School with 70% pass rate "actually" has 0% - have you seen this?

[roisin]

BBC article here

"In one academy, 70% of pupils got five good GCSEs, but this reduced to zero when equivalents were discounted."

So what they are saying is that EVERY child in that Academy is doing one of these inflated "worth 2, 4, 6" courses, eg COPE; presumably purely to try and manipulate the league tables. But actually NONE of the students are leaving with a handful of decent qualifications?!

I wonder where this school is?

I don't think it's unusual roisin. I went to the open evening at our local Comp, which has much improved results since the appointment of a new head, 77% 5 A*- C last year up from18% 5 years ago

I was skeptical TBH and wrote asking about the % made up of "equivalent" and his response was that the "majority" were equivalents. Went on to explain that they are a fair equivalent etc, which clearly they're not ivo recent announcements.

I've been scrolling through the performance tables and found one Academy which has 84% getting 5 GCSE (or equiv) at A*-C grade; 56% getting ditto including Maths+Eng. But its EBacc score is a big fat zero.

An awful lot of academies are showing as "No KS4 data available for this school" for 2011.

I realise that subjects like BTEC Science do help the league table figures a lot in many schools. But for a school to go down to zero, that is absolutely shocking!

I mean to get 5 all they need at C or above are Maths, English, English Lit and Dual Science GCSE. To have NO students achieving this (presumably none having the opportunity to achieve this) in the twentieth century in the UK, is IMO an outrageous failure to provide a decent standard of education.

If you look at the per school breakdown in the tables there's a figure for average number of entries per pupil and then another for average number of entries per pupil for GCSE's only. The difference between the two gives you a feel for how reliant the school is on non-GCSE qualifications for its headline figure.

Most schools will have a big difference between the two for the low-ability group, which may well be appropriate, but our local school has their high ability group with an average entry count of 17 GCSE equivalents, 9 of which are GCSEs, which is crazy, surely.

17?! Who needs 17?
At ds1's school they only do 9.5 as standard, but all are GCSEs.

Apparently 6FC and Universities are most interested in the consistency of their performance, ie their average; or sometimes their "top 8" performance. And having 15 is no advantage over having 8, as long as you have the subjects you need and good, consistent grades.

I look at the inc E and M. It's rare that measure doesn't have decent GCSEs in it as it tends to be the E and M that are the harder ones to nail. The score without E and M, you just never know what makes it up.

Ebacc is all very well, but that's flawed too. Especially at the moment, where students didn't know a MFL would count when they chose their options.

If you assess a school based on league tables, this is the outcome. It happens everywhere, not just in education either. Stupid targets set by stupid people have consequences apparently not foreseen by said people, probably as they lack the basic intelligence needed to put 2 and 2 together.
At least new targets make schools focus on 'better' qualifications but education system is a mess bottom to top

If you assess a school based on league tables, this is the outcome. It happens everywhere, not just in education either. Stupid targets set by stupid people have consequences apparently not foreseen by said people, probably as they lack the basic intelligence needed to put 2 and 2 together.
At least new targets make schools focus on 'better' qualifications but education system is a mess bottom to top

Our school has just been given a crap ofsted result, because our results are not as good as they could be. This is partly because we do not pander to this system, and only enter students for BTECs when it is in their best interests. The vast majority of our students sit GCSEs. When BTECs stop being taken into account, our school will magically be much, much better than many others in the area.

One school I went for an interview at made all kids with L5 or below in science (ie a lot of them) take the BTEC - only the L6 and 7 were allowed to do science GCSEs! I pulled out of the interview.

senua "An awful lot of academies are showing as "No KS4 data available for this school" for 2011."
That's because they converted in 2011, so they don't yet have exam results as an academy. You'll find their results under their previous names.

I'd be interested to see which school has the 0% score, assuming this is a real outcome not a weasly worded urban myth.

The way the BBC has published schools data makes comparison quite easy. The headline rate is percentage A-C, and then there is also percentage A-C (GCSE only), which shows how much of then school's output is exams other than GCSE but which have an equivalence rating, then EBac. If the two A*-C scores are the same - which for many schools they are, but the EBac is lower, it suggests that the reason for that is GCSE subject selection. If the scores are all over the place, then it tells you that the school offers a lot of non-academic options. If your DC is not attracted/particularly suited to a closely academic path, then these are th schools to look out for.

" If your DC is not attracted/particularly suited to a closely academic path, then these are th schools to look out for."

That depends on whether the school is offering good vocational courses judged to be useful to the student, or whether they are just gaming the system.

It suggests that they do offer the courses, and in some numbers. I would think it's a better start point to seek out a school which offers a range of vocational courses, as the dominant activity of the school, as opposed to an obviously "GCSE only" one. The whole ethos is likely to be a better fit.

I disagree.

Schools that are prepared to fuck up children's future options in an effort to improve their standing in league tables are bad schools.

That's an ethos I'd go some way to avoid.

The approach a school takes to educating all of it pupils appropriately is far more important than what vocational courses it offers.

The problem is that the vast majority of school game the system to a small extent, and in moderation it doesn't make them a bad school. For example DD's primary brought her in for extra coaching because they wanted to be sure she'd get a secure 3 at her SATs. That was presumably motivated by league tables, but I thought it was fine because she was being taught solid academic skills of general applicability.
As a parent it's so difficult to tell the ones which have crossed that line though.
The classic example is the school who concentrate all their resources on the borderline D/C students who will affect the tables, but let the solid C students swim for themselves rather than pushing them to get a B - but I'm sure there are schools which are pushing students to go for the vocational courses with the highest equivalency/teaching time ratio, rather than the one which will suit that student best.

But the fault is the fault of the monitoring system and the reporting of results. On the new framework Ofsted will fail you if your Maths or English C% is below a certain threshold. And this will happen irrespective of any other factors or anything else they see in the inspection. It is a very strict framework.

So schools are forced to plough all their resources into that one statistic, rather than - as you say - converting Cs to Bs, or Bs to As.

It's fascinating to have this transparency in the league tables although it must be depressing for schools whose academic success is entirely dependent on their intake. The 'equivalents' may have been a way of gaming the system but for an individual child it's better to have a string of passes than be labelled a failure. If only 18% of children are achieving the Ebacc that's an awful lot of failures.

We have gone back to the divide between o-levels (which only 20% of the population took) and CSEs. I guess it's always been there. Only 23.7% are entering the Ebacc nationally. You have to be realistic about how high that will go if only 33% of the intake nationally is 'high' achieving (Level 5 end of KS2).

In my very average school (not a bad one) only the top two classes took only o-levels. The middle stream of 4 classes did a mixture of CSEs and GCSEs - many got grade 1 which was considered a 'C' at o-level (they were the ones who benefitted from GCSEs as employers didn't always see the equivalent.) There was some setting between top and middle streams that enabled those in the middle to follow o-level courses as the syllabus was different. I.did see a figure of 20% o-level entry in 5 subjects in the 70s so maybe by the 80s it was closer to 33%. Will try and dig around for that.

Is Ebacc 23.7% nationally?! :-o

Round her the 6 state schools have 0%, 2%, 6%, 15%, 17% and 18%! :-o

"it must be depressing for schools whose academic success is entirely dependent on their intake."

That's all schools.

The mark of a good school is not grades, but what they do with the pupils they have.

It's not something you measure, it's something you judge.

Boring - you let your primary school daughter do tutoring for SATs?

That is so messed up.

meditrina "I'd be interested to see which school has the 0% score, assuming this is a real outcome not a weasly worded urban myth."

It's the Steiner Academy Hereford www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/group.pl?qtype=GR&f=OqLhwXObou&superview=sec&view=aat&set=2&sort=l.schname&ord=asc&tab=52&no=998&pg=1 , but that's a school that only caters for 20 families per year, it's not worth fretting over because those parents have chosen that particular form of education
www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/group.pl?qtype=GR&f=OqLhwXObou&superview=sec&view=aat&set=6&sort=l.schname&ord=asc&tab=88&no=998&pg=1

Thanks! Schools with that few pupils are normally excluded from tables, aren't they? So there is a small flavour of weasel there.

I'm disappointed that examining the tables to see which schools use non-GCSE qualifications is a poor starting point (please note that I was talking in terms of starting point of search for a likely to suit school).

For the logic of that has to be that all those currently offering vocational qualifications are charlatans, so if you want a vocational route for your DC, to avoid charlatans you must restrict your search to only those schools which do not currently offer them. And then I suppose hope that they change their curriculum and develop enough expertise in delivery in the few years before your DC sits external exams, and that none of the parents who chose "all academic" because they wanted an academic school manages to prevent/delay the change.

I is very depressing that there is no way to look for a good vocational route. Secondary moderns may have been underfunded, but at least parents knew what was on offer. If it really is the case that all schools offering vocational courses are charlatans, then this is worse than everything before it.

That's barely a school. 20 pupils. Pupil teacher ratio 37:1.
Is that Steiner as in Steiner? Alternative etc.
It isn't the norm at all.
Regarding Btechs, are they really as poor as some people make out? And isn't sometimes a Btech better than an F in GCSE. People rate GCSEs more highly but some kids get such poor grades that I can't help wondering if they might have done better with more supported coursework and, for some kids, more practical study.