Secondary school "league" tables

[Arkadia]

Out of interest I was trying to find the latest (2018?) ones, but all I could find was a list of the top 50. Does anyone know where a more complete list is available?
I have even tried the government website, but it is far to complicated. All I am looking for is the usual info (like nat5s).

Thanks.

Is it not usually December?

No idea :D
I can't find 2017 either.

Try googling Education Scotland schools dashboard, you should find the latest info ( sorry, out and about so can't post a link)

My understanding is that the govt does not publish league tables. They publish results for each school but it is usually the papers that put the data together and produce league table - usually The Herald.

Yes, I know, @Seniorcitizen1, but I couldn't find it :)

Thanks @Superjaggy, that is an interesting and SOBERING read. I didn't know that SO FEW children achieve stage 2 at the end of P7. I have looked at my primary and wanted to go and bang my head against a brick wall... I do wonder what those statistics actually mean. I am not sure what all those indicators mean.
At Secondary level is even more intricate. It is all very detailed, but you need to go on a course to understand all that.

Try this. There is a link which takes you to a page where you can search for Scottish schools;

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/best-uk-secondary-schools-guide-scotland-wr9qh9lg2?shareToken=a0e56ba8d282b94ae19124791751764a

@celtiethree, thanks, but that is the usual top-50 list. Perhaps the new complete list hasn't come out yet.

If you can’t find them then they haven’t been published for 2017/18 - they usually wait until all the SQA appeals have been settled

@Arkadia I wouldn't put too much stock in the data, although it should become more accurate over the years. Although there are children who don't have 2nd level at the end of primary, there will also be plenty working within 3rd level by then, so the average is pretty meaningless!

Indeed, but to see that ON AVERAGE just over half reach the end of second level by the end of p7 is a bit of a shocker.

Stage 2 is a very nebulous concept. The criteria are very subjective and current data is internally assessed by individual schools. It is not verified or benchmarked. Also it is assessed part way through P7 not at the end. Very few primary schools are likely to suggest they have got everyone to end of stage 2 by Christmas and are therefore sitting on their hands for the rest of the year. 1 of the 4 local schools I looked at out of interest had not submitted at all.

The Dashboard for secondaries is usually updated in Dec/Jan and that is what the papers then use to collate the "top 50" data. They have been changing metrics for the last few years as they get to understand the dashboard better. I would like to see % getting 3As and 2Bs in Highers at 5th year in 5 academic subjects (standard entry requirement for Ancients) but it is not available - my backhanded way of saying all the data and league tables need a sceptical knowledgeable eye to be of any interest.

Very true @howabout.
It would be good to see useful data, but even in the future, if the information keeps coming solely from the SNSA, that is unlikely to happen. But what is the point of having the SNSA if the data then is SO unreliable? (I know, well known problem)
Let's see if the papers manage again to produce a list of Secondary Schools by highers, plus oter parameters, if anything because the Government portal is (for me) difficult to navigate and understand.

If you want a true bench mark then look up the Glasgow private schools. They publish results by cohort size, subject and grade.

The data doesn't just come from SNSA, though - there are other judgements made by schools internally which go towards the final "score" for each child. For example SNSA only assesses technical skills in writing, not the ability to actually write say, a report or a short story.

This is why schools aren't publishing SNSA data on its own - the picture would look quite different and would no doubt be horribly misconstrued by the media.

@Superjaggy, but then the data is still very subjective, isn't it?
@Howabout, that doesn't really help, I would have thought, because it is a different environment and I wouldn't be sure how that would translate to my schools. I was talking to a parent that sends his kids to a private school and they don't even do SNSA (or so I am told).

No. The private schools just council the parents out of the sector if the DC fail to perform or they don't get past the entry criteria in the first place. A relatively high number of bright pupils transfer into the private sector for exam years in Glasgow. At secondary school the Glasgow private pupils are sitting the same exams as the State ones. The cohort is 100% SIMD 5. So the private school bench mark is a rough proxy for what a school with nothing but bright privileged children would achieve. (Edinburgh is less useful because they are more coy and some use the A Level system).

If you are interested in "top 50" league tables etc I am assuming you are really only interested in how a school is performing for its most privileged top performers. In that case, for secondary schools the top 20% performance measure within the Dashboard is a fairly decent proxy. An average score above 1900 is good. Any school getting above 2000 for this cohort is probably doing it by getting them to sit lots of extra Nat 5s. A school with a SIMD 5 70%+ cohort should find this bench mark easy but it is more stretching for an average school with SIMD 5 20%.

