New CfE levels out today.

[WankersHacksandThieves]

Interesting reading for those people into stats and the new School testing results

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-38302299

And a fairly damning piece in the Telegraph re attainment levels: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/13/scandalous-gap-education-rich-poor-scotland-exposed/

Just been bogling about in the stats. My children went to a primary that served a large council estate and an executive private estate - nothing in between. I always thought it was fairly well thought off, but when my children went on placing request to a top 5/10 school, it seems that they were behind on most things and particular Maths. It doesn't actually give the demographic for deprivation figure for that school for some reason, but i've compared it to a similarly sized school in the same region where I know the deprivation rate is higher and they are found wanting in comparison.

Perhaps related would be that they get allocated extra budget for deprivation (pupils on free school meals) I think that as half the school now comes from wealthier families, their money has gone down, so less support for the pupils who need it simply because of stats.

I'm not surprised by the results. As a side note, we are in West Lothian but both DC switched to one of the Edinburgh day schools when they entered P7. When DS joined, I was horrified to find he was well behind in what he was expected to know in Maths. His Edinburgh state school peers were well ahead of him. I had a good moan at the time to my ILs and my MIL said, "Maybe the Edinburgh schools teach beyond their abilities." WTF?

3 years later, I was able to prep DD before she started so she wouldn't be behind. Speaking to other West Lothian parents, others also had a similar experience. Looking at the P7 numeracy stats, I see West Lothian is sitting at 60% compared to Edinburgh's 73% so at least I wasn't going mad and I doubt the difference is due to Edinburgh "teaching beyond abilities"!

I don't think they should be publishing these for individual schools - it's going to end up with the same shitty situation as down south with everyone having "choice" of schools.

Are they publishing the individual school results? I only found the council/area results.

I have just been playing around with these stats. I think they need a HUGE health warning. They appear to be based on teachers' internal assessments of the CfE levels across pupils. IME there is absolutely no consistency among different teachers within the same school assessing these levels let alone across different schools. I have an S4, an S3 and a P1. The S4 and S3 have subject levels ranging right across the spectrum depending on the interpretation of each teacher.

I was more interested in the stats for the Primary school. According to the stats my P1 is at by far the absolute worst performing school in the secondary school catchment area. However I know that DC from that primary school actually outperform all the other primaries when they all get to secondary and sit Nats 5 and 6 - it shows up in the stats as it is easy to map to the SIMD but I also know enough pupils to confirm it personally.

I was actually more interested in the SIMD data as our LA will benefit substantially from the increases to the education budget to tackle the attainment gap. Historically the very worst off schools have been identified and supported by the LA and the best off does ok through a combination of parent support and sharp elbows. I think large mixed catchment primary schools like the one my DD3 attends will benefit under the new attainment gap funding. Cynically I might say their results are bound to improve and flatter the Scottish Government because their assessments atm appear so out of kilter with the rest of the area.

I am also very opposed to choice in education but if some consistency in the measurement system can be adopted similar to the analysis of Nat 5 upwards results on the parentzone site then it might dispel some of the myths about what constitutes a good school and give some indications where to look at to find what works. Atm if I were on my first rather than my third DD I would be thinking about a placing request a mile along the road. My insider knowledge makes me confident my DD3 is much better off where she is.

My limited (2 children) experience is that at primary it can vary dramatically between teachers - my daughter was in the top maths set at primary, and we were regularly told how brilliant she was, but her P6 teacher in particular seems to have been pretty flakey, and now she is in S2 she seems to be struggling at times and doesn't have the kind of grounding I would have expected. My son is in P6 and his maths homework looks very different to what she covered a few years ago.

Thanks for the link! I'm in two minds as to whether or not it should be published at that sort of level, but it is interesting.

Very interesting reading as DD's school seems to doing very well indeed compared to other schools.