High School Tables

[dancemom]

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/15139936.ExamtablessrevealedFinddouthowwyourkiddssecondaryyschoolperformed/

Interesting reading...

Good to see the Glasgow schools improved performance
But overall same old story Jordanhill,Williamwood,Douglas
1 ordinary Glasgow school in Top 50

Williamwood and Douglas are ordinary schools though - just happen to be located in better off areas. They get the same funding as every other school and teach the same courses. Would you prefer to see them performing badly to pull students downt to the same levels as everywhere else?

Interesting to see how schools are performing against the benchmarking though, although I do think it's all a bit made-up and artificial. Pleased with the quality of education that my child is getting at his secondary school and this is backed with the figures.

Absolutely not
I moved to send mine o one in the top 10
Totally wish all schools were as good

I can't see Jordanhill, am I looking at the wrong thing?
I see Hyndland up there though which is where I have a placing request for Dd.
It's parent's evening at her current school tonight, ugh, dreading it.

Jordanhill was top overall

As ever with those tables, I'd like o see the detail of what they're measuring.

Some of these league tables count the number of Highers over 2 years - not the number sat in S5. Some of them don't count the number of Advanced Highers. Some of them vase the percentage on the cohort that started in S1 and don't take into account eg a transient population (asylum seekers/Roma).

And as someone has already pointed out, what level of pass was achieved? A C is no good for many Unis - nor is just 3 Highers. How many As were achieved? How many got 5 Highers in a single sitting?

Dd's school had 26% who got 5 or more Highers last year and 26% got at least one Advanced Higher in S6.

43% go on to HE.

So it performs well for the academic and the medium performers (well above its comparator - and that's before the proportion of SIMD1 is increased as one locality had been wrongly categorised). It still wants to do better for the bottom 20%, those who don't go on to positive destinations.

A good school is one that wants all its pupils to do well. Not just the academic ones.

Our school in Aberdeenshire is top 20, glad we moved here from South Lanarkshire! Just luck though, no planning went into it. OU school has dropped though, was top ten a few years ago. Would be interesting to look back at the figures; have we got worse or others just got better?

Our school, not OU!

There was a good explanation of how the tables were compiled on the Herald website
Agree it all depends what factors they take into account but I think for this report they are consistent Year on Year
It is all a bit daft from the point of view that if the school is 9th or 20th it's not going to make much difference to how an individual pupil does
But I do think there is comfort in thinking iff you have got them into a 'good' school that's half the battle
I don't think most parents making a choice think about whether a school is good for all kids
Maybe they should

Surely they need to include the %age of free school meals etc. Exam results in a wealthy area with motivated parents are going to be better than results in a shitty area with disinterested parents (massive generalisation but you know what I mean)

Apologies - I see that info is in there

They do - the evening times tables shows something about the Index of Deprivation which measures how many children from deprived areas are at certain schools. Sort of similar to free school meals.

I think the benchmarking yes/no is the best indicator to be honest - is the school doing as well as it should be, taking into account the type of pupils and comparing it to schools with similar intakes.

No longer live in Scotland but I'm a bit sad to see my old school has gone right downhill!

Can I ask what is an advanced higher? Is that like a sixth year study certificate?

I'm not sure of the exact conversion. Advanced Highers build on the Higher. It used to be said that they were more similar to the first year of uni.

I don't think AHs are a terribly good measure of a school. It's hard to find the staff willing to teach them and uptake is often much lower than Higher.

I see St Andrew's has done very well; that must be why the HT is off to be a super-executive. Presumably with a helicopter to dash between Holyrood and St Andrew's

I just think it is very unfair to pit Jordanhill against St Margaret Mary's and Lochend.

Advanced Higher is the equivalent of the old Certificate of 6th Year Studies.

Apparently it has more UCAS points than an A Levrl

....haven't checked that out myself as ds is only in S5.

An A in an A.H. is really a massive achievement. Not uncommon to get an A in the Higher and flounder in A.H..

(or it was. My knowledge is pre-Nationals).

I remember sixth year studies being pretty undemanding. I found sixth year a bit of a skive!

A at Advanced Higher Maths, English and Geography are all 56 UCAS points, A* at A level is also 56 points for these subjects. AH at Grade B is equivalent to A level at Grade A.

Think they have revised the points system as I remember looking a couple of years ago and it was more like 130 points for A at AH and 120 for A* at A level.