Richmond Borough Schools Chat 6

[BayJay2]

Hello! This is the latest thread in a series originally triggered by Richmond Council's Education White Paper in Feb 2011. We chat about local education policy, the local impact of national policy, local school performance, and admissions-related issues.

Please do join in. There’s a bunch of us who’ve been following the thread for a long time, and we sometimes get a bit forensic, but new contributions are always welcome.

If you have a few hours to spare and want to catch up on 4 years of local education history, then below are the links to the old threads. We have to keep starting new threads because each only hold 1000 posts. The first two run in parallel, as one was started on the national Mumsnet site, and the other locally:

1a) New Secondaries for Richmond Borough? (Feb 11 - Nov 11)
1b) New Secondary schools for Richmond! (Feb 11-Nov 11)

1. New Secondary Schools for Richmond 2 (Nov 11-May 12)
2. New Secondary Schools for Richmond 3 (May 12-Nov 12)
3. New Secondary Schools for Richmond 4 (Nov 12-Oct 13)

1. Richmond Borough Schools Chat 5 (Oct 13-Nov 14)
2. Richmond Borough Schools Chat 6 (Nov 14 - ????) : This thread!

It's arguably more difficult to make the same level of progress with children who have little support at home, as children who have lots of support at home, no matter how good the teaching is, but broadly speaking that is the gap that the pupil premium is intended to close.

Of course, it isn't always the case that children from "naice" homes have the support they need either.

Definitely not talking about middle-classness, MrsSalvo (not always an academic advantage and certainly no indicator of talent - look at RH's results when compared with RPA). But was talking about prior attainment. Christ's and Grey Court had larger proportions of higher attainers than RPA in that 2014 cohort. Grey Court with 51% had around the same level as Waldegrave. Local primaries are good, so that just reflects a high and/or broadly representative level of local take-up. RPA had a lower proportion of high attainers because it was taking from a wider catchment area, and because a disproportionate number of Barnes/East Sheen/Kew locals can afford and aspire to selective privates or feel the peer pressure to go down that route. That would cream off more locally than the Tiffins or StRR put together, although they contribute to that effect.

CAVEAT: I do believe that is changing - this was the intake from 5 years ago.

You're right to look at individual attainment bands when looking at progress. But the progress measure in Maths for a 'high' (L5) attainer means getting a B at GCSE, C for the middle and at least a 'D' for 'low' (L3) attainers. So at the lower end it's a much harder target (only 25% made expected progress nationally compared to 85% at the higher end).

It strikes me that even those three ability bands are too wide for percentage progress comparisons to be meaningful. Let's take Maths. What if the 'middle attainers' at Christ's were averaging a 4a, whereas at RPA there were more at 4c? Maybe if you could see it split for sub-levels you'd get exactly the same rate of progress.

Or maybe, like AbsintheAndChips you're sceptical about the subjectivity of whole SATs level thing anyway ...

Bayjay - yes that is the reason for the pupils premium - RPA do not shown the breakdown of their income and expenditure.
One interesting point is that the staff/pupil ration at Christ's is 15, national average - whereas at RPA is 11.7 - maybe this is what the PP is going, although if they don't show their finances ??? so who knows?
In any case, from those figures you would think that pupils should be getting more individual attention at RPA, which s not translating into pupil progress.
Another interesting stat that both schools have about the same number of teachers, but Christ's has three time the number of teaching assistants - maybe these are giving closer support to lower attainers which improves their chances of making expected progress?
And remember this is only expected progress, no more than that - a very modest aspiration - not even adding value.

I think RH's intake is evolving too muminlondon. I've heard their initial intake was quite mixed from an academic perspective, but that it's become more selective over time (presumably private schools have to open their doors wide when they're just starting up and need to build up the cashflow).

Yes, I'm sure that is true as it has been (or will be) of other new private schools. I don't particularly mean to single them out.

But the fact that the intake is 'better now' is irrelevant - the ability of the cohort that left was know when they arrived - what strategies were put in place to enable their progress? Why did they not work?
Is the prevailing view is simply that previous cohorts can be written off as new children coming in will be easier to teach, so hard questions about the reason why cohort was allowed to underachieve after 5 years of teaching can be brushed under the carpet?

MSM, one simplistic explanation could be that when that cohort arrived at RPA their school was still on the road to improvement, whereas Christs has been 'Good' for the duration of that cohort's secondary school career.

MrsSalvo you might be right, and if so I'd question the effectiveness of the chain in general, as Ofsted has done. The headteacher has been there since before the conversion to academy status and it has had the advantages of pre-coalition building grants, but there might have been policies imposed from above, whereas a school with more autonomy could have adapted more flexibly. Or it might be suffering still from having smaller budgets due to under subscription. And I think there's a teacher training crisis which complicates things. Despite all that, I genuinely think that some of the subject results are good, and that there are still talented children getting A/A* in a whole string of subjects. Seeing a DC go through secondary school makes me realise that most teachers are trying to do their best, but some are better or more inspiring than others. While you might have a point about standards in core subjects, the problem may just be about consistency across the board.

Or what BayJay2 said.

