Secondary schoools achieving <30% at GCSE facing closure - this is the MAJORITY of schools in our area!

[tortoiseSHELL]

We live in Bristol, and this news report about which schools are facing possible closure due to not achieving the minimum benchmark says that the MAJORITY of secondary schools in Bristol are on the list!

The education has always been bad here at secondary level, and it is very very stressful thinking about where the kids will go!

Just to defend Bristol a tiny bit: my sons have had excellent care from various hospitals in the city, notably the children's hospital. I come from a medical family and know that teaching hospitals such as Bristol have do attract the cream of the medical profession. One doctor in one hospital even told me so, not knowing my medical background. I was much amused.

That said, I did see one hospital named recently as having a high MRSA rate.

Dumbledores Girl you are quite wrong. Doctors do NOT want to go to Bristol because they know what they will find. And they don't want to be blamed. The hospitals are failing, have been for a long time and cannot attract the best applicants. Ask anyone who has qualified in the last decade (and who doesn't work in Bristol!)
I also come from a medical family and my mother was a GP nearish for some time. She would send all her cancer patients to Exeter for treatment rather than the much closer Bristol, and she wasn't the only one. It has had a dreadful reputation in the medical reputation for more than a decade now, and I don't just mean cardiology/paed cardiology!

I have just looked at that list and recognise a lot of schools from the area where I grew up and schools from where I am now living. They all have one thing in common. Situated in low socio-economic areas where too many families unfortunately do not prioritise or value education for a plethora of reasons. Unless you solve these fundamental issues, no rebranding, rebirthing or any other hullabaloo is going to help improve results.

The teachers in these school are usually diligent, creative, dedicated and care deeply for those children who are working hard to achieve something within a culture that does not value academic ability. I was one such child and now have a PhD, highly paid job, great career and participate in civic activities.

Teachers in these school need support not only from government but from the communities which they serve. When parents (understandably)choose to send their children to private school or to schools outside their community, they are helping to exacerberate the problem.

If a school has a strong head/leader and dedicated teachers who are committed to inculcate a culture of achievement, unswerving discipline, accountability, responsibility and respect for authority, they can really change the culture within a school but they can achieve much more with the support of parents.

spokette - that's what I'm pinning my hopes on right now! We have a strong leader and dedicated teachers. I can supply the supportive parents for at least one pupil.

Yikes PrincessPeaHead, let's hope none of my family get ill then. That is a sorry situation isn't it?

All I meant was, my sons have had excellent care (and I am very demanding and hard to please when dealing with the medical profession). The surgeon who operated on ds3 did an even better job than the excellent surgeon in Sussex who operated on ds1.

Good luck Ormrian!

When something like this starts to work, it has a cascade effect and before you know it, you end up with an influential caucus of parents who can and do make a difference.

I hope so. The school had a terrible reputation - everything that could be wrong was wrong. Parents who were at school in the town 20 yrs ago are simply horrified that we are sending DS there.... but things have changed. New head, fantastic teachers, a very good Ofsted (good with some outstanding features), robotics team that has won national competitions, the top sports teams in the town, less than 700 pupils.

But it's a very deprived area and I guess that has a big impact. But there are already more 'middle-class' parents opting for it and I suspect this will continue.

Anecdotal evidence to back up PPH's point - I was in Bristol General (emergency) in 1990 and it was quite, quite appalling. Mixed wards of geriatrics, children, male and female, filthy lavatories, a single inaccessible bathroom (full of storage boxes - or at least I insisted on having a bath), indescribably unpalatable food...

When I had ds1 in Southmead Hospital, various things happened which retrospectively I am not happy about. Firstly a student mw made the decision to induce labour, though I was already having contractions. I should have said no, and would have done with subsequent labours.

Secondly, she wouldn't believe I was IN labour, and wouldn't let me go to the labour ward, until she checked and found I was 7cm dilated.

Thirdly, they thought ds1 was in distress and wanted to check blood oxygen levels, so they took samples from his head(!) - not comfortable for me btw!) - then the machine broke, so they had to do the whole thing again - get more samples from his head - levels were fine.

