Bedford Girls School A-level results - Disaster?

[Aircooled2]

Am considering sending DD to BGS. Originally all planned for BHSG (DD born 2005) 2009 came and the rest is history..
However BGS a levels this year 2013 have crashed and burned: 34% A*/A compared to BS 53.96%, BMS 56.23% ( even Kimbolton managed 46.23%)
contrast with 2011: BHSG 55.89% and DAHS 50.42%
So is this a temporary blip whilst things settle or has the heart been ripped out?

Just googled the bursar story - a 74 year old man! Obviously parents should take care in the school car park then lol!

You cannot expect schools to have exactly the same quality of students every year. It is just not possible when parents have so much choice and the school may just have less brilliant students than normal . You do not know what the value added was for these students either. The school could have worked miracles. Unless you know the details it is impossible to make judgements that are accurate.

Apologies, apparently the conviction was JUST for dangerous driving.

BGS, fantastic school, my daughter absolutely loves it and loves the support she gets from all her teachers and peers. School is getting better every year and do agree this has taken time from the merger due to staff, parents and pupils against it. Sport is fantastic, with PE staff going out of their way and giving up so much of their time to develop my daughter, who wasn't sporty, until she went to BGS. Would recommend it over BMS and St Andrews, as schools not as good BGS in every department. Send your daughter to BGS, you wont be disappointed!!! Only disappointment is Bursar, but cant have a perfect school.

Results can vary considerably, even if teaching standards are consistent. The results that you mention were dependent on the ability of the cohort that year, and whether any pupils had external issues which affected their grades. Sometimes there may have been a number of pupils who were having hard times outside of school but who didn't qualify for special consideration from the exam boards. Also, if class sizes are small, the % can easily be skewed by one or two pupils. So, those results may actually be excellent.

If you want to judge a school's effectiveness, do it using their value added data. Quite often, going on exam results alone only gives you an indication of how bright their pupils were to start with.

Is it just me or is oscaralfie posting the exact same wonderous review on all the old threads that have Bedford Girls School in the title?? Something fishy this way comes . . . . . . .

^^ I doubt oscaralfie works for them if she's criticising the bursar!

Well I didn't see that bit on here yesterday! All the other copied posts on the other BGS threads don't have it on there either. Anyway I take exception that oscaralfie is saying BGS is better in every department than BMS and ST A. How does she know? Has her daughter attended all schools? Silly statement imho.