to be astonished at the Highland secondary schools' underperformance?

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I was just reading The Times and there's several Highland schools with 0% deprivation scores achieving very poorly. I know quite a bit about city centre schools but this is news to me.

Can anyone comment?!

(Unhelpfully, I can't find the data on Education Scotland's site and there's a paywall on the Times).

I know nothing about the Highlands but could it be that many students know that they will be taking over the family business/farm and thus don’t really need formal qualifications?
A former colleague teaches in Dubai and some of the very wealthy pupils just don’t turn up because they know they’ll be wealthy/have a job in the family business for life regardless.

Isn't there also a.problem with recruiting teaching staff, especially on the islands?

Golspie has less than 250 pupils (40 pupils per yearish) and Gairloch less than 150 (25 pupils per year). (Average school size in Scotland is round about 1000.) Both have very mixed demographics. I would be surprised if this did not affect the results both in terms of absolute performance and in terms of variability from year to year and so wouldn't read too much into it.

I was wondering if staff shortages was partly the reason. I can understand how two relatively poor year groups can affect overall scores.

Why are the mixed demographics not reflected in the 'deprivation' mark?

Do you have a link?
I'd be very interested to read it.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/schools-in-wealthier-areas-dominate-top-of-the-league-2dpf2p9rf

It's behind a paywall though.

Coming from that area, in my opinion it’s: lack of ambition (teachers were shocked I wanted to go to university); crap teachers (most good ones want to stay in Glasgow/Edinburgh or go to England); lack of role models (nothing wrong with being a farmer/builder but I didn’t see anyone working in ‘professional’ roles growing up and it definitely affected my ideas of the jobs I could potentially do).

I live in Argyll so it's relevant to me.

You don't have to pay, but you do need to register. Then I think you are allowed to read two articles a week for free.

This one give the table which you can search rather than just a list of top/bottom. You can input the region rather than the school to get all the schools for your area.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/schools-in-wealthier-areas-dominate-top-of-the-league-2dpf2p9rf

Oh, I'm not paying!
I moved Dd to a Glasgow school because the education she was getting here was shit, and the pastoral care was non existent, even for a child with extra needs.
She's doing so much better now, and is much happier even with the commute in each day.
She's currently on a residential for Higher studies, (weirdly just out of our town as they wanted to get the kids out of the city), which was totally free, she's also had a lot of contact and input from Glasgow Uni.
Her old school get none of this.

Here are the Argyll figures. First number is % Deprivaton, 2nd figure is the comparator % of what percentage they would expect to get 5 Highers, the 3rd figure is what they actually got.

Happy to paste in any other regions or schools if anyone wants?

47 Tobermory HS, Argyll & Bute 0 43 48
62 Hermitage Acad, Argyll & Bute 8 46 45
107 Islay HS, Argyll & Bute 0 33 37
117 Oban HS, Argyll & Bute - 37 36
138 Lochgilphead HS, Argyll & Bute 0 44 33
140 Tarbert Acad, Argyll & Bute 0 24 32
163 Dunoon GS, Argyll & Bute - 34 30
202 Campbeltown GS, Argyll & Bute7 36 25
225 Rothesay Acad, Argyll & Bute - 24 22

Thanks Wax, just registered.

Ah that's not worked very well :( All the schools are in double figures for the last two columns so Tobermory (47th in Scotland) has O deprivation figure, 43 expected results and 48 actual. SOme of the schools have ) and some a - for deprivation, not sure what the difference is if any.

Thanks for that second link.

The 'virtual comparator' scores are more or less the same as the actual results, so I think I might have been hasty using 'under performing'. But then, 70% of a cohort getting less than 5 Highers isn't great.

I'm not sure if I can work it out, I'm looking at Hermitage, obviously, but also have an interest in Oban.
Dd would be on the deprivation list as entitled to free meals and was in care for 14 months whilst she was there.

Interesting. a recent meeting I had with Highland and Islands Enterprise shocked me at the challenges businesses are facing in recruiting suitable employees in the coming years "just to keep the lights on" as they put it.
Ii is pretty much only tourism which keeps the area from being more deprived that it already is.

Hermitage are pretty much performing as expected. Is saying 8% deprivation, 46% percent expected to get 5 highers and 45% actually did. They are sitting at No 62 in the country.

demented, there was also an issue with the college and a whole class failed a higher (I think) and then after measures were put in place, the next years class all failed too.

The Evening Times has lists for most of the Central Belt too, but has used 3+ Highers.

www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/16091575.How_has_your_child__39_s_school_performed__See_our_leagues_tables/

It's all very depressing.

I also might be wrong in this, but the comparator thing isn't them taking say 5 schools with similar demographics and comparing outcomes, its a bit more sophisticated. I think they take small groups of pupils and class them (based on postcode etc?) and then allocate them a score and when all the scores for each child within a school are rolled up it gives a schools overall expected score. So pupil Jack may have a score of 50 and Sally have 67 and John have 25 as he lives in a poorer area and gets free school meals.

Someone else may know better than me though.

Dd's boyfriend has done very well at Hermy, he got six A's in his highers in S5 and has an unconditional offer from Glasgow, BUT, even he has said that he can't believe how much better Dd's new school is.

It's not all about the exam results I think. We chose to send DSs to a different more academic school but it was for reasons of bullying and we also thought the more academic style would suit DS1 better as the disruptive behaviour at his catchment after years of bullying was likely to make him more anxious.

Anyway, whilst he has done really well and Ds2 is doing okay. I've grown to hate the school. I was up there for a meeting the other week, just about the S6 options and I ended up feeling so angry that I had a headache for days afterwards.

It's a case of who you know and there is no support at all.

I honestly think they would have done better as people if we'd sent them to the catchment. One more year and I never have to go near the place again.

I'm sorry about that Wax.

While I agree it can't all be exam results, it's so unfair that in our wealthy, first world country, your success still depends on where you're born.

This is the way I understand it; I think we need to compare the % adjusting for the virtual comparitive (middle column) against % actually obtaining 5+ highers (right hand column). If actual numbers obtaining 5+ highers is greater than middle column then the school is performing better than expected, if it’s the other way around it’s under performing and if these numbers are the same then school is not adding any value.
I’ll try to post photos from the times I bought yesterday.

Wax that is broadly my understanding of how they do the comparator figure too.

The other thing which can cause a distortion to the crude number passing 5 Highers is the staying on rate. The comparator is adjusted for this but obviously it does affect the crude comparison.

In answer to the query on "mixed demographics" the zero figures in this column for the small schools are a bit misleading. The cohorts are so small that the figures have all been presented as Q3 or mid ranking for SIMD to avoid identifying individual figures. When I have compared 5+ higher figures between schools the most significant drivers of out performance have been high % of Q5 pupils and staying on rates rather than high Q1 acting as a brake.

All the individual school data together with methodology and analysis has been updated at ParentzoneScotland in the search by school section.