Ds1 was born at about 7 o clock in the evening. So I had missed lunch and tea, being in labour. At 9 o clock I was taken up to the ward, dh was sent home. I had had NO FOOD since the previous day, and was told there wasn't any, as I had missed the times for the meals. I was SO HUNGRY!

They then took ds1 off to the nursery, as they said they wanted to keep an eye on him.

I had rubbish advice on b/feeding - was told they only needed to feed every 8-10 hours. As a result b/feeding never got properly properly established.

I had the next 2 at home!

SIL chose to go to BRI to have her 3rd child because WSM hospital was so awful. Which doesn't say much for WSM general I guess.

No experience of either. But dad had good care at the eye hospital.

The eye hospital is ok, although VERY disorganised! The children's hospital is fantastic actually - we are lucky to have that.

My MIL works at the eye hospital, she's been there about 30 years now! She used to enjoy her job but is retiring slightly early, due to the way she's been treated during the past year. New management who don't really seem to care much about the staff...
she and another senior are leaving at the same time, the place will be more disorganised!

Message withdrawn

Should clarify: ds1 and ds3 had the same op done, one in Sussex and one in Bristol - in case anyone thought I was just comparing general care. The children's hospital in Bristol is where ds3 was and, as I said, the surgeon was excellent. We didn't really get a chance to see the food, and, in common with pretty much anywhere I have had experience of, the nurses left basic care to the parents, but the loos etc were clean, and out-patient care has always been good.

I have heard Southmead is a dreadful place to have a baby though. Kings College Hospital, London, was too!

I live in Bath & N.E. Somerset education area and there is one school on the list but when you look at the value added (the government has made a lot of fuss about this) they are on 1050 so they have worked very hard to improve the school.

At the same time there is going to be a lot of reorganisation in the area because at the moment a large number of pupils who live in Bristol are coming to schools in the area and our council wants to cut the number of places available and just educate those who live in BANES - we will see what happens.

"The area we live in is not deprived by any means, why on earth are the state secondaries here so bad?"

Possibly because so many middle-class parents take one look at the results and go "Heavens, how frightful. We're going private."

It's self-perpetuating...

PPH, was your FIL there when James Wiseheart was head of paed cardiac surgery and they were merrily killing all those babies? (Not that I'm blaming him personally, just interested.)

There was something in our paper yesterday (only got to read it this morning ) saying that some of the areas with the highest number of schools in this list are also the ones where there are also selective schools.

All the below 30% A - C schools have one thing in common - they have applicants from poor families. In school terms, it's usually defined as a high proportion on free school meals.

Nobody but nobody has ever managed to break the connection between household income and educational achievement en masse. Yes, there are always individuals who come through but, on the whole, the poor do badly at school.

This is true, OrmIrian, and the list takes no account of how Ofsted rate them or whether they have had particular problems that they are now tackling.

Somebody has simply printed off a list of all schools that got less than 30% A-C last year and said 'These are all bad schools; let's tell them to improve or close because that'll make it look like we mean business about driving standards up'.

There is one school in our area on that list - the current Head inherited an appalling situation and last year's Year 11 had had a disrupted and inadequate five years there. But he is working his socks off to turn it round and Ofsted are cheering him on and commented that the school is 'improving rapidly'.

This must be so dispiriting for him and his staff .

That is certainly true of 2 of the 3 in our LEA nkf. And the third is a farming school where the not-so-academic children tend to go.

Ofsted have themselves created this problem by demanding that all schools meet the "average" criteria, then moaning when they don't. if you have an average, half the schools will be below it. Like, duh.

The average is around 50% though. Not 30%.

More to the point, the 30% improve or close threat has been overblown by the press. It's based on targets for 2010 and the schools won't be closed but changed. That is a real worry I think because the academies have not proved themselves at being good at getting good results for children in low income neighbourhoods.

I think this announcement was a typical headline grabbing, not thought through ideathat we seem to see so many of currently.

In this LEA, we have recently had a huge overhaul of secondary education. Some of the schools on this list are due for closure at the end of this academic year anyway. It's just shock tactics IMO - they can't close all the schools on one town can they?