This is all imho of course, but gleaned from 13 years of relentless pressure to play the game rather than just turfing my DC out of bed to the local catchment school in the morning.

Well yes, @Arkadia - but writing, art etc can only ever really be marked subjectively, at any level. But schools are getting better at moderating this (at least, they should be).

Thanks, @howabout.
Can you please rephrase your first sentence? ;)

@howabout, I was having a look at what (I hope) is what you were talking about...
Looking at two schools in my area, the top 20% for the "School leavers' average total tariff score" for one is 1946 (virtual comparator 1906), for the other 1788 (VC 1925) and for a third 1738 (VC 1784)
What do these numbers mean? I have tried to google it, but it is pretty much beyond me.

There is / used to be an explainer online which gives the calculation method. My reading of it, (backed by some playing around against actuals) was, an A at Advanced Higher gives 480 points, an A at Higher gives 204 points and an A at Nat 5 gives 74.

So a top performing pupil doing 7 Nat 5s in S4 and carrying on 5 to Nat 6 in S5 and then 3 to Nat 7 in S6 would end up with:

3x480 + 2x204 +2x74 = 1996

An equally bright DC might instead opt to do 5 Nat 6 in S5 and a further 4 in S6. With no unconverted Nat 5s this would give them:

9x204 = 1836

That is why 1900 is the bench mark I picked.

Otoh if a school has a low staying on rate it will have fewer points earned in S6 but this will be adjusted for in the Virtual Comparator (VC). This could be because lots of DC are going off to do apprenticeships or because they are using the college route to specialise in S6 (common in eg Arts and computing).

In your example I would be happiest with school 1 (above 1900 and beats VC) and most concerned about the middle one (below 1900 against standard VC). I would also be asking questions to better understand the third one.

If you look at the Nat 7 data you will see that very few schools have 20% doing 3 Nat 7s which is why I am sceptical about scores above 2000. The most obvious example I am aware of is that in East Renf bright DC are encouraged to do 10 rather than 7 Nat 5s and this gives the schools an extra 3x74 = 222 points to flatter their result. If they have a few DC studying extra curricular music they can get them to do Nat 6 music before S5 and extra points for ABRSM exams as well. If they have a few bilingual DC they can persuade to do a Nat 6 in their native tongue that also helps. There are also extra points for sporting and "leadership" qualifications. The bigger the cohort of privileged DC the more examples like this there will be within the "top" 20%.

I am NOT an expert in any of this and I live in hope that one day someone will validate or correct my understanding but it hasn't happened so far unfortunately - either in MN or the press. (nice to have someone to indulge my geekery with though )

One other note of caution. If the school has a standard 20% SIMD 5 cohort and is a standard size of about 100 per year group then you would probably need more than one year to judge performance because of distortions caused by individuals.

The bigger the school and the larger the SIMD 5/4 cohort, the less this is the case which is another reason why the large East Renf schools score consistently well. You can also see from the data if DC are transferring into a "better" school within the LA for S6 - if S6 is same size as S4 rather than smaller. Jordanhill is the most obvious example of this - it explicitly recruits to fill S5 and S6.

@howabout, thanks for your detailed post. In the past couple of days I have been mulling over it while looking at the "dashboard" (well, not all the time :D ).
The second school (the one with the worst score) is my go-to (faith) secondary. The third one in my catchment non den HS, while the first is my neighbouring HS.
Up until recently I have always given for granted that my kids would go to our default (faith) HS, but now I am not so sure anymore.
I still have time to think about it as my eldest is in P5 now, so it will be a twelvemonth before I have to do anything, assuming there is anything to be done.
For now let's wait for the 17-18 info and possibly the 18-19.
The roll in my HS is going steadily down, while in the better school it is going up, but I do not know if they are operating at capacity (is that info available anywhere?)
In any case, I don't even know if a placement request for a school only because it is (allegedly?) better will be even taken into consideration.

Forgot to say, my school has 1200 pupils. The best one about 1700.

1700 is a big school - twice the size mine go to. On the plus side they probably have scope to cater for everything properly but on the negative plenty of opportunity to get lost in the system.
Best source of information on capacity and current rolls and policies on placing requests would be your council website. You could also check how much the curriculum policy is centralised across schools and if there are any consortium arrangements for senior years or specialist resources. In terms of teaching there is very little difference between the local schools where we are because of this. The teachers also swap about quite a bit between schools. The main difference is the pupils and my gut was always to stick with the devil I knew.