Would you worry if 44% of entrants to a (secondary) school couldn't read?

[Takver]

To be more exact, 44% 'have a reading age of lower than 9.5 years' - from the Estyn report. Would this worry you if you were choosing a school?

Its not in a particularly deprived area, nor does it have many (I suspect a trivial no.) of children for whom English is a 2nd language.

Friends of ours ended up with the Welsh school - it was the ONLY way to get the academic rigour they wanted.
Not much welsh spoken at home though!

Definitely good enough to go to the Welsh school (have had this conversation with her teacher) but she finds it frustrating to lack the vocabulary to express herself fully.

Again according to primary school/ed psych reports her reading age is around 13 in Welsh, but 18+ in English, & she comes out 99%+ in the various tests they do. So no doubt she could do absolutely fine in Welsh, but there's lots of issues around the fact that the school is very, very traditional (which translates as few girls taking science A levels, just for example - and I suspect dd will be science/maths oriented).

And then the English school has an unquestionably excellent science dept - four oxbridge entrants from last year's cohort, all in science subjects. But then that is quite possibly just one teacher . . . and if they leave may change

As you can see, we're going round in circles rather!

Apologies, realise that I'm rambling dreadfully on here. Lots of useful thoughts, though, will go and visit come September armed with a long list of questions

Thing to remember about GCSEs
look how much has changed in the last three years
so guess how much will change in the next three
make your choices (for now) for your DD on years 7 8 and 9 IMHO
and keep an eye out for how the wind is blowing after the next election ....

I was educated in rural Wales, back in the dark ages when two pupils out of 1200 spoke Welsh (and one of those only under duress as her father taught it).

I just can't get my head round trying to teach ICT and modern science in a language that was dead before they developed.

Welsh simply cannot have the vocabulary.

I know old friends who's DCs are in Welsh media schools because that's where the money is, but I very much doubt they speak a word of Welsh at home. My generation never learnt any.

My parents and DSIS still live there and they certainly don't (even if my DSIS can copy type it).

DD is housesharing at uni with a lovely boy from a Welsh language medium school.
He's bilingual and seems to have had no trouble acquiring all the A levels he needed for an Architecture degree course with a huge amount of ICT.

a minority that will have SN and be below average

Some people have SN and are actually above average.

Of course they will! I was doing a quick précis - not writing an essay about the intake! The only point was that I wouldn't expect such a large percentage to have a low reading age.

My DS has SN and is above average, in some things, for one.

Agree there's no problem getting A levels etc in Welsh. And IIRC something like 80% of the intake to the Welsh medium school here don't speak Welsh at home, so dd wouldn't be in a minority (was very surprised by that, as its a heavily welsh speaking area, but its the figs they gave at the last open evening). In fact also I do speak some Welsh, though DH speaks none.

My concerns - as well as dd's preference to work in English - are much more around (1) dd struggles with writing at any speed - though to be fair improving dramatically - so want a school that is open to computer use etc, plus the ed psych who's worked with dd is based at the english school. Also various things around the school culture.

I agree also that having a low reading age doesn't of itself say anything about your ability. One of dd's best friends has a reading age of 6 (can you tell I've been discussing secondary with all the parents I know!) and is obviously extremely able esp in maths/science, she's just severely dyslexic. I was just somewhat thrown by the very high number who are obviously struggling with reading, and as others have said, what that will mean for resources, lesson structures etc.

You haven't mentioned setting. Is that a question to ask the HT: what subjects do they set in, and from what age?

They definitely set in most subjects from pretty much day 1 - but I guess it depends what levels the different sets are working at, if that makes sense?

I would be worried, as the results for ALL Wales that are stated in the June 2012 Estyn report as "Around 40% of learners enter secondary schools in Year 7 with reading ages significantly (at least six months) below their chronological age. Around 20% of these learners are not functionally literate, with reading ages of below nine and a half years." so that's 8% by my reckoning with a reading age below 9.5 yrs. (Sorry if my maths is wrong -somebody will be along to point it out if it is!).
My DS entered secondary with reading age of exactly 9.06 but he is "significantly" dyslexic this hasn't stopped him working his way up to top sets. He can read really well now if he has to, but its sadly not a pleasure for him.

I am not sure I would worry so much about the secondary school so much as the feeder primary schools (which presumably includes the one your DD attended) as that figure seems awfully high - I would expect around 20% to be nearer the norm. How were the reading ages measured? Multiple choice cloze type tests tend to generate lower reading ages than word or sentence reading to a teacher. Can you see any reason why the local primaries perform so poorly? Do the English medium primaries have many children who started in Welsh medium and were moved when they weren't doing very well, so only started to learn to read English when they were 7 or 8?

Does the secondary school have an explanation for the high percentage? I can see that having a reputation for help with special needs would raise it to some extent, but I'm not sure how much in rural area. Do children make quite long journeys to attend this particular school for this reason? Of course, every good reader who is moved to Welsh medium will raise the percentage of poor readers that little bit more.