'Talented children' getting A*s is not a measure of a good school if across the board children are being let down. What value is being added to those talented children, or are they just being relied on to make the school stats look better?
There does seem to be a preoccupation on MN with 'bright and talented children' - don't the others matter?
And also if there is an attitude of excusing failure on the 'un-Sheen-like' departers and then complacently sitting back and waiting for a bright cohort of children to have no alternative seems rather cynical and lazy...

OK I've compared progress rates and Ebacc entries per ability band with Ark Putney and two single sex comps in Merton. It doesn't compare well. I still think it's a problem with the chain.

MrsSalvoMontalbano: 'Talented children' getting A*s is not a measure of a good school

No, but Ofsted wouldn't have graded it as 'Good' if the school sufficiently hadn't demonstrated that children at all levels were making good progress.

Of course there are general question marks over Ofsted accuracy etc, but given what I said about it being a relatively recent judgement, I don't think there's any reason for this year's GCSE results to cast doubt on it.

MuminLondon you deserve a medal for ploughing through all that would be nice to have a lovely spreadsheet instead of having to look back and forth t numbers and descriptions...
BayJay, sorry when I said 'good' I didn't mean in the Ofsted sense, have no idea what alchemy goes into their deliberation - I just meant a school where a child can be confident that the secondary will teach them well enough so that they can make expected progress, and not let them down.
I think primary heads would be justifiably unhappy of the hard work put in in primary is frittered away in secondary.
And the GCSE result overall are meaningless, it is the individual child achieving their potential that matters. Even if its potential was only ever going to be a D that matters, just not failing the child by only being teaching them well enough to get an E. The fact that others get an A is completely irrelevant. (Especially if their expected progress would have predicted and A - by no means all high attainers met their targets either)

"when I said 'good' I didn't mean in the Ofsted sense, have no idea what alchemy goes into their deliberation - I just meant a school where a child can be confident that the secondary will teach them well enough so that they can make expected progress, and not let them down"

Well if Ofsted are doing their job properly, using alchemy or otherwise, those two things should be the same. Most parents aren't able to deconstruct the results to the nth degree, and so should be able to use the Ofsted judgement as a rough guide to the quality of the school. (As well as visiting it to see if its the right school for their child of course).

MrsSalvo my nerdy tip is that you can compare schools from different boroughs in the official tables by ticking the box next to the name of the school, searching again, then click the 'Compare' link under the rows that give averages. Instant comparison!

BayJay2 with regard to the idea of the council contributing money for the site - that document postdates the proposal by Bellevue Place. The council could have invited proper tenders earlier but it's a risky business if the Secretary of State can reject its preferred sponsor and impose what she likes as the document says. It's very 'tinpot dictator'. There's no way I want the council to pay for Ryde House if it is to be transferred wholesale to BPET. No mention of that in its manifesto, unlike the Catholic school.

I find it telling that Lord True in House of Lords speeches has expressed frustration at how 'absurd' it is that the EFA does discuss with LAs sites for free schools and that councils are banned from proposing new academies or free schools 'except at the fringes'. I think local LibDems and Vince Cable are stirring it up, but VC should be taking collective responsibility. And that's from someone who would never vote Tory.

'EFA does discuss' = 'EFA does not always openly discuss'

Whatever the timing of that particular document, the process has been in place since the 2011 Education Act ... although I think it did take a while for Local Authorities to get to grips with it.

Other LAs were certainly using the process back in 2012 (see my post of Mon 18-Jun-12 12:13:03, in thread 3).

Wow!
muminlondon2
You are officially my hero!
really helpful!

Sorry, meant to say - thanks!

"I find it telling that Lord True in House of Lords speeches has expressed frustration at how 'absurd' it is that the EFA does not always openly discuss with LAs sites for free schools"

Given the hostility of some LAs to the free school policy it's probably understandable that they became generally wary of doing that (everywhere, not specifically here), and the demonstrable need for confidentiality doesn't lend itself well to free discussion either.

Despite my own frustration with the process, on a human level I do feel a little sorry for the EFA's predicament - they've been given a tough gig to find sites for hundreds of schools on such short timescales, under the critical eyes of proposers, parents, the DfE, the audit commission, and Local Authorities, who all have different priorities.

Sorry to interrupt, but whatever happened to the plans for a (primary?) school on the site of the brewery in Mortlake?

Aprimary school is part of the future planning brief for the site Cat, but as far as I know the brewery hasn't vacated it yet.

This RTT article says the brewery will remain on the site until at least the end of 2015.

MrsS combine the compare function with filters, and clicking on column heads to sort them, and you can prove all sorts of things - like Waldegrave gets better grades (average point scores) for high attainers than all of the Kent grammars and most Richmond comps compare well. RPA does at least beat a couple of Lincolnshire grammars on that score if it helps!

muminlondon - you are very dedicated, my head would have exploded at that point
It is a minefield, and maybe in fact too much data just clouds the issue instead of clarifying it.
However, in reality, most of only have a very narrow choice, if any - and mostly that is based on distance. Kent would be irrelevant to us, whereas the 'choice' of Christ's or RPA is just about feasible. If the bestest results for low attainers happened to be in John o' Groats, we would not be moving there...
Still think tho' that HTs should have a good explanation for the progress stats. If they have (and it is not just a whining 'we need better kids to make our lives easier so we don't have to put any effort in') - phew - we can relax...