Harris Academies

[Daydreamer01]

Does anyone have any experience of Harris? I'm unsure how they are able to make a 'bad' school into such a 'good' ones and for non selective pupils to perform so well. Are they playing the system somehow as the EBacc scores are fairly low. Are they enjoyable schools to attend or just an exam factory with little social interaction?

AllMimsy is correct about how it works in Lewisham.

I haven't checked Haberdashers but if Mimsy is correct the methodology is different but the outcome would be the same as Harris - the intake would reflect the ability range of those applying.

There are in essence three approaches to fair banding:

• use national scores so the intake reflects the ability range across all schools in England

• use local scores so the intake reflects the ability range in the area (usually the LA)

• use the scores of those taking the test so the intake reflects the ability range of those applying

To make this clearer, imagine that there are, say, 25% low achievers nationally and 15% in the LA but only 5% of applicants to the school are low achievers. If the school uses national scores for fair banding they will end up with 25% low achievers (provided enough low achievers apply to fill that many places). If they use local scores they will end up with 15% low achievers. If they use the scores of those taking the test they will end up with 5% low achievers. So in this scenario using the scores of those taking the test would give all applicants an equal chance of getting a place. The other two approaches would give low achievers a higher chance of a place.

There is also the question of how places are allocated within the bands. If the school has the banding results and does the choosing, it can offer places to the top performers in each band.

In Lewisham, the way it worked was that the children in each band were ranked according to the admissions criteria. Their banding result was completely irrelevant. PRH is the expert, but I would be amazed if it was legal to use the banding results in the way you suggest, sugarfoot. That would be academic selection by the back door.

If the school has the banding results and does the choosing, it can offer places to the top performers in each band

No they cannot. AllMimsy is correct - that would be illegal selection. Harris City Academy uses random selection. By law there must be an independent observer for this process. If the EFA found that they were "randomly selecting" the top performers in each band they could lose their funding.

Daydreamer01 yes there are ways of finding out exact results.

The performance tables and under the default 'KS4 2013 results' main tab, select the option 'KS4 exam results'. The first column gives GCSE results excluding equivalents. One school's GCSE results drop 26% when equivalents are excluded - and less than a fifth of those passes are in Ebacc subjects.

And if you are concerned, and good at filtering in Excel, you can download a spreadsheet with all the courses, results and grades here under 'Associated resources'.

Can't comment on the reputation of the head at Harris CP, but be prepared for the GCSE results to fall further over the next few years.

Until fairly recently over 70% of children starting at the school were categorised as 'high ability'. Given that many of the same children apply to both Harris CP as apply to Harris SN (1 mile down the road), which admits fewer than 30% high ability children, there was clearly something very underhand and murky going on with their 'fair banding' admittance process. I'm really glad that this is now being addressed to make the intake at Harris CP more representative of the children in local area.

Can I add, that last year only 45% of children at Harris CP were classed as 'high ability' on starting at the school.