Agree with reason no.2 The cachet of being in Oxbridge is greater than the actual worth of any degree.

I'm not just talking about financial worth or employability. Just the relevance of something like Religious Studies offered at a mainstream uni in 2022.

Go to a seminary or an equivalent religious school for a "career" in theology. Or if you are simply interested in the subject, go to a library.

Plenty of jobs available to a graduate in any degree which requires analytical thought, debate and written skills.

Plus, RS teachers...

RS is still a GCSE and A level!

Going by that logic scientists are the best people to teach RS then 😄 Plenty of analytical thought and debate there.

Anyway I'm derailing the thread with my rants. Apologies OP