Will being in a school with so many poor readers really effect your child? Children with SpLDs can still be intelligent and contribute well in class. You do not say how what size the school is, but being surrounded by so many poor readers has not held back last year's 4 Oxbridge entrants. Did you have any doubts about this school before you read this particular statistic? Otherwise, I would go with what you would prefer for your DD and not worry too much about the other children.

Cecily, lots of helpful thoughts there. I don't really know the local primaries other than ours, which isn't that great IMO (they've only just really admitted that dd's friend - who effectively can't read at all age 10 - has any kind of problem).

I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I do suspect that working in two languages (they alternate 'english week'/'welsh week' from yr 3 onwards) can't help those who have problems, and certainly dd who was an early reader never actually got any English phonics instruction at all at school. I don't know though how things work in other primaries.

Definitely the Welsh medium secondary creams off the more academic and/or middle class kids - very much the same pattern that you'd expect to see in an English town where there's a C of E secondary & a community school.

"Will being in a school with so many poor readers really effect your child? Children with SpLDs can still be intelligent and contribute well in class. " I guess that's the no. 1 key question!

Did I have any previous doubts about the school . . . yes, it has undoubtedly been through a very rough patch (very unpopular HT, lots of teachers left, HT then left, acting HT for some time) though I'm moderately comfortable that it's on the up and the new HT due to start in September comes with a very good reputation. They recently did a grading of Welsh schools 1 to 5 (crudely, good to appalling) - this school was graded 4, the other 1 . . .

Basically, its just very hard to have the confidence to say that this school looks bad on externals (basically exam results), but actually it probably is the best school for my child.

are you talking about the two schools (Welsh medium and English) which both begin with P? In a seaside town beginning with A?
Don't forget that as there is so little choice of school, the intake is very broad, which might make looking at such statistics as reading age on entry somewhat irrelevant. Also if i am right in my guess, the English medium school is good with 'special needs', and bringing everyone up to a level.

No, it isn't! I guess the situation is pretty similar in a lot of Wales though, very little choice of schools (basically choose one of two) and the Welsh medium tending to be the more academic.

Interesting that Klaritaf and Takver are NOT talking about the same town.
The towns where DH has seen exactly the problems described are Caerphilly, Newport, Swansea, Merthyr, and anywhere along the heads of the valleys.

League tables may be the spawn of the devil, but dropping them has done serious damage to Welsh schooling.
As Bob Diamond said, people do the right thing if they think they will be caught.
Welsh schools had been told they would not get caught so ceased worrying about the right thing.

Schools here are not great, no, always banging on about how they are 'truly comprehensive' and then offering a skiing jaunt to America at £700 odd as the only trip in years 7 and 8. (rant rant moan moan) They also seem to be stuck in the past and convinced they are marvellous. If they spent as much time educating children as shouting at them about their shoes, they might do better.
Ho hum.

Interestingly I think we're seeing a lot of the same problems that you get in England. In the same way that faith schools cream off the middle classes there, the Welsh medium schools seem to round here.

Its silly really - obviously, some people quite rightly want their children to be educated in an entirely Welsh speaking environment, either because they are Welsh speakers or because they consider it important for cultural/employment reasons.

But I'm absolutely certain that of the 80% of entrants to the Welsh school coming from English speaking households, the majority would prefer to have their children in a school operating in a mix of English and Welsh (the case for the 'english medium' school - in practice you can take subjects in both languages). Because the latter is seen as the 'rough school', though, they all go off to the Welsh school and just reinforce the situation. (Obviously, I'm also guilty of this here as we may in the end give up and go with the flow!)

TalkinPeace, surely schools don't stop teaching reading just because there are no league tables. We have never had primary school league tables in Scotland and reading is still taught.

Takver, I think your analogy with over-subscribed faith schools in England is a valid one. Certainly, the 2011 league tables, where pupils levels on intake were also given, were a bit of a revelation. If Welsh-medium becomes the default choice of every aspirational family, the 'rough school' consequence seems the likely outcome.

I suppose the other issue with league tables is that where there is minimal choice, they probably aren't likely to make a massive difference. Here you've got the choice of the local school, one about 6 miles away which shares the same head teacher, or one 8 miles away.

Some people do move their dc to the latter, but generally only in fairly extreme circumstances just because of the cost of fuel etc (and of course you can only do it if you've got reliable access to a car every day at pickup/drop off time).

There is a rough equivalent to league tables in the recent rating of secondaries from 1 through to 5 by the welsh govt.

Takver how many 'rough' schools send pupils to Oxbridge?

Yes, that's what I thought. Unless the school is really huge, four in one year is really impressive.

If it was a streamed comp, I would forget what goes on in any other stream than the one my child would be in.

If the bright , aspiring, supported children do well, get stretched, challenged and get added value from the education then I would be happy. As for enough challenge and stimulation from enough bright motivated children - yr 7 at DS's school is as big as his whole primary school, so in one class of children of similiar ability he will have far more at his level than he has had in his primary class!

Similiarly, if I had a child who needed support, time to learn at a steady pace, i would be looking at the value-added scores of the middle ability children, not how many of the top lot got A*s.