SATs levels question for year 9

[shootingstarz]

DDs report said she is working at level 8 in math?s. I assume they are referring to SATs levels yet her school does not do the SATs could it mean something else?

Actually, they are a bit rubbish really, not managing 100%! They only need to move each child on by two levels of progress in five years!

@seeker no, it's completely comprehensive. There is quite a large catholic population in Croydon and it's not focussed on the posh bits, believe you me. If Coloma was a catchment school, then it would be unremittingly posh (Shirley is v v posh). Since it's not a catchment school, although you do get some people train-ing in from some distance, it's mainly people who can't afford to live in Shirley who go there. You do realize that just because a parent is committed and involved doesn't guarantee a child will be average or high ability, I hope? And shit parents can have very bright kids.

Much as it would be lovely to think that all Catholics were superbrains I sadly have to admit that this isn't the case. The attributes of our kids will be as evenly spread around as the attributes of non catholic kids (so, brains, sportiness, musicality, thespian leanings, artsy skills, rocket science - whatever). What we do have is quite a lot of ethnic diversity, which isn't reflected in other types of faith school to the same extent. This isn't true all over the country - for example there are huge indigenous catholic populations in the north which never went away, even during Elizabethan times. But in London, catholic communities are very diverse and always have been (when I was at school we had a massive polish contingent, this was in the 80s, as a result of the war and the polish communities based around Sussex and west London which both sort of spread out over time and seemed to meet around the Croydon area).

But the Coloma Convent is not completely comprehensive, unfortunately. It is only for girls. It is only for girls who have Catholic parents, who have been baptised within weeks of birth, who have received First Communion, whose parents attend mass regularly on Sundays and holy days... If the school is undersubscribed in these categories, it is open to other girls. If it is oversubscribed, distance and other services to the Catholic Church act as tie breakers. If I lived in Croydon, since I am an atheist mother of boys, my children could not go there.

In the 2011 cohort (the one achieving the 90%) there were only 3 low attainers (2%) compared to 101 high attainers (68% getting Level 5s at KS2). There were only 4 disadvantaged pupils. (Compare to my local comprehensive with 24% low attainers, 21% high attainers and 29% disadvantaged pupils).

Anyone who follows a religion, who attends religious services regularly and who gets their children baptised is displaying character traits that suggest they will be supportive parents. Of course being supportive doesn't mean that your children will be high attainers, but there seems to be a suspiciously strong link from the data. People with chaotic, difficult,'disadvantaged' lives are in no place to manage the stringent religious observance criteria, even if they wanted to - they're too busy struggling to give their children breakfast and clothe them, never mind getting them to Sunday School (even assuming they're not Moslem or Hindu or not practising at all).

I may spend all evening looking at the DfE's fascinating tables.

@singersgirl comprehensive does not mean anyone can go to a school. It means the school caters for all abilities and does not select on academic ability that is all. Many comps are catchment schools. By your reasoning, that would mean that none of them were comps either.

It is obviously technically comprehensive in that it does not select for ability. However, any school which has any entry requirements at all apart from being the nearest one attracts parents who at least understand the system. And the oversubscription requirements are such that only children of supportive committed parents could hope to meet them. And those are parents whose children will tend to do well. It's not all about brains, you know!

Singersgirl- I want a list of the top 50 performing comprehensives, so that I can find the ways they aren't comprehensive at all!

@seeker being the nearest school is often the requirement that makes a school decidedly not comprehensive. I am firmly of the opinion that everyone who continually ignores this fact, refusing to acknowledge it when it is pointed out, has a decidedly ulterior motive based on their own finances and leafy area of residence. That's the elephant in the room. People who trumpet the mantra that locality and proximity should be the only deciders for school admission invariably live in nice posh areas.

You wouldn't say that if you saw the school my own ds was going to in September!

But I don't think it helps to make this an an ad hominem discussion. Our personal discussion. Our personal circumstances are all diffeent- if you happen to live in a leafy suburb that doesn't mean you have opinions on the education system in general.

@seeker you clearly do have opinions, however if you seek to change the definition of what comprehensive means don't be surprised if others pick you up on that. And if you continue to refuse to acknowledge the perniciousness of selection by wealth then don't be surprised if others draw their own conclusions.

You claim to support comprehensive schools but when somebody names a comp which gets superb results instead of being pleased that your claim - that comp education can work brilliantly - has some factual evidence to back it up, you try to diminish the results of that school and claim that it isn't really a comp (when in fact it completely fits the definition of comp). What could be your motive?

I don't hink I have ever said that the selection by wealth is not pernicious. I just don't rally know what can be done about that. I've often said that when I get to be dictator, I'll make it illegal for people of child bearing age to move house! But I do know that any school claiming to be comprehensive but getting results in the 90% cannot actually be truly comprehensive and must have some covert form of selection going on. And that is something that can be changed.

I always thought they were referred to as Faith Schools not Comprehensive.

I agree that faith schools are clearly comprehensive in theory and don't select children by ability; however, in practice exactly this selection occurs because of the admissions criteria.

Absolutely agree that many, if not most, so-called good comprehensives select on the basis of postcode and therefore income. So those schools don't really demonstrate, any more than the faith schools, that the comprehensive model works - though it may do. What they demonstrate is that if your intake is composed largely of able and affluent children your results will be good. That's why I think it's a shame that the CVA measure is being removed by this administration - at least that attempted to show progress against starting points.

Like Seeker, I don't know how we could get around this, though Brighton's approach is one possibility.

Seeker, this link is good for going through the nitty gritty of cohorts, though you'd need to know the schools' names first: www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/

I was disappointed when CVA was rumoured to be going but the tables I have seen more recently have shown outcome per ability level. That table I thought was really useful.

It showed our school - which is comprehensive but loses 10% of top ability to grammar and gains more lower ability needing our good pastrol who choose to come from outside catchment. Our school gets 56% inc EM, which I think is pretty good, given the circumstances. I can't see how we can be compared directly to anyone really, it's all about the cohort. (for example our grammar is a long way away and some years parents get together and a group apply to go and they share transport. Other years, parents don't, and our school gets a lot more able pupils). I think the new breakdowns showing progress by ability level is a reasonably useful measure.

Kez, I agree about the CVA - I liked it too.

I think the grammars are actually going to have to stand up and be counted soon, because it will become clear that they don't 'add value' as much as schools like ours (comprehensive, loses 20% approx to grammars).

let's face it, if you start with good raw material, you dont have to work nearly as hard to get them up to the Bs and above as you do if your raw material starts from a much lower level and NEEDS to get their C grade to access the next stage of education.

Dd's school is a faith school. But it has no catchment area so can't "select" pupils by postcode or income. To be honest there are a lot of children at the school from what you might call "the rough area" (council est) and that includes my dd (its not rough like some of the places you see on the tv but you get my drift). And there are some from the "posher" areas. And the ones who seem to be doing the best at the school are the children from the rougher areas but obviously those are the ones i know myself or are dd's friends. The posher ones apparently are always being disruptive in class and get told off a lot (dd's words not